good useless

Since I've been home I have...

slept a lot
ran
ate
went to a track meet
read
went to Target and the grocery store
wrote a letter

All that adds up to just about nothing. I've also discovered that I'm way too used to New York so sleeping at home is freaking me out cause its so dark and quiet. I used to really love both of those things. But its so different being in a big, silent but creaky, house, mostly empty, with no secruity after sleeping behind locked doors and a 24 hour guard in a city that's never dark or quiet.

moved

Well I'm back in MA. Technically, I moved Thursday. My stuff moved Wednesday but it didn't follow it until the next morning because I had to say good bye to the little sister and I wanted to hang out with people. Seeing Rone wasn't as upsetting as I thought it would be. We just hung out, talked about anime, and then I left. No deep conversations or anything. That's the best way.

Anyway, the Thursday move date didn't really count because I left at 7:30 Friday morning to go to Chicago. So thursday night consisted mainly of load after load of laundry as I tried to unpack enough to be able to repack. My room is still a total wreck. I think I'm going to move everything to my brother's room so it won't be in my way as I try to sort through all the crap I've accumulated for the last 3 1/2 years. It's itimidated.

The weekend was nice thought not exactly a crazy party. It was me, my mom, my aunt, and my five cousins. The youngest of that set of cousins is 38 so its not exactly a party crowd. There are a lot of women on my mom's side of the family. By generation:

3 sisters (including my mom)
5 female cousins, me, my 2 brothers
7 girl cousins, 3 boy cousins
For a grand female/male ratio of 16/5.

This explains why my mom's side of the family has "ladies' weekends." I don't mind. I get to stay in hotels I can't afford and eat at resteraunts I wouldn't be able to pay for. And I like my cousins. They're pretty impressive women (lawyers, navel commanders, engineers, etc) and they all have pretty good sense of humor and a real appreciation for good food. I'm much calmer after having a weekend to relax away from NY and MA and any kind of work or decisians.

I also liked chicago a lot more than I thought I would as a city. I was really impressed with its art museums and just the general feel of the city. I had only been there once before for a 8 hour layover, but I enjoyed walking around and finding good places to eat and running along the lake. It helped that it was nice and sunny.

Also I really like having a diploma. I didn't think it would make a difference to me cause after all I still haven't really finished what I started. But it does. Cause now, no matter what I do I have a Barnard diploma with a Barnard GPA so it feels like I can do the engineering without risking everything. Like I could say in a job interview "yeah engineering was a real stretch for me but I decided to do it anyway even though its obvious from my grades that I'm better at other things." Also its a really pretty piece of paper with lots of pretty latin.

Now all I have to do is find a frisbee team in seattle...

graduation makes me angry

To be more exact, grades make me angry. I'm used to being a top student and it was depressing not to be phi beta kappa or whatever the hell the honor society is just because I took the engineering courses. It didn't help that today I looked at my grades before I went to commencement and I have by far the lowest GPA I've ever gotten. All the smart SEAS kids had these weird cape things and I know I'd never get a cape thing. And yeah I can blame the fact that I took 6 classes and I picked the one I have a 96 in to P/F (that was one of the dumbest moves of my college career), but its still depressing to know that I'm not as smart as most of my friends (at engineering). But also today, I got my Barnard diploma and it says magna cum laude at the bottom which I have to look up cause I'm not sure what it means. So its totally giving me mixed messages.

Graduation also makes me angry because my family was so unhappy. I only saw them for like two hours, probably less, and they spent the whole time either arguing about logisitics which I guess are pretty complicated or bickering. Which I guess I contributed to somewhat. But all I wanted them to do was chill, eat lunch with my friends, leave when they wanted to leave, and all they did do was look like they very much wanted to be somewhere else the whole time. I love my family but when I walk into the lounge and all four of them are sitting there silently looking unhappy its like, what the hell? I just graduated. Even if I have another year, I still just graduated. I love that they came for the ceremony and I know I haven't been easy to be around lately but why did they all have to be so, I don't even know. Eric was being demanding and insensative, Mikey was silent and grumpy, my mom was being passive aggressive and irritable, and my dad was just making things complicated. And of course I was being a bitch. Ahh!

Even if I do come back for another year, I don't think I'm doing the ceremony again. And I certainly don't expect them to come again. It obviously wasn't worth their trouble. God I am a bitch. I can't even help it. I'd apologize to them if it wasn't them that I was mad at. Leaving NY tommorrow morning and I have so much stuff to do tonight. Sent Eric home so I had a chance at finishing it (which is part of the reason why logistics were complicated). I should probably start going through my to do list.

At least its a beautiful day out.

moody

I always get major mood swings when a lot of things are changing at once. This is definetely one of those times. My mind can't handle so many transitions at once so it treats every new piece of information as a potential threat and freaks out. Luckily my moods don't have such a wide range anyway so swings aren't that bad =).

Told Steve I wasn't going to road trip with him which was made both easier and harder by the noises coming from his room when I knocked on his door to meet him for lunch. Damn that was weird/ unsettling. It's not like he didn't know I was coming over. Even without that, it would have been a really upsetting conversation so I think that was a justified mood swing. I wish I could talk to Karen right now. Stupid Drexel midterms. When I invent a college, it won't have midterms, or finals. It probably won't have learning.

Senior ball was like a better version of prom, though my friends and I have a real problem with logistics so we did not start the evening right. Between being ready an hour after we were supposed to be ready (not me), losing tickets (me), and trying to take a group pictures, everyone was a little crabby. Once we got there and in, it was all good. I love dancing, especially in my really floaty dress and my shoes weren't too bad. It was cool to see Eunji and Sasha and them all there. Guys to dance with are a good thing. Picking and getting to an afterparty was another headache, but fine once we got there. You'd think after 4 years, we'd know how to coordinate 9 of us, but we totally don't. And the issues are so predictable. Before an evening starts, I could probably tell you who's going to want to do what. Good thing we all like each other.

Also I seem to have a room in Seattle which is awesome. They haven't sent a final confirmation e mail but he told me it was mine if i wanted it and i said i wanted it, so it should be good. Its a big room in a place near UDub with 4 other people, 2 guys, 2 girls, kind of far from my work but accessable by bus and not that expensive. I'm happy.

Oh well, back to packing. I don't have enough boxes. Graduation tommorrow.

freaking out

So against all advise, I was planning a road trip with Steve. I think it would be fun cause he's a good driver, willing to be flexible around my plans, and all about the activities. But now I'm totally freaking out. I want to go on a road trip. I've never seen this country and I don't know when I'll have the chance. But if I do go, I'll only get to spend about 5 days at home with my family for the entire summer.

May 17th: graduate
May 19th: fly to Chicago for a lady's weekend with my mom and cousins
May 22nd: back to MA
May 23rd- June 1st: road trip
June 5th: fly to Seattle for the entire summer

I just don't think I can do it. I'm already kind of upset that I won't get to go to the cottage or camping with the Ashcrofts for the first time in my life ever. But to not have anytime at home to see Shelby and Sarah and Karen if I can swing it or go to O Malley's graduation party. I just don't think I can handle that. I'm going to get homesick enough over the summer. I just feel really bad about flaking on Steve cause he's going to start work in July so this is his only chance.

It just sucks though cause I had told steve I wanted to (which I do) and we've been talking about it for a while and planning out options, but it didn't even hit me what that would mean until we started looking at airline tickets (cause we didn't have enough time to drive all the way out west and we were thinking of flying into denver and going from there). So it hit me last night right before I went out and all of the sudden I was just like I can't deal with this. My mom would kill me if I went. She flipped when I went back to the city for one day to see Stoops; "what you can't spend 4 days with your family? Are we so aweful?" And she liked Stoops.

This dilemna put me in a really terrible mood but I went out anyway which could have been really bad but ended up fun. I think the Irish guy made my night. I went up to get a pitcher for us and there was this group of Irish guys and one of them, a really tall skinny one, insisted on carrying our pitcher over and then presented it to us on one knee. It was hysterical. Then a couple minutes later, he came over and grabbed my hand and started swing dancing with me in a really crowded bar while his friends laughed at him. It was so incrediably random and really fun. Even after the Irish left we had a great time singing to bad 80s music and acting out scenes from Dirty Dancing. I usually only have an ok time out with just the Barnard girls, but last night was really good.

belated woohoo!

I'm done with school! As of 5:14 yesterday. It was an amazing feeling. My last two tests weren't that bad I guess. I didn't fail. There wasn't anything that made me cry. I had just been studying for sooo long. I managed to actually study by keeping entirely away from people who were already finished and pretending that everyone else was working too. Manufacturing was a joke in that I really felt like I was playing balderdash on the short answer questions.

For example
Test: "What is a pultrusion?"
Me: "Well I know we didn't actually learn about this but it sounds like a combination of "pull" and "extrusion". "A pultrusion is an extrusion that you pull."

Even funnier was waiting outside Hamilton for people to finish so we could crack the champaign and hearing every single person come out and ask "Is a pultrusion an extrusion that you pull?" "Did we learn about metal matrixes?" "Is a tailor blank just a blank, only like, custum made?" Yeah, I think there'll be quite a curve on that one. Which is what you get when you test people on things you didn't teach.

But then we had champaign on the lawn and found a camera and turned it into security and hung out and it was a good evening. Helped my parents move my futon out. God, Eric is getting so much stuff. They're bringing him futon, mattress, two tables, 4 chairs, and a vacuum. And that's only what I could see in the back of the van. I'm pretty sure my dad had stuffed even more in there. Basically they're furnishing an apartment for him out of stuff that was in our barn. Had dinner with them and then got all fancy to go out.

I hadn't dressed up for a while and it was really funny to see people's reactions. Especially my engineers who only ever see me in sweats studying. It's not often that I get to see 9 or 10 guys do a double take when I walk in =). Too bad they all have girlfriends. Actually it really is too bad. I really like a couple of them. One or two in particular are smart funny cute and ridiculously charming. Damn them.

Started at Lerner Pub which was fun but a high school dance is a high school dance even with alcohol. Got Sarah and Jen signed into EC but there was really no one at the frisbee party and it was kind of awkward for them. Wein was ridiculous. I didn't even know you could have parties in wein but I guess its ok when the RA is the one stumbling down to sign in my friends saying "I'm so wasted" over and over again. It was totally a mech e party. Then 1020 in the rain then nachos which was good. I like it when my groups of friends mingle.

I don't know why I had so much energy since at that point I had been awake for about 22 hours. But I really wanted to dance and people kept handing me margaritas and dancing and it was so fun. Finally headed back to EC through the pouring rain and sprinklers were on all over campus. We laughed. It was a good night. I just wish we hadn't had to move around quite so much. By the time I headed home the skys had opened up. My clothes are drying and my shoes were really unhappy.

I'm just glad the semesters finally over. It's been so long. I don't know how my grades are going to be. Not great compared to the people I know in my classes but I feel like the 3-2s are much more on the ball than the normal students so I still might be ok. I worked really fucking hard this semester no matter what. I really did. I put so much time into pretty much all of my classes with only a few lapses. I can't say that for every semester. It's been a crazy few months.

Now all I have to do is find a place to live. Two weeks (ish) til I move. Maybe closer to 3. Either way I need to get on it.

Goddamn I studyed all the wrong things for lab. I literally couldn't do two out of four questions. I have got to get my act together for heat transfer and manufacturing. I can't afford to blow those finals. I'm no good at in class technical tests. It just takes me too long to think through a problem. Like I need days.

I was also thinking about the lessons of NSOP such as they were as far as relationships go and the number of personality conflicts I had to work though. It's a good thing we had rules of engagement. Especially all the times we had to practice giving and recieving critisism. I think my best/worst moment was when someone told me "whenever I talk to you, you have this blank look on your face for the first 10 seconds. Makes me think that you think I'm retarded or something." That was my thinking face, goddamn it. I had to spend the rest of the summer practicing saying "that's an interesting idea, give me a moment to think about it"

People are so rarely direct with me. With anyone I guess. My friends would tell me if I was wearing something atrotious but I would never find out if I had some severe personality issure that bothered them. Of course if it was really that serious, they probably wouldn't be friends with me. We have such a positive society. I wonder if that's a new thing because of the amount of mobility we have (you can choose friends who like you) or whether that's a historical constant. If you lived in a small village, would people be more likely to point out your faults cause anything you didn't change they had to live with? Or would they just grit their teeth and ignore them in an effort to keep the peace? One thing I think is constant is that everyone is their own standard for appropriate behavior and can only tolerate so many deviations from themselves.

I hope I can manage in Seattle. I have a feeling I'm going to be really retarded at my job for at least half the summer. I wonder if they'll help me learn or just give me dumber and dumber jobs until I can do them. That would be annoying. But not every workplace is as touchy-feely crounchy as SDA/ Columbia. I think I'll be ok though. At worst it'll only be 12 weeks.

None of that made a lot of sense. I just finished an soul-crushing final and now I've got to study for my next too. I looked in the mirror today and noticed that dark black circles are not my most attractive accessory. On the positive side, I had a canolli today for lunch/ dinner. Those things are awssome.

As far as productivity goes, yesterday was not all it could have been. I did pretty much finish my lab notebook and I did some studying. I also spent several hours eating pizza and watching simpsons and family guy, and even more time sending and reading many pointless e mails. I only have one lab write up and three finals to go, but I can't even work on the write up (due tommorrow) cause Brian's the only one in my group to send me their stuff and I'm compiling. Damn them all. If they make me stay up late the night before my final, I won't put their names on it. See how they like that.

I just found out that my parents want to stay with me on their way doen to DC to move my brother. On Thursday night. I was barely planning to be home that night between hanging out with my Barnard friends and going to the frisbee party, that was going to be my night of total debauchery. Oh well. They'll probably want to be in bed before I even start to go out but I might need to tone down my outfit. Or change when I get to the party. Damn its going to be like high school.

Also, I've decided that I'm a compulsive liar. I think in the past week I've lied to just about everyone I know. Mostly about useless stuff like where I am or what I'm doing (sleeping when I'm actually studying, studying when I'm actually out, with one group of friends when I'm actually with another). Half the time it doesn't even make a difference, but I do it.

Like right now, I want to write about the night that me and my engineering friends took a six pack onto the roof of mudd and just chilled, but I think I told other people that I was someone else at that time. It was so pretty up there and the view was incredible. Much better than a bar or a party. I really like that group of people. If I come back next year, I'm living with Elizabeth, and the guys are all living together in another townhouse so I'd see them plenty.

Anyway back to studying. Math library is nice cause people don't use it so much so its pretty empty.

panic inducing

Contra-contraception

Its a long article but worth reading if only for how scary it is. There's one particular paragraph that describes father-daughter dances where he gives her a ring that symbolizes her sexual purity and her intention to save her virginity for her husband. Goddamn there's so much wrong with that. If you want to stay a virgin until marriage that's fine with me, but I don't want to live in a world where a woman's sexuality is handed from father to husband and sex is state controlled. How regressive is that? How can you be against condoms in a world where millions of people a year contract HIV or against birth control in favor of the seven children per household model? One of the signs of a developed country is an ability to regulate population. I'm so scared of the strength of the conservative movement in this country right now.

In other news, I finished my car jack yesterday afternoon and have done nothing since. I decided I deserved the day off. Tommorrow I'll start studying hardcore.s

end in sight

Holy shit I'm tired. I literally spent 16 hours staring at my jack yesterday and when I got back to the lab at 8 this morning, there were still people there from last night. And its still not done. I have to price it, draw some sketches, and go back over my drawing sheets. That shouldn't take me more than an hour or two. I was working really well yesterday; its just too bad I hadn't done that a week ago.

I also had to miss midnight breakfast which made me sad. But if I had gone over there at 11, I probably would have ended up going home and then I'd really have been fucked. I was also in a terrible overtired cranky mood which I still kind of am. Every time someone called to tell me I should go to midnight breakfast, I got so angry and no one wants to be around me when I'm like that. It's not their fault that they're done and I've been in the lab for 40 hours in the last three days. I've been getting angry pretty easily lately cause I know I was last Saturday, Monday, and then last night, mostly cause I was feeling abused. I'm not usually an angry person so its better if I stay away from people. It's nice of them to call but honestly I can't deal with people.

I will be in a much better mood when I hand this in and take a run and then a nap. Or reverse the order. This is just my bad week.

lab fun

Productive or not, I'm settling in for a long night in the lab. I've been here since 9 AM. Basically my whole class it here too. I don't think anyone realized how long it would take to dimension ten or twelve parts. Its nice to have company but its also distracting. Too bad there are only two labs on campus with this program and none of them are my room. Oh well. I haven't pulled an all nighter since... actually I'm not sure I ever have (for school). I like my sleep too much; but tonight we'll see what happens.

As soon as I figure out how to put movies on blogger I'll put up the best film clip ever made. Who doesn't want to watch a car jack go up and down.

i am productive!

It's a good feeling. This week I have 7 assignments due, 3 major, 4 minor. I've finished 5 of them, 2 major and 3 minor and I should finish another by the end of the night. And I got free sushi and wine at ali's thesis presentation. Actually a bunch of the women's studies presentation were really interesting, especially the one on the relationship between Barnard and Columbia and the one on PMS as a cultural thing. I have pretty strong opinions on all things women, though most of it reduces down to "stop judging me" with an important corollary on humor as a weapon.

Actually that's a rant I've been meaning to go on.... why are people so hesistant to admit when they're offended? I'm offended by Barnard jokes because they perpetuate a sterotype of Barnard and by extension women as either stupid sluts or dykes or stupid slutty dykes. Sterotypes matter! When African American students are asked to identify their race before they take a test, they do measurably worse then when they just take the test. Then people think they're stupid. Group characterizations are not harmless! I don't have to prove I have a sense of humor or smile and nod at things that are intended to hurt! People are always saying "oh I just think its funny" or "come'on its only a joke." Well that's true and its not true. It might be just a joke if we didn't live in the society we live in. But we do.

...ok I'm done. Ask me about my seminar paper on prostitution and capitalism in Victorian England =)

Anyway its been a good day, and I'm going to go back to designing my latrine (which is amazing by the way).