Meeting Challenges

I could only eat six of them.

This was an eventful week with an abundance of meetings. Tuesday, I met with Johnnie at the Dunkin' Donuts to attempt to eat a dozen doughnuts in under 40 minutes, the time it took him to eat a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts during the Krispy Kreme Challenge. I was able to eat six of the doughnuts in 17 minutes, so I was well on my way to beating his time. However, I started to feel lightheaded and stuffed. The problem is that Dunkin' Donuts are 1) slightly larger than Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and 2) denser than Krispy Kreme doughnuts. So, eating six Dunkin' Donuts is like the equivalent of eating nine Krispy Kreme doughnuts. At any rate, I lost the challenge miserably, and had to apologize personally, and publicly (on Facebook), to Johnnie for calling him a pussy for initially complaining about having to eat the doughnuts during the race. And, I felt really lightheaded and sluggish for the remainder of the afternoon. I really hate having to tuck my tail between my legs on things like this.

On Wednesday morning, I attended the weekly lab meeting with The Good Doctor. The meeting was largely uneventful, as usual. However, a considerable focus of the meeting surrounded a side discussion about applying to graduate schools. A friend from the lab is currently in the application process, and was lamenting her chances to get accepted. She was concerned because her GRE scores, while good, weren't as good as she was hoping. However, her GPA is considerably higher than mine, and she has the benefit of being multilingual, and has experience from a study abroad program in which she took part. The discussion actually aroused anxiety in me, since, if she is having worries about getting accepted, I REALLY should worry. I did considerably better on the GRE, apparently, but my GPA isn't all that close to hers, and I don't have any sort of extracurricular experience to promote on a CV for grad school. Further, she applied to about ten schools around the country. Since it costs $100 for every grad school application, not including the cost of having the GRE scores sent to multiple universities, I simply do not have the sort of money to send out more than a couple of applications. And, I've been wanting to keep myself in North Carolina, which further limits my options for getting into a program where I would fit. I've been hoping to somehow stay at NC State, and get into one of the professors' labs here, if not even stay with The Good Doctor; but this week's set of meetings has thrown the fear of God into me about getting accepted into a program. And, as I've mentioned in the past, I don't have a backup plan in the event that I am not accepted.

Kreme of Consciousness

The Fourth Floor of Poe

I just finished the fourth week of the semester, which means I'm now one fourth the way through this one. I suspect that this post will be mostly an annoyed tirade, so I wanted to warn you if you aren't into that sort of thing. It does get more upbeat after the break.

Things have been relatively light, despite all the reading that I've complained about in the past. Western Literature is enjoyable, although I dislike the Sexy Scot's habit of always making the class get into small groups to discuss the daily readings. I much prefer discussing the readings within the larger class group. I'm not sure why, but I just find the smaller groups tedious and unnecessary.

And while I'm in the mood to complain about little things, my Philosophy of Science course is really bugging the hell out of me, too. I should be loving this course. Philosophy, science, and religion are some of my favorite topics. We are, of course, talking about the controversy surrounding creation science, or intelligent design. Actually, it would be more to the point to say that the professor is the one talking about the controversy. We are just supposed to keep up with readings, listen to him lecture, and respond to quizzes and tests online. One problem is that the course is a 200-person auditorium class, which greatly interferes with the potential for the students to get into classroom debates. Personally, I don't think any philosophy course should ever be more than 40 students to a class. But, with all the financial cutbacks the university system has endured the last decade, what could we expect.