The Wild Life and Times of a Botanical Geek

My final exam is IN, finally. That thing has been a monkey on my back the past few days. Tomorrow I dive head first into getting my specimens prepped for a summer's worth of measuring and statistical analysis. In the meantime, I have TAGS to write!

On a different note, yoinking an idea from Eien-chan...

You ask a question, I'll provide an answer. I reserve the right to not respond (meaningfully) to questions.

Fail #1: Receiving a nomination to present at the graduate symposium and not responding right away.
Fail #2: Accidentally deleting the nomination email in a flurry of trying to keep my webmail space down, because they don't give us enough (although I just figured out how I can get more, thank goodness).
Fail #3: Forgetting to respond until 1:00AM the day after the due date for responding.

This adds up to EPIC FAIL. I just sent an email to the person I hope is right, apologizing, sending what information I could remember I needed to send, and asking for a second copy of the email. I am SUCH AN IDIOT. I hope I can still present, but I doubt it, because I suspect I come off as a sketchy, irresponsible idiot now.

Good GRIEF what a strange day. Pressure changes so crazy they make me nauseous, high winds, random cloudbursts, and HAIL. IN JANUARY. From what I can tell, hail is a summer thing. Of course, it had to start hailing while I was trying to get home in the dark and rain, so I decided then would be a very good time to pull into a gas station and buy gas and hope that the hail would stop (it did). WTF, weather?

So, things start up for me again tomorrow. You know I'm massively excited. >_> I've already started having bad dreams about teaching (the most recent one involved me trying to give my class an exam, but the TV in the room was possessed, or something, because it would keep randomly turning on and distracting them. I couldn't get it to turn off, so I had to mute it). My schedule is really weird. I'm teaching basically all day on Mondays, now. Tuesday and Wednesday are basically free for the moment, although I still have to go to seminar on Tuesdays (*groan*). Friday is lab prep day, which just leaves Thursdays. Thursdays SUCK. In the words of the great Arthur Dent, I could never get the hang of Thursdays. I've got a 10AM class, and then a second class in the evening from 5:30-8:30. It's at a center that's not on the main campus, either, so I'm going to have to hop a bus to get out there. And because I have that early morning class, I can't just go down to school after my brother gets home. So that means I'll have to ride in with my mother like always (and get up at the crack of WTF), and have a day that basically lasts from 7 in the morning until 8:30 at night. You know I'm positively enthused.

On a better note, though, I got a nice chunk of writing done! 8 stories drafted, including a couple songfics and two giftfics. They all need to be hit repeatedly with the edit stick before they're presentable, but I'm still pretty pleased with myself. Editing them oughta keep me pretty busy during the semester.

Now, if only my pinky would stop hurting. It's protesting when I use the 'shift' key. Meh.

Now that I have a few minutes to actually sit down and stuff, I can unleash the news.

In a nutshell? Unofficially, I'm in. It's still unofficial because I haven't gotten the official letter that would make it official, but I'm in.

I'M IN.

I WAS ACCEPTED.

I'M GOING TO GRAD SCHOOL.

OMG.

I'm simultaneously elated and terrified. Mostly terrified at the moment, as the elation has worn off and it's sinking in that I'm subjecting myself to this torture AGAIN, and I'm realizing I have a month to get myself ready, which includes things like signing up for classes and figuring out what the TA stuff involves and getting textbooks and meeting with advisors and AGH AGH AGH.

*falls over*

Okay, I checked with the grad secretary about what the minimum on GREs is for the department. Apparently it's all subjective, and is compared to the scores of other applicants, as well as being incorporated into things like the applicant's undergrad career and so on. So I guess I should just apply and see what happens.

Also, I've been meaning to make a post about this, but I kept forgetting. >_> I finished my cleaves! I actually managed to finish them shortly after we got home from Florida, thanks to having 24+ hours to work on the cowl part.

( Picture! )

They are very green! The picture shows them in the proper folded-down position for wearing. I knitted them out of acrylic, as that was what I could get my hands on at the time that I could actually wear (I lament at my allergy to wool ;_; ) and was a pretty color. I know there are some horrible things said about acrylic, but I've knitted with some acrylic that's not been that bad. This, for instance. It's actually quite fuzzy and warm. I guess it depends on the brand you get, or something. Anyway.

I'm actually rather happy with how it turned out. I had a couple of rather royal flubups, including not realizing that to get stockinette in the round, you don't turn the needles (and having to undo a ton of work to fix it), and messing up the ribbing just as I was starting the cowl (I ended up having to leave it in and fix it as I went, but it looks like you can't really tell). And while making the cowl, I was getting the sneaky suspicion that it wouldn't fit me, but it seems to have turned out okay. It expands quite a bit once it's off the needles. It's even a little bit big, which might be good, as it makes it a bit cozier. They're very nice when you're cold, but not so much that you need a whole sweater.

Oh yeah, the pattern!

The GRE is a little over a week away, and I really don't think I'm going to do well on it. I've been doing practice tests, and for every section, I hover somewhere in the 60-70% range every single time. I don't really seem to be getting any better, either. Maybe it's just that a lot of the questions are things I haven't seen in, well, years, and I'm trying to remember how to do them. But if that were the case, you'd think I'd be gradually improving, right?

But I'm not. I'm flailing with the vocabulary, seeing as I don't use words like "proclivity" and "unctuous" on a regular basis (and the "use the words in everyday life" study method doesn't work for me, because I completely forget to use them in favor of words that make sense), and more often than not, it feels like I take a horribly convoluted and inefficient method for figuring out math problems (and subsequently get them wrong), which is just gonna kill me, both point and time-wise.

Throw in a mess of non-GRE things which are stressing me out and...yeah. I know, whining doesn't help and all, but right now, other than doing what I'm doing, I don't know what else to do. I feel like I'm going to be going to a train wreck.

I've been way way busy lately. Tons of stuff has been going on, and I've got a huge list of things to do, and it's been hectic enough that I haven't been able to say much about it. Heck, I even was a goob and didn't get around to updating Avobaby this week. I need to do that tonight or tomorrow. Anyway, since there's lots of stuff, I guess I'll just do the highlights. Bullet Time!

--IT'S SPRING! I know, old news, yes, but I mean it's really, *really* spring. All the plants in the yard are coming up, and it's making me positively euphoric. It's not just a case of "Oh yay, they survived the winter!", but it's also "Oh yay, I wonder how big they'll get this year and hey it's time to go and buy more plants to put in the yard and look lungwort and hosta and indigo and peonies and SQUEE!!".

--Probably the biggest bit of excitement on this front is that we have BLUEBELLS. I love bluebells, and when we saw some at our local garden center whilst picking out plants, I wasn't fazed by the fact that they were actually rather sad and weepy-looking, and in fact looked rather dead. My parents pointed this out to me, and that it appeared we were, in fact, buying dead plants. However, I was not to be dissuaded, because BLUEBELLS. So, we got the one that looked the least sad, and planted it. Of course, it crashed, and I figured that we had to chalk it up to the ravages of war in the garden, which made me sad. However, several days ago, I started to see life appearing in the spot where we planted it. At first I thought I was mis-remembering where we put it, and thought it was a hosta, but the leaf shape was all wrong. Then I thought it was a weed, but I decided to wait and see before pulling it up, just in case. Then a couple days ago, it's started putting out flowers. They're still in buds, but they're plentiful enough and the leaves have developed enough that I'm convinced that the bluebells have resurrected themselves. I consider this to be my biggest garden victory to date. It also means we can buy more bluebells.

--I seriously need to post an update about Avobaby and Friends. Tons of stuff is going on.

--Finally, FINALLY, after three months, my family finally had another get-together. This makes me very happy, because I miss people, and was glad to see them. My aunt brought over a box o' history to show my brother and father (the history buffs). Apparently her father was in WWII, and had made a scrapbook from his experiences. The scrapbook, however, is disintegrating, so she's going to go about having the items in it preserved. Before that, though, she wanted to show what she had to them, since they would get a kick out of it. It was pretty neat, from the two-day passes to the USO program to the pictures of her father and his buddies hamming it up for the camera to the cartoon done by one of his friends as an editorial statement on their commanding officer to the copy of the Stars and Stripes with the huge "NAZIS QUIT" headline taking up half the front page. I'm realizing I have more of my father in me than I thought, because I was pulled in by the whole thing too. Maybe that's why I'm into archival-type things, like the herbarium and the like. It is, after all, a blending of botany and history.

--Thanks to a source known as Eien-chan's Brother Who is Kind Enough to Let Me Borrow His Copy, I've started watching Firefly. All I have to say about it thus far is 'Ooooh...'. It's gotten hold of me from the plastic dinosaur battle onwards. It's also the first sci-fi series I've seen that respects the rule that there's no sound in space. That deserves a nod. Anyway, this looks like it's gonna be fun.

--I really need to get back onto studying for the GRE. I wonder if there's a good way to get in a couple GRE words or something a day.

--Lush has brought back Fairy Jasmine bath bombs. I must get some.

First off, thank you to everyone who commented in my last post! <3 <3 <3

I decided to go to both the mass graduation ceremony and the departmental one, seeing as I figured one only really gets to graduate with a BS once. Despite the fact that the mass graduation was pretty long and involved a lot of speech-making, I think it was worth it. I amused myself part of the time by seeing how people had decorated their caps to make them stand out. Among other things I saw, there was one who had lined the edge of the cap with flower vines, one that recycled his organic chemistry model set to create some sort of molecule on top of his hat, and one that had assembled a two foot model of the Eiffel Tower on top of his cap.

I think it was the new vets that seemed to have the most fun though, probably because they were among the only ones that got their diplomas during the mass ceremony. One of them got the award for most unusual cap decoration in that she had put a cage with actual mice on top of her cap. I also noticed several of them waving arm-long latex gloves blown up like balloons when they were conferred their degree. Methinks I know what those gloves are normally used for. XD

The departmental ceremony was much more casual, and I really enjoyed it. Seeing as there were only about 20 of us getting botany degrees, it was much shorter, and there was much more room for personality. It was kinda a little bittersweet too, since it was my advisor's last graduation, seeing as he's retiring and all. He advised all of us little botany undergrads, and even though it doesn't really matter personally, since I'm outta there and all, those who come after me won't have the advantage of his guidance (and the exposure to copious amounts of puns). I think it's going to be hard for the department to find someone as awesome as he is to fill his shoes.

So now, on to finding a job. Luckily, I have a temporary part time job lined up with the uni to work in the herbarium, so that'll help to keep me busy while I look for something more permanent. It's also nice in that I'm not going to completely unplug just yet, which is nice. I do have a bit of a dilemma though in that I've caught wind of a second part time job with the uni, thanks to one of my classmates from my community ecology class. I'm having a hard time deciding if I want to take two part time jobs or not. On one hand, taking it would mean I would get more experience, but on the other, I don't know if I want to work full time for two part time jobs. Furthermore, it would kinda be nice to have some significant downtime before finding a full time job, seeing as that'll probably be the last time I get to have that amount of free time. The fact that I want to not pursue the second job because I want to have some free time before diving into the workforce makes me feel guilty though, like I'm being lazy and slacking off, or something. The result is I don't know what I want to do. I guess I'll figure out something at some point.

Nothing quite says "Holy crap, graduation really is upon me" quite like going to the bookstore and getting your cap and gown. I did such a thing today, and I'm still kinda in a state of GLEE. Yes! Graduation is coming! I'll be getting my BS soon enough! <3 <3 <3 <3

I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that the color of the gown is not red, like I thought it was going to be, but black. I'm rather glad it's black, but it's also a little confusing. At my high school graduation, I wore my school color (maroon). I know at the college across the way, they wear light blue, and I know at the high school some of my friends attended, they wore white. My mother wore black when she graduated, but that was graduate school, and thus I kinda always assumed that you don't get to wear the awesome blackness unless you're getting a master's or higher. Still, I'm glad to be wearing black. It looks pretty nice.

On top of that, I qualified to get the gold Summa Cum Laude sash (hopefully nothing horrible will happen between now and graduation that will cause my GPA to drop), so I got that as well, and it all comes with a gold tassel (I think that signifies graduating with honors, but I'm not sure. They had a lot of different colored tassels at the pickup place, which I thought referred to what college you're coming from). So I'm going to be decked out all in gold and black. I think I'm gonna look pretty bitchin'. XD