This Is Nothing

Insane Graduate School Edition

Sunday, March 16, 2003

So, welcome back to school . . .

Yeah, so here it is, the last day of the spring break. I spent all of Saturday thinking it was Sunday, so now it doesn't come as much of a suprise that it is, in fact now Sunday. The weather is absolutely lovely, and I think: man, I've got so much work to do in the coming week, much of which I want to accomplish today. . but if this was highschool I'd buy a 50 cent kite at Biglots and go fly it around my house. Oh, but who needs fun when you have work?

Actually, I shouldn't bitch. I've had my moment of denouement

Main Entry: de·noue·ment
Variant(s): also dé·noue·ment /"dA-"nü-'män, dA-'nü-"/
Function: noun
Etymology: French dénouement, literally, untying, from Middle French desnouement, from desnouer to untie, from Old French desnoer, from des- de- + noer to tie, from Latin nodare, from nodus knot -- more at NODE
Date: 1752
1 : the final outcome of the main dramatic complication in a literary work
2 : the outcome of a complex sequence of events

Ok, so it wasn't that dramatic a complication, it wasn't that complex, but I feel relieved to have gotten past the freak-out stress stage and now be moving on to gettting-things-done-land. I think I may have completely finished my powerpoint for the Apex. Maybe. I'm telling myself its done so that I'll stop messing with it and get together bulleted points for the talk today. That way I'll go to Prudy with my APEX presentation roughly complete, and ready to turn into a poster of sorts. And you know what would be left, kiddies? Taking the talk and fleshing it out into a paper to turn in at the end of the 12-week. That's it. Stick the APEX in the can and call it a day. I'm simplifying, but the reason I barely worked on this thing till now is because it's so big and scary I didn't want to--that and I was so busy I couldn't bring myself to do it.

It's like when you watch a scary movie as a kid, and the monster scares you so much that it haunts you a bit every night. You walk around and you're still so scared of it that you don't want to think about it. But eventually you work up the strength to just face it, whatever it is that is so scary. And when you do, you see it's really not much at all--in fact it's beatable. The days I realized I could probably stick a gremlin in a blender, or punch that clown from IT in the face. . . .those were good days. And maybe today I actually believe I can get this APEX done. And it won't suck. I practiced the talk with the powerpoint, roughly, and it's easily 15 minutes, and I only need about 12-13. How's that for awesome?

So I'm feeling better. I still wish I had a vacation--somewhere sunnier and warmer where I could hop in the ocean or sleep on the beach, eat shrimp every night, and give Dave some tropical drinks . . . .