Call Me A Dreamer

Good Morning! Or.. Whatever time of day it may be for you while reading this. It's the Monday after coming back from Thanksgiving break, and what a lovely break it was. Nothing like a little dose of Christmas break and that feeling of warmth being around family to make you want the break to come all the sooner. Yesterday we, Karl & I, arrived back to Corvallis campus to go our separate ways and get back to studying and doing homework and preparing for presentations, studying for exams, reading for class, etc. (Most of these things were his to do... And he is, by far, more productive than I in a short amount of time. Karl is leaving for halfway around the world this coming Thursday at about 4am on the HUT shuttle for PDX. He has exams all of Wednesday and an Exam and Presentation on Tuesday if I remember correctly. He has been working ridiculously hard studying and reading, writing essays, staying up until the wee hours of the morning and then only getting a few hours of sleep w...

Well, this week has been quite a turn around in comparison to the rest of the term. I think that residents are finally settled in and understand how things are, and I too have adjusted. I think after being shaken up a bit by my lacking academic success for the first few weeks in my engineering classes, my ability to be more disciplined is getting better. I'm currently on a library date with Karl actually. However, I finished my reading before he did, so I now get to blog. Life is getting better, or at least I am more joyful and happy. Prayer is wonderful and I truly think that has been the change in life. My residents are showing more appreciation for me lately, which has been quite an uplifting thing. I get to help them out with their chemistry homework and 'work magic' or so it seems. They're impressed that I remember it, but in all actuality, its just a more simplified version of some of the things that I have going on in my Thermodynamics course. I also got to col...

Do you ever sit and just ponder life in general. Where you're going, if you can attain your goals, who your friends are, how your family is doing, do you feel valued at your job, and feel that what you're doing is worth while? I generally try and keep myself so busy, that whenever I do get around to thinking these things, it is because I am discouraged by what I am trying to do, and therefore all of my answers are quite negative. And then, here I am, sitting in our floor's study lounge, laptop, transport homework, kleenex (I'm starting to get sick..) and a bowl of life cereal, wishing that life really did come in a box. How does one even make life 'better'? Many will say, life is what you make of it. Some will say, it is doing the best with the hand you've been dealt. Is changing your self-talk, all that it really takes? To be positive amidst everything? What about self-esteem, and when no matter how much you talk yourself up with the 'You can do this!...

So, I'm sitting at the desk today is game day here at Oregon State Campus. We're playing Arizona State and it's been a close game so far. We get to use the radio today because of the increased amount of people on campus using phones, so sometimes our duty phones don't work. The radio is our back up communication line, and we've been having trouble alarms today with the fire panel. (Mostly the batteries in smoke detectors being replaced) That was a bit annoying and having to ask to silence the trouble alarm. There are also a lot of people out here tailgaiting since we live right by the stadium. It's ridiculous how rowdy adults can be. I understand game days are fun, but I wish they would be good examples for our undergraduates living here on campus on how to be responsible drinkers. On the bright-side, while being here on duty I've been confined to the building, and there isn't really a ton to do, so I've managed to clean my room, vacuum, put away l...

Hi again! I'm still trying to figure out when it is best to write these. I'm currently sitting in Bing's the Cafe at Weatherford having just finished my lunch and reading for my Bible as Lit class. I've also been listening to some podcasts and was on reddit a little bit and watched someone on youtube debunking a psychic. In all honesty, it hasn't been all that productive of a day. Slept in til 9:30am printed out things for my Transport Phenomena class and then went to class and have been here since noon. (It's about 1:40 now). Things are going alright for me. Those exams I took kicked my butt and I failed one of them and I'm waiting to see how much partial credit I get on the other one, but I know I approached it incorrectly. I'm just praying that there will be some way I can redeem my grades. I think I need to just sit and study alone more often. Yet for some reason I don't feel like it would do me much good. For I know the concepts and such, it was...

Well, the last two days have been really really rough. I had a midterm in Thermodynamics and Nanotechnology on Monday and Tuesday (today) respectively. It was sad because I thought they would both be relatively easy, because I've been doing well in those classes, and then I take the exam and I realize, I missed a huge concept, or I forgot to study something really important. It was quite the rude awakening to pro-school for me. I'm currently sitting in the 2nd floor lounge of the ILLC outside of a classroom that should be open for our staff to have our staff meeting. I just finished eating dinner with Karl. Jon and I had a rather... unsuccessful floor dinner. No one really wants to show up, which is rather disappointing, but such is life. I'd rather have them not show up, than show up and not want to be there. The general complaint is that it is at 5pm, which is before our Staff Meeting. We have our Hall Council meetings on Sunday Nights, starting at 8 for HC and 7pm for ...

Well hello there! Long time no talk! (or type... you know) I really fell out of writing over the summer, but now as school is picking up, I realize how therapeutic it is, and that I really need it. To be 'alone' in a sense with one's thoughts and experiences, yet to 'verbalize' it publicly (as public as this is, since not a ton of people read this..) helps keep my own thoughts and complaints in check. It helps me figure out if I'm being unreasonable in my thoughts and opinions. Anyways, classes are going alright. Transport Phenomena is a bit difficult as we're using the energy balance that I learned last year, but we're integrating and doing differential calculus on it now, which isn't really my strong suit. Thermodynamics is relatively easy in comparison to Transport. Nanotechnology is my ethics course; we're focusing mainly on ethics of nanotechnology and writing papers about such. I kind of like writing because it makes me sound significantl...