The Blog of a Lifetime

Well, if it's better to show rather than tell in your writing, then I suppose I've done some awesome writing this past month to demonstrate the busy-ness of this semester :-) But it hasn't been true business that has kept me from writing. Most nights lose an hour at least to Facebook, and many times when I've had the opportunity to write here I've shied away from the overwhelming task of tackling all that is unwritten. It's hard thinking, too, and that hasn't been the most attractive thing.

SO. This semester. What's it like? How should I remember it when all that fills my attention now is gone from my memory but a few defining points (probably from the last week of the semester)?

I'm driving a lot. Pretty much 9 out of 10 days. And rarely paying for parking. But twice paying tickets, which cost far more than meters, yet somehow feel different than shelling out three bucks a day in shiny silver coins. There are four legit places that I know of that have no meters, two of which also have no time limit (the reason for one of my tickets). Every day I dance the dance with the law, weighing risk against convenience and time, and occasionally landing a sweet spot like a busted meter or a Mazda-long space just tucked in behind a sign.

I sleep a lot. Not a day goes by when I don't find at least 15 minutes to doze somewhere. There's something about facing an entire 18-hour day with no prospect of releasing the pining tiredness that drags at my eyelids and weighs on my chest that just isn't tenable. Sometimes I pay for it by getting delayed or not being able to work out at the Pete. Sometimes I step back and think how odd it is that I'm sleeping all the time during the days and wonder if it's a really bad thing to give in to my tiredness and not push through it and get used to being able to function while drowsy. But even 15 minutes of release can make a world of difference, so on I go. The quiet reading room in the engineering library is the best spot, though at times the floor of the basement computer lab has served :-) That place is seriously my second home. Well third, after the Hoffmans. yay!

I am working out, though sometimes it's crammed in odd places. I'm making the Pete about half the time, but my home workouts are usually pretty solid. I'm stretching every single time, and today I did some kicks and it appears that there is some progress in flexibility, which has been irritatingly lacking so far. My left hamstring is stupid - it seems to just get torn or something, not stretched. Which brings up the point that my legs on the whole are lousy - my knees never quite chill out and become normal, and my hips feel weird sometimes. Quite irritating from a lifetime perspective. Overall I haven't seen a ton of improvement or growth from working out so far, but I'm just starting to pass the 6-week point, beyond which Ryan says new muscle tissue starts to form. I'm kicking it up a notch, too--going for more weight and fewer reps, trying not to be easy on myself. Every time I work out I feel great, which is nice. The Pete is sweet. Or swete, as the case may be :-)

I feel like saying "classes are hard." But everybody says that, and I want to get it a little more meaningfully. Ummm, the work I have to do for classes is throwing me around like a bucking bronco. Last week I just barely held on. Process control can be difficult to understand sometimes, and the homework can take confoundingly long. The average on the first exam we just had was 49.5, which really got Dr.Parker concerned. I got a 75.5, so I was pretty happy. Plant Design is...unlike any class I've had before. In a way it's very open and easy--no "homework" per se, and Dr. Enick tells us basically every little thing we have to do. But practically it's getting extremely hard. Not usually by difficulty of work but by volume and persnicketyness. "Homework" consists of progress reports--roughly one a week--that each cover a step or two in the design of a styrene plant (that is our ChemE senior design project). Heat exchanger networks, Aspen simulations, reactor sizing, plots, tables, discussions, descriptions...each report is a mini-monumental task, and Charlie and I spend lots of hours (like, 6 or 7 straight, 2 or 3 here and there) to get them done. Often the directions are unclear or the enabling information was blustered by us in class and nobody remembers. Then it really gets hard, and the minutes, quarters, halves and hours slip away and you're looking at the clock and it's saying 9:07 and you still haven't worked out or eaten dinner. Such I heard about design ("Ohh man, you live in the labs!"), and now I look and see that so I am indeed experiencing. Um..process safety, compared to the big two, is negligible. Except the honkin' lecture summary report thing that took hours upon hours upon hours of time and is just regurgitating all his lecture notes ad nauseum for only slightly more points than the homework which takes 15 minutes before class in the 10th floor lab. Arg. Yet another poorly-thought-out class. Another reason I'd like to be a professor. But boo grad school. yech.

It's 2:35am, and tomorrow I need to get up at 8:30 and get down to Pitt to listen to a bunch of music and write out essays for the history of the symphony midterm. So I'll can it. I'm dried-sweaty from a short but fierce workout downstairs, I'm un-hungry 'cause I had a roast beef-pear sandwich (Go protein! Go into my little muscles!), and of course, I am not tired in the least. I'm bright-minded, open-eyed, and ready to hit the world. This bio rhythm never ceases to confound me. Even with plenty of sleep (like, 9 hours), if it's before noon, and often in midafternoon, if I'm not doing something actively with mind or body, down I go. Then, after about 8 or 9, I'm up and ready to go. Grr. Stupid body! Or maybe it's all my fault and if I would just do things right I'd be tired at the right times. Whatever.

I've gone to Akron for a concert at the Orange Street, Steph came to town and we visited Grove City, Mom and Dad were gone this weekend and I recorded in the basement, Daniel's on fall break so he's home right now, and I'm in general fairly disconnected from God, church, friends and normalcy. But I pray often and honestly, and I'm not ultimately deserting or ignoring (I don't think) the truth of the Gospel, who God is, and who I am. I don't think. I think reading the Bible more might show that my thinking has changed more than I realized from God's mindset.

Enough for now. I hope to write more this week to catch up a bit. We'll see. Oh yes. Next week we have THREE progress reports due. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Plus process homework. Go ahead and shoot me why don't you? Geez.

--Clear Ambassador