Sophomoritis, or The End v2.0

The lack of motivation that saturated the last month of sophomore year still numbs me now. In fact, as I write this, I'm eating the cereal I never ate during the school year because I'm too lazy to make any other meal. (Well I'm always too lazy to make a meal, but I usually hide behind the excuse of being too busy). I've been putting off writing this post for days (or a month, you could say, as my last post chronicled my E-Days adventures). The crash and lethargicness of the summer has hit me after eight months of the frantic rhythm of 18 to 18.5 credit hours. Now the only reason to get off the couch is because the leather has gotten warm and sticky in the heat of May. My room is a mess, full of boxes and clothes I've brought back from Golden. I've allowed my curly hair to roam free like always (because I'm too busy to tame it doing school anyway), but my mom has noticed and insisted I attempt to do something with it on occasion, comparing my locks to that of my sister's, whose owner has time to wake up at 7AM. But for me, waking up at 7AM has always been a sin-- even for 8AM classes I've woken up at 7:40-- and any sort of effort to do anything cannot be mustered.

I'm just trying to recover from this semester while being in awe of how quickly half of my undergraduate days have flown by.

***

"I wanted to kill myself," Michelle said of the last day of EPICS presentations and the last day of school. I doodled the earth's magnetic field and volcanoes and tornadoes on my team evaluation sheet. I hope my professor liked it. I don't think any of us had caffeine that morning. All six classes of mine were tiring, and most of them were review sessions. I looked at the clock in Static Fields more times than Shane, passed notes to Rosie, and made faces on my fingers. "What's up with you guys today?" my advisor/professor had asked. "We have Sophomoritis," I solemnly replied, "like Senioritis, but for sophomores."

Unfortunately true, that's pretty much how the semester went. Constant business and motion capped off by more intense business struggling to get done. I had the benefit of being certain to pass all of my classes and the attitude of being perfectly content to do mediocre. This time freshman year, I was going insane trying to ace tests and get a higher grade...what happened to my motivation?

I had forgotten how to study, anyway. All semester, homework and a slight review had been sufficient to get me through the midterms (not to brag-- and I DO NOT recommend this style of "studying"). So here I was, the Thursday before finals started Saturday, staring at the list of Linear Algebra theorems in Arthur Lakes Library, and starting to silently freak out that I wasn't prepared for this. Additionally, I feared I wouldn't have time to become prepared, for I was going to go see the Iron Man III premier that night. Friday, or Dead Day, was devoted to Differential Equations, though I really didn't need to study for it.

Finals Week actually flew by pretty quickly, though sometimes it seemed to drag. 5 more days, 4, 3, 2. I had been keeping track since Shane began asking me in January. The 100-plus days had dragged by in some moments, yet flew by all together. As I took one of my finals, the heading of "MAY 5, 2013" took me by surprise for a second. The year really was flying by, and sophomore year really was almost over. It took all my strength to muster up just enough motivation to get through the final five days though. So many times I wanted to give up and go to bed.

I finally got to go to bed May 8. After nearly nine months.

Tonight, We Are Young

Coming off of MysterE-Days 2013, I am even more convinced that I despise this "time" nonsense.

Nearly 50% of my life at Mines has been wisked away already (assuming 4-year plan...I'm not gonna fail a class, danggit!!!). We are slaves to this concept. 4/8/13 as a header before we start taking notes. Monday, I go to this meeting. Friday, I gotta be here there, and everywhere in that order. And somewhere in there find time to study for an exam or get that assignment done, concepts that I've been neglecting more and more of late.

It's somewhat monotonous, somewhat an adventure scrambling each Monday to get everything done, somewhat interesting to see if we'll actually learn everything needed to fumble around on the exam to do decently. It's somewhat scary too, with us somehow making it through the torture each week, bringing us that much closer to the end. The end of the week. The end of the year. The end of college.

I'm still in the 40%- it's not like I'm graduating in less than a month. But it seems like we've all grown up to be 80 years old.

Do not want. As frozen as time seems through the monotony, the amount at which it progresses causes me to want to either freeze it or travel back into it. I don't want to get old. I don't want to even grow up.

It's funny though- last semester seems like forever ago. I can hardly remember any of it. All I remember was studying in Brown all the time. Struggling through geology lab. Struggling to wake up for 9am Intro to Geophysics. Stupid Econ. And the such like.

This semester has been crazier, but I've not been in Brown as much (but the Linux Lab more). I think back to Fall semester and it seems like forever ago. Like it was a totally separate year. It makes me feel old.

***
Monday morning after E-Days, nobody wants to get up and go to school not even me, who did not drink at all. My body ached everywhere, and even though I had gone to bed at 8pm (like an old lady), I wanted to skip my 8am class. I should have.

Yeah, I went to bed pretty early- don't judge me. I just wanted the weekend to last a bit more.

Who knew having fun could be so exhausting? No wonder we at Mines don't take time to do it too often. The shenanigans started Wednesday for me, a day in which I was tired from taking two math midterms in 12 hours. After class was over though, I was a happy camper for four days.

Blaster on the Orecart Pull.

Rockies Opening Day right after the Orecart Pull.

Some of my friends competed in the Cardboard boat race Saturday.

Trebuchet launch at the Carnival. 

 

Mines baseball won their first series. 

The struggle of sophomore year has been comparing everything to freshman year. Yeah, it's different. It doesn't mean it's bad. If it was the same, it'd be boring.

We're still young. Even if we have to pretend so for just a few nights.

Correlation

Some unrelated Java code...

I enter Green Center at 9am for Geophysics EPICS, our project-based data analysis class. It's a fun class, probably my favorite. We're on our second to last project. The stress of the week has weighed on me. I'm feeling the tension of stuff not getting done.

But yet, the time in the Linux Lab flies. Time flies when you're having fun. Using MATLAB, I throw some plots together. It's a soothing process, once you get past the craziness of the impending deadline of Friday.

After three more hours of class, lunch with SWE, I head back up to the lab. Finally, at 2pm, I exit the lab to go to my other classes. It's a beautiful day, dang it. I wish I could be outside chilling, or having a catch. Not spending it inside the dark abyss of Green Center.

After classes are over, I head back to the Green Center. Anxious and unfocused, I decide to buy a grape Nos energy drink. I focus and make more plots, trying to find a correlation between weather patterns and avalanche occurrences.

It's enjoyable. I can imagine working a job like this. In fact, I'm excited for the research internship at CSU I accepted: my project apparently will be "mapping the global persistence of tropospheric winds and the impact of these winds on large scale climate/circulation patterns". Kind of similar to the stuff we're doing in EPICS. It seems cool.

I like the exploration of data, trying to find patterns. At the beginning of the class, I had no idea what I was doing and made plots pretending I knew. As it goes on, I still don't know what I'm doing, but I know how to pretend better and use the tools better. It's like life. You really have no idea what you're doing, just winging it as you go along, learning more and more stuff.

Yep, it is like life. Sometimes it feels like a mess.

Sometimes things go wrong.

{badness 10000}
It's over 9000.

"MATLAB is exiting because of fatal error."
"killed" 
bahahaha

And at the end of the day, all we can do is leave a report, or lab log of what we've done.

Today I Don't Feel Like Doing Anything

Last week killed me.

I'm dead. A goner. Dead meat. A floating fish. But not really.

I'm not surprised that I've started to get sick, honestly. I heard that getting less than 5 hours of sleep is bad for you. I haven't really been eating well. Or exercising or doing anything healthy or good at all. I had three tests within 18 hours, and that was after our third EPICS project was due (Wednesday).

I guess my whole goal this semester has been to simply survive, so I really don't care how terrible I did on those exams (that DiffEq test....ouch).

The great thing about 4 of my 6 classes having tests/projects last week was the fact that this weekend, President's Day weekend, I could be a lazy bum and not feel bad about it. I despise laziness, but I think in this case I get a free ride.

I hung out with old friends, went to a coffee shop by myself, covered the Mines baseball and softball series, watched movies, attempted to save incoming freshman's souls from choosing Physics or ChemE as a major, took naps and took naps.

The best thing is that I don't have classes on Tuesday, meaning: Four day weekend! But in reality, my laziness must cease for the next three weeks (until Spring Break), so I must get started on my Linear Algebra worksheet.

Ain't Nobody Got Time for That!

It was the second week where I have stayed up waaaaay too late on a Sunday night in order to (partially) complete the assignments due the next day. The combination of Java programs, EPICS projects, Static Fields readings and homework, DiffEq worksheet, DiffEq book problems, Oredigger editing and writing, and remembering to live has made me a very busy, crazy, and sometimes overwhelmed person. As a result, I've gotten 3 hours of sleep Sunday nights. It's not that I've been slacking during the week, rather I had worked on the EPICS project, filled out research internship applications, did homework due other days  (Linear Algebra worksheet and reading quiz Wednesday, Static Fields...). You get the picture. There's no time for anything.

• Laundry
• Exercise 
• Eating
• Sleeping
• Having fun
• Reading the book in order to do the homework
• Actually doing the homework
• Paying attention in class (some classes I use to get homework done in due in a couple hours...it's bad).
• Seeing friends
• Talking to friends
• Hanging out with friends
• Breathing
• Personal hygiene (somewhat kidding)
• Blogging

Sorry.

I do try on some of them. I do try.