And that was all there was to that.

This semester, I hope will be different. I’m taking all my classes at the Ji campus. I’m feeling slightly nervous. My Mondays and Tuesday will be hectic. It will get less hectic as the week goes on.

I’m preparing by studying OChem through the David Klein book. I’ve ordered Le Pens (tiny 0.3mm colored pens that I hope will be good for notetaking and drawing). I need to clean up my desktop.  I need to clean my backpack. Tomorrow I volunteer (and I have to figure out what’s a good new day to volunteer).

I need to finish listening to Scott Young’s videos, too. There’s quite a lot to do.

GOALS [before school starts]

1. Grasp OChem intuitively
2. Get a head start in physics
3. Exercise for half an hour everyday
4. Eat right

Okay, we’ll see how it goes.

UPDATE: Scratch that. I need to talk stuff out. I’m a talker.

• I dropped Physics because there was going to be an exam the day after an Organic Chemistry exam

• I dropped Organic Chem because my professor was not a very good prof and made a lot of mistakes.

• I’ve decided to delay my applications to Pharmacy School.

I’m not sure how to explain this to my professors what I’ve done or what’s going on. I’m sort of afraid they’ll think I’m not tough enough and I’m a basket case, and that I won’t make it when I’m in school.

I have to study for my only final this semester. It’s on Wednesday.

Some thoughts off the top of my head:

• Spend time with other people who know they only have 10 years left so we can all party together
• Attend Pharmacy School
• Take up running
• Take up pilates
• Travel around the world staying in luxury hotels
• Get LASIK
• Go to charity balls (hehe)
• Try to write a hilarious book
• Move to Hawaii!!!!!
• Help with H’s baby!

Different than what I would have imagined.

I signed up for a “How to Study” course online (not through a school, but through Scott H. Young) and I hope it will help. He has worksheets and video modules accompanying an eBook. I’m not too sure about this, but I just blew $67 on it so I’m going to give it my best go.

I may need to create a second blog to explore my fears and figure out how to develop resilience. I really need to be more resilient. I hope I can figure out how.

Not quite sure how I’ll explain this to the admissions committee: I dropped OChem.

Priya’s List of Reasons Why:

• My professor did not take my seriousness seriously.

He was more of a showboater. He had somehow decided what grades we would all get already and didn’t work with the system.

• My professor did not have set dates for exams or quizzes.
• My professor’s grading scale was not easy to decipher, and at best, random.

Apparently everything was going to be “fine.”

• I didn’t appreciate his political commentary. It’s inappropriate for a hard science course.
• He didn’t give me a sample of an honors paper. He said he was “getting it” and then he didn’t. I asked every week until I dropped.
• He didn’t seem very credible. A lot of the time he was unsure of a response.
• He didn’t read our textbook. He made mistakes in lecture.

My Chem II professor kept up with the book. This guy didn’t. Why?

My guess is that he has other things on his mind. His newborn, his contempt for community college students, his ballooning weight, his need to look like he knows what’s going on when he doesn’t.

• He didn’t put his stupid smartphone away, ever.

He’s a young guy. He’s very nice. He doesn’t write very well on the board, like in a way that lets you copy what he’s writing. I could get past that if he stuck to using the expensive textbook. But he doesn’t. I’m not an aural learner. I have to read and see to learn. I find myself surfing the internet looking for lecture notes from other universities on to when his notes don’t match the book’s content.

I’m disappointed by other things. I don’t know if it’s fair to say, or if it sounds totally reasonable, but I guess the things that bother me are impeding my ability to feel confident. Or maybe I’m just being childish. I guess it doesn’t matter. Obviously it bothers me. 

I don’t think 2 lousy quizzes and a lousy lab should have ruined my midterm average. I don’t really even know where I am in the class, grade-wise. I’m fairly sure he’d give me a B, but it would be a meaningless B, and anyway, I feel anxious and not quite in control.

And these are my grades. This is very important knowledge.

I sort of wish I could get my money back. I don’t know how 2 W’s are going to look on my transcript. I don’t know how I’ll feel graduating from Pharmacy School at 36 instead of 35. I don’t know what the admissions committee will think of my scheduling snafu. Hopefully I can explain what happened.

I don’t want to go in in two hours to take an exam that will just make me feel less in control and worse about myself. My notes are extensive, but they don’t appear to mean anything. He talks, and I don’t absorb what he’s saying.

There are all these schools where professors actually make an effort. They post lecture notes. They read the expensive textbook they have you buy. They care about being professors. I know it’s actually very helpful for someone to answer questions via email and text and all, but it’s a hallmark of a good professor to anticipate students’ questions.

Maybe I got dispirited too soon in the semester.

I’m starting to mull. I think I need to make a pro/con list. I’m fairly certain I’m not going to take today’s exam.

Fact: I did not take my multiv Friday night, so I was tired and sluggish on Saturday, and spent most of the morning and afternoon in bed reading about Gaddhafi’s death and then about Koko the gorilla. I wasted Friday afternoon, too.  Instead of being efficient, I was puttering around. I felt tired. I generally feel tired.

Maybe I need more iron. Sigh. I have a quiz tomorrow, and, historically, quizzes have not gone very well. It really kills my self-confidence and studying is about building self-confidence.

So I should be stricter with myself. I have trouble with discipline. I know exercise would help. Yet I feel like sticking it out in my chair trying to dredge up motivation is the answer.

I wonder if I’m trying to sabotage myself. I don’t want to be anything but reliable and steady, yet I get flaky.

I could be tired. I could be slightly burned out. I could be overloaded with things to do and am just getting by. I might be procrastinating because I’m seeking some kind of sensation. Or maybe I’m lazier after having the whole summer plus 1 month to study for PCATs.

Maybe my prioritization technique is actually a crutch that keeps me from doing as well as I could. Maybe not doing awesome right off the bat in OChem made me so anxious and my self esteem is so low that my mind decided to sleepwalk this semester.

I’d like to blame it on my cold and on my period, but I’m not sure. Lack of iron? Perhaps.

A part of me thinks that I’m doing this because I don’t want to get sucked into getting too interested in a frilly class.

Whatever the case, here I am today: nearly 3am and pulling an all-nighter reading for a Speech class midterm exam tomorrow. Of all the dumb things.

So last week, I busted my hump over Exam I in Organic Chem. I got an 88% (my lab partner got a near perfect score, which I am jealous of (and I vow to be a better student than her)). I dropped Physics recently.

But today, my speech in for PS went over by 3 minutes. I hadn’t practiced it. I think I spend so much time fretting over OChem and pharmacy school, that I decided I would attempt to soothe my worries about it by spending more time on it. I was going to get up early and practice my speech, but I had a monstrous set of cramps and a headache to boot this morning that I decided I’d probably be fine.

[Another problem is also that my school makes you pay for printing now, so I have to buy a print card and print it at school. It's annoying. I should really get a printer for myself. I know I'll need one. It would make me more efficient. Hmmm....maybe that's what I'll do now.]

But now that I spoiled my second speech (and my prof seemed stern about it), I feel like I absolutely cannot get a B in Public Speaking. So I have to step up my game, of course. I have 5 bonus points from the first speech, so maybe I can still weasel my way to an A of some kind, if this wasn’t a total mess. I have an exam in PS on Friday, so I will have to study hard for that, finagle a solid A.

Now if I can just figure out how to get my upstairs neighbor to quiet down their noise. It’s driving me crazy.