Now I know the true meaning of Dead Week.  It's not that classes are dead.  It means that you will feel dead from the work you've been forced to complete in this last week of classes.  Add in my innate procrastination, and it's a recipe for exhaustion.  My schedule from this week:

Saturday: Get up at 8:00 for stupid band thing for a couple hours, realize bachelor party plans for next day won't work, stress over planning new party in 24 hours

Sunday: Do Lafayette Xmas Parade in pouring rain, get back late, rush to find Chris and Craig to drive to Champaign, IL, chaos ensues, eventually make it to bachelor party, find out we're going to the Motor City Bowl (worst case scenario, not going to any bowl at all would have been preferable) get back to Purdue at midnight

Monday: Almost miss Genetics class to turn in final HW, get with Hort group to make presentation over final project and take 3 hours to do 5 minutes of work

Tuesday: Give Hort presentation in 2 hour class that runs 1.5 hours over, band from 7-9 pm, drive to Lily Hall at 10 pm to finish botany project research, get back at 2 am.

Wednesday: Skip morning classes due to me hating Genetics and refusing to go to Hort since I spent 1.5 extra hours there yesterday, find out that I don't have to take Genetics final due to good grade in class (thank goodness I got that HW in!), start Botany final project compilation and poster around 11 pm.  Takes 9 hours to finish.

Thursday: Technically a continuation of Wednesday because no sleep was taken (first all-nighter ever!), go to Botany class at 8:30 am where lab practical is given, followed by poster session for 2 hours.  Get back to apartment at noon and collapse in bed.  Get up 6:30 pm for band until 9:00 pm.  Return, start writing final 8 pages of  Hort final project research paper around midnight, finish at 6:00 am.

Friday:  Skip classes needed to go to because I can't get out of bed, manage to get to Greek.  Now, must run out to store and rent tux shoes because I forgot to find some, then leave Purdue at 4:00 pm to drive to Danville, IL for Ben's dinner rehearsal.  Spend night with strangers.

Saturday: Wedding!  Finally drive back home and realize nothing to do for once (other than study for finals, haha).  Probably will binge sleep for 24 hours.

I've never looked forward to finals week so much in my light.  It's ironic because I know that it will be less busy and stressful than this last week.  I'm sure everyone has had weeks like this, but this is the first time so much junk has been piled up all at once with several little things of stress added in almost constantly (trying to set up Tshirt order forms for a club, couple of deaths of acquaintances, car being blocked in at inopportune times, etc) and a severe lack of good news (I don't have to take a final and...that's about it).

Phew!  I need some chill time.

Well, I guess it's fitting that I update at the end of the semester (almost) seeing as how the last time I wrote on here was the beginning of the semester.  What spurred this update?  Perhaps it's that I missed writing my life down so I could read it later and remember the events of my youth.  Perhaps it's that I missed being in whatever slight contact this counts for with old friends.

Or it's the fact that I have my laptop in front of me and my desktop computer next to me has 8 sentences done of a 10 page paper that I've been putting off and I am welcoming anything that delays the inevitable mediocrity of writing.

Some things never change.

After Thanksgiving break, I was pumped about there only being 3 weeks left.  I'm not really a fan of most of my classes this semester, with the exception of Greek and possibly Plant Anatomy, so I will be glad when they are done.  Plus, next semester's classes look to be mostly great.  But I forgot that profs love to make life hell before finals.

I've missed more classes this semester than all my other semesters combined.  It's hard when your two most loathed classes are your first two of the day.  I wake up, only want to go back to sleep, and the only thing motivating me to get out of bed is Genetics lecture, taught by someone who obviously never took anything on the topic of education and teaching.  One week before our third exam, we go to class to find another lady there who tells us that our regular prof is in Spain for a week, and that she doesn't know what we've been taught, and he didn't tell her what to teach exactly, but by God her lecture material may be on the exam.  And she's running our review session for the test.  Over material she doesn't know was taught or not.  Brilliant.

Also, I've decided I suck at running things.  I don't like taking initiative.  I don't like having to improve things and groups.  I don't like being in charge of something that I feel barely stands on it's own two feet, and me feeling as if I should leave it that much better.  Bettering something requires taking initiative, and as I stated before, I do not enjoy this.

I guess that's why I'm not in management.  I'm a maintainer.  That's probably a skill I should work on.  And not mention in an interview, haha.

Well, back to my scientific paper.  Let's not wait another semester before we do this again.

Classes start in under 12 hours.  My schedule's pretty nice.  I start at either 8:30 or 9:30 and go straight to 12:30.  Then I'm off until band.

Band camp is over.  It wasn't too bad this year, except for the completely retarded exhibition that we had to do at the end of band camp for "family and friends to see all that we've accomplished this week."  It was basically an hour of long narration about how we exactly march and repetitive marching drills.  I felt like we were freshmen in high school.  Anyway, the freshmen this year seem pretty cool, and we got an extra half-rank (with the piccs, haha) for a total of 28 altos.  I'm a 10 this year in the rank, meaning I'm second in command of my rank.

We hosted the alto party this year.  We had a pretty good time getting to know the freshman better and reliving old memories.  It was a little more restrained than past alto parties, which was kind of nice being the host.  Our section leader made a sweet DVD with all of the pictures from last season's game days, travels, and parties set to music.  We watched it today and it was hillarious.  It made me pretty excited for the coming year.

Fall semester, here I come.

Last evening, I went golfing with the roommates and Funk.  It was my first time ever on an actual course, and I've only been to the driving range twice.  That said, I didn't do too badly.  I only shot 10 and 5 strokes behind Tony & Stephen respectively, and I had a lot of fun.    Definitely something I could get into.

The only major event this week was when I stayed up until 2:20 am cleaning my room.  It had gotten to the point where there was not a single spot of carpet showing.  And either my bed or computer chair was overflowing; it just depended on which I was using at the time, and the crap would get shifted to the other object.

Prospects for the future include partying at Funk's tonight and DCI with Emily & Kasey tomorrow, and maybe something with Ben and Chris on Sunday.  Looks like a good weekend.

Plus, only one more week of work left.  Sweet.

Nothing's really happened/been happening.  Went up with Tony to his grandparent's place in Michigan, where I met an entire side of his family.  The place is right on a lake, so we tubed and swam and boated for a couple days, and filled the nights with poker and other games.  A good time.

Other than that, it's basically been trying to grind out the rest of summer.  I'll be sad when summer ends, but work is starting to drag on.  I've found I have a few stages when it comes to most semi-tedious things, like work or school:

Novelty: For a few days, everything thing is new and exciting.  I'm usually refreshed from not doing anything for like a week or two before, and I feel optimistic about everything.

This isn't for me: Right after the novelty quickly wears off, I get really pessimistic.  Usually its from switching to getting up earlier and the lack of sleep hits me.  This is when I get bored with what I'm doing.

This isn't too bad: The previous phase goes away after another couple days, and then I get into a rhythm and things aren't so bad.  Work isn't the greatest thing, but is it ever great?  And it could be worse.

Okay, when's it over?: This phase is more of a steady deterioration of the last phase.  Over time, things become monotonous, and I'm ready to move on to something else.  This is where I'm at right now.  Work's not hard or anything, the days just keep seeming to get longer and longer.  I have nothing better to do right now, so it doesn't matter.  But school is actually looking quite attractive right now, if nothing else for the guarantee of free time to nap.  Man, I love naps.

Acceptance: Actually, I don't know if I ever hit this stage.  I hope so, or else working the rest of my life is going to suck hardcore.

IMPORTANT NOTICE!

If anyone drinks coke products and aren't keeping coke rewards, I am actually trying to get something sweet on there.  If saving bottlecaps or the bottle codes is too tedious, all I ask is that if you get like a 12-pack or 24-pack of cans, please send the code that is on the part you rip off to get the cans.  Those codes are worth extra points.  Thanks.

Not much going on now.  Work during the week, come home and watch tv/eat dinner, either do nothing during the weekend up here or go home for a visit.  Stephen organized a co-ed softball team, and though our season is short, it's been a fun diversion from the boring regularity of this summer.  Other than that, my biggest priority is to clean my room.  And dry my clothes from the 5 am fountain run that Stephen and I took and somehow thought it was a good idea.

It was cold.

I made it back alive and well from Trinidad.  Actually, I got back like a week ago, but I kept putting of updating this because I didn't want to have to write all about the trip.  Then I realized that this is my journal, and nothing says that I must to write out everything I did.  Plus, I wrote a journal while on the trip, so I have that to keep my memories fresh.  If you are sincerely interested in what happened, ask me.  Not in a comment, haha.  And say you want more that, it was great.  But in all seriousness, it was great.  Learned a lot.  Considering taking more international-themed classes.  Might be going to China next summer.

So now I'm back to work.  I found that for some reason, menial tasks no longer bother me.  I kind of zone out and get lost in my own thoughts and before I know it, an hour has passed and I've done all the lab dishes.  Also, since I'm kind of the lab bitch, I get to help out with like 3 different projects, so I get a fair amount of variety in my work.

I got my iPod last week.  It is now one of my best friends.  Luckily, I bought one of those covers for it, because the screen area of the cover is already scratched.  Covers are easily replaced, iPods cost mucho monies.

Time to head home.  Stephen's back for the rest of summer, so now there's three of us and we're having a good time.  We're starting a softball team to play in the intramurals.  We're going to be named "Pitch and Moan"...if they let us, haha.  Let's hope the managers have a sense of humor.

So I made it to Trinidad, alive and well.  It's amazing here.  The place we're staying at most of the time is in the "mountains" about 800 feet above the main port city.  We're in a little guest house dealy that has a veranda on our second floor that overlooks the entire city on the plain below.  Think of the classic "makeout point over LA" image, multiply the view by a thousand and add in a Caribbean flair and that's our place.

Our adventures begin tomorrow.  I'm pumped.

Packing always takes me hours.  Usually because I get distracted and do other things right in the middle of packing.

Like, buying an iPod.  I've been wanting one this summer so I can have one for work and during the year, and because I can buy it with job income rather than scholarship money, I don't feel guilty.  I'm pretty sure mp3 players don't qualify as an academic accessory in the eyes of the scholarship donors.  So it should come sometime when I'm in Trinidad.

Speaking of which, I'm pumped.  I leave tomorrow at 10:47 from Indy.  Then two weeks in the Caribbean, and I come back on the 7th of June.  Please don't call me, because I won't answer because I don't want a $2000 cell phone bill.  I'll have my laptop, so email me if you need contact for whatever reason.

Wow, the next time I'll be online, I'll be 3400 miles away.  Hopefully, I'll return with stories to regale and enthrall you.  Later!

So I've accessed the internet on my desktop for the first time in 377 days, as my antivirus so kindly reminded me.  Since leaving the dorm, my desktop has be disconnected from the world.  But now that Hendo is gone and isn't using the router for his desktop, we've attached it to mine. 

I wish that work days weren't 8 hours.  By the time I get off work, eat dinner and relax a little to get energy to do any chores/tasks, it always seems to be after nine.  So then I either a) don't do the chores because I don't want to do chores until I go to bed or b) do the chores, and have about 45 minutes of free time before I have to sleep.  I can't really go to sleep before midnight because then going to bed earlier than that really eats into what little of an evening I have, so then I'm tired because I got like 6.5 hours of sleep, which leads to me needing time after work to rest up.

So I've come up with a few things:
a) My "relax a little" time is actually like 3 hours long.  So I just need to remember that I've had 3 hours of free time
b) This is a fact of life
c) Maybe in the future, I'll get a dream job that only takes like 4 hours a day and I still feel like I'm working up to my potential
d) Almost no one in the world who is ever anyone started off and did their whole career with only short workdays
e) I'll never understand people who choose to make work their life and put in 60+ hour weeks.
f) This is good therapy for my ADD and laziness

Well, I need to organize my shelves.  Or maybe I'll watch a movie.  Who knows.