Lab

So, I realised that I talk about lab on my blog a lot and I've never put up any pictures of it. So, I thought I'd put up a few pictures so you guys know where I spend half my life! I was there this afternoon and super late tonight (till past midnight :( ). I have a super annoying 10 hour reaction that I have to run, so I end up going in late and night and then early again the next morning.

Anyway, onto pictures!

X Ray machine with my compound x-raying. We use x ray diffraction to work out what we've just made!

Furnace room. (We make all our samples by cooking them...shake and bake chemistry!)

The furnace I'm using! (We do have some fun in lab with naming the furnaces!)

Photograph of lab as a whole

My super messy lab bench (complete with the huge white column down the middle and cupboard below that won't close)

Lab coats. So attractive! Blue/grey is such an unattractive colour on me.

My "fake" notebook. I have a proper (red) lab book, but I also have this one for some unknown reason.

The desk I work at (complete with computer, phone, tea!)

The BANE of my life. I don't use this blowtorch any more, but it was the thing that made me dread going into lab last year.

In other news I got my economics grade - A-. I'm pleased with it (I would have loved an A), but I'm pleased that I got an A range grade (instead of the B+ I was worried about).

PS I have my meeting my my lab professor tomorrow (at 3). I'm super nervous about it, so wish me luck!

Good Start to the Week

Today was a fun and somewhat productive day. I slept until 10:30 (so hard to get up when the boyfriend is still asleep!). I'm still finding that I'm oddly tired during the day, especially given how much I've been sleeping (maybe I'm sleeping too much?).

I went to lab for most of the day. I'm still stressed about the lab bench situation, but I'm just trying to make the most of it. I also started working on my thesis properly today - I realised that I'm going to have to average a page a day for the next 90ish days (until it's due - April 23rd!).

For lunch I had hummus on rye bread with sprouts (which was surprisingly good).

I've also watched loads of Friends today...I only started watching it at the beginning of January and I'm already half way through season 5 (argh! Talk about too much TV!). We also went out for chinese for dinner - not the healthiest, but it tasted good!

I also got one other piece of good news...my art grade: I got an A-!! (Which I really wasn't expecting, so I'm really pleased with that!). I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, but if I get an A in Econ (fingers crossed crossed crossed) I'll be at my year goal of getting my GPA up to 3.4. If I get an A-, I'll be at 3.39, which I will still be happy with. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, especially as I'm not sure how well the final went. An A- would also mean that I'd have one semester where I got all A's and A-'s. Anyway, that's enough on grades, I'm sure I'll be happy with whatever I get.

I'm going to spend the rest of the evening...

watching Friends

doing a few small tasks (getting off some emails mostly)

going back to lab and setting up a reaction that needs to run over night (not looking forward to that one so much!)

Anyway, that's all from me!

Last three weeks!

So, the last three weeks have been incredibly busy for me (which is also why my blog has been so neglected :( ). My college has exams after Christmas, which is a bit unusual. At first I wasn't sure about it, but it's (mostly) grown on me. It still feels a bit tough coming back from Christmas and feeling like you've forgotten everything, but I also think it's worth it not to have exams before Christmas!

Anyway, my first week and a half back was studying/writing my one super short (1000 word) optional paper. After that I had exams - I had two take homes (for psych and politics) and two in class exams (art and econ). I used to really like take homes, but now I just find them annoying (Professors really only assign a take home final if they want you to spend more than three hours on it). Regardless, my two take homes went fine and my two in class ones went okay, but not great.

I've also gotten back two of my grades (in psych and politics) and I'm really pleased with them: I got 2 A's :D. My first two years were academically and socially challenging, so my GPA hasn't been too happy since then. I'd love to graduate with a 3.4, which means that I need a 3.7 average this year, so I'm now well on my way to that!

In other grade news, the boyfriend got an A- in politics (his major!). He's struggled much much more than I have with grades, and has only ever got 1 A and 1A-, so this is a big deal for him! I'm so proud :D.

We have a week off between semesters, but I'm staying at school to work on my thesis (as is the boyfriend, which is nice). I went into lab yesterday and apparently my lab bench is no longer mine. In my lab there are good benches and bad benches, and after having a bad one for 6 months I got a good one over the summer, which I've had since then. However, we have a new grad student in lab ( who is technically senior to me) and apparently my boss (Professor) just decided to move all my stuff and give him my bench. It does sort of make sense (he is more senior than me, and I'll only be in lab for another 3 months), but still! I was really hurt that no-one told me and it made me feel very undervalued. After talking to my best friend about it yesterday I've decided that I'm just going to work really really hard on the thesis and hope it all turns out okay.

In better news, having a week with the boyfriend is bliss! For the last two evenings we've cooked - we made chili con carne and rice on Friday and a asian chicken stir fry last night, both of which have been very yummy! We also made it to the gym yesterday, and I did his biceps/triceps workout with him, which was seriously tough! (And I'm feeling it today!). Anyway, hopefully the rest of the week will be filled with those kinds of things instead of lab bench stealing type things!

Monday

Monday was a good day foodwise - I stuck to my plan (and I also had salad at both meals, no dessert at either and no french fries!).

I also went to pilates - I haven't been in such a long time (6 months or so!). I remembered most of the positions/moves, but my abs have got much weaker, so I wasn't able to do them as well. (My big problem with pilates is my neck. For some reason I tense it a lot when I'm doing anything that requires me to lie down and hold my head up - crunches and a lot of pilates exercises. When my abs were stronger that problem got better, but they're back to being weak again :(. I need to work on that!).

The pilates also felt gooood after my run yesterday. I am still really sore from it (much more than I would normally be). I'm also really feeling it in my hip flexors which is a bit strange. During the run yesterday (with the new "barefoot" shoes) I felt it in different areas to normal - the top and sides of my feet and the insides of my calves. I also think I really overdid it. After I came back from the run I read more about it all (trying to make sure that I was doing it "right"). Apparently you can seriously mess yourself up if you don't build up slowly. So...the new plan is to try to run in them for 2 x 10 minutes during my two cardio gym trips. I was able to run for longer than normal in them, and I felt better running than I normally do. I'm hoping that once I build up and can run those distances "safely", the shoes will help me to enjoy running again and start solving some of my foot issues!

Midterm grades are starting to trickle in slowly. I'll probably do a post on them in the next few days.

In other news, my poorly sister has to have a colonoscopy tomorrow (a bit tmi, I know). I am sure it'll all go okay, but I'll be thinking of her and keeping my fingers crossed. Also, fingers crossed for this helping to work out what her "illness X" is!

Wow, I fail

And haven't blogged in almost 2 months. Really not good.

My goal for this week will be to blog at least every other day :D.

The thing that's been eating up all my time recently has been getting back to school/choosing courses/thesis (I have to write one! Urgh!) and law school applications.

I'm taking social psych, intro to microecon, game theory (which is hard! But I feel like I'm learning a lot) and history of photography.

I'm not sure if I've talked about this, but I'm applying to (US) law school(s) at the moment, to start next year. I wanted to go straight from University to law school, because if I start working I don't think I'd be able to get myself back into the "school" frame of mind. Anyway, I have a bit of a difficult situation because my GPA is mediocre (3.3 ish. Which is good, but when places have a mean GPA of 3.9 for accepted students...), but my LSAT (the standardized test you have to take) is good. So, it's even more impossible than normal for me to have any idea about my chances at a particular school. (Also, they're not due until February or something, but they have rolling admissions so it's seriously advantageous to apply early.)

I'm probably going to end up applying to 12-15 in the US (which I know is totally ridiculous. I was advised to apply to 10-12, but I'm risk-averse and I'm so unsure about my chances of getting into these various schools). I'm going to be applying to one early. If I get in, it's binding. I'll find out 15 days from when I submit the application (which will probably be this week or next week). Anyway, all pretty nerve wracking!

With regards to being healthy etc, I have been AWFUL about going to the gym. I just haven't gone in so long, mostly because I've been so busy with law school apps. I did have a bit of a wake up call over the weekend though - I started getting ill (not with anything serious, just a cold/flu), but I realised that I'm going to be much less productive if I get ill. (And I'm pretty sure that the reason I started to get ill was from eating too much sugar and not looking after myself well enough).

Anyway, I promise more updates this week!

Resolutions

It's June! I  can't believe this year has gone so quickly. Anyway, a new month means that I need to make new resolutions and also review how I did on my ones from last month. Annoyingly, I seem to have left my little pink book with all my resolutions in it at school, so I'm not really sure what I'd got down that I wanted to do. Nevertheless, I'm going to come up with some and start on them, and perhaps save the ones in the little pink book for next month. So...

Diet - I really don't know what to do for this one. At all. Eek. I'm trying to think about the aspects of my diet that aren't so great. They're mostly insufficient protein, insufficient fiber (and veggies) and too much sugar. I think I might try to record what I eat for a week to see how many calories, protein, fiber etc I'm getting, and then work on getting up to 25g of fiber per day. I was talking to my mum about it, and neither of us have any idea about how much fiber is in food, unlike calories. So, I guess I want to work on eating more fiber and developing an awareness of which foods contain most fiber. (To do this I'm going to use the tool at http://www.myfitnesspal.com/. If anyone has any suggestions for a better tool that would be much appreciate. I just downloaded this one onto my IPod a while ago, and I think it'll be useful to be able to "track on the go")

Exercise - Weights or rotex.... I have goals for both of them. I like doing weights more than cardio (I didn't use to, but in this heat I really don't enjoy cardio). I think I may sit on this one for a few days and decide later, because whichever one I do doesn't need to be done daily. I'm leaning towards to the rotex (or cross-trainer, my goals for this are basically to get up to the next level on the machine) just because I know that's whats best for me.

Other - Wear sunscreen everyday on face, hands and neck area (if exposed). (I know that this was also a resolution last month, and it went okay, but not great. I didn't really like the sunscreen I was using and it made my skin break out a bit. I've found one that I think will be better, so I'm going to try that.)

Review

Water - I did okay, but not great and not nearly as well as I should have done. It was difficult with all the moving though, because I didn't have my water cooler. It was also difficult because I'd leave it to the last minute (I still can't get in the habit of carrying around water with me) and then I'd worry that I'd be up in the night because I'd drunk too much before bed (which did happen a lot). Of course, getting up in the night isn't good either. Anyway, I am going to try to continue this going forward, I do think it's helpful but I just need to space out my water consumption better.

Sunscreen - see above

Exercise - Plank - I finally did it! I've been trying to hold the plank for two minutes for quite a while now (apparently people who can hold the plank for two minutes have a lower risk of back problems. I already seem to be on the track to potential back problems, so this is important for me). This is definitely something I want to keep working on, and I particularly want to work on improving my form.

Exercise - Running - I was also successful with this one. Over the month I think I ran for twenty minutes three times (one time for 22.5), which was good. But...three times isn't really enough. I'm glad I can do this though, and I definitely want to maintain/improve.

Weight - I'm pretty sure I didn't lose any. Urgh.

Grades - I don't think I've written about this before, but I also had a semester long goal of getting my GPA up to 3.3 (a B+ average) from 3.2 (between a B and B+, a B is 3). I definitely managed to achieve this goal (it's now 3.32!)

Grades

Just a quick update....

I should preface this by saying that I'm not totally obsessed with grades, but they are important and they were also an important catalyst in making some important changes to my life, which I've talked about before.

Anyway, I've got all my grades for this semester now - I got a B+ in my lab work, and straight A's in my other four classes. I am so pleased with myself. I feel like I was able to make some really important changes to my study habits and that that's really paid off. I'm especially pleased with my grade in history because I really wasn't confident about that one.

On a separate (but related) note, my boyfriends meeting with the academic adviser went really well. He seemed to think that it would be helpful for next semester and he now has some good strategies for exams etc. The adviser also talked a little about how important it is not to base self worth on grades. I've already got passed that a bit (I say a bit because good grades still make me feel really good about myself, but at least my self worth isn't so badly affected by less good results). For my boyfriend I think that was an especially important discussion to have. (He also did pretty well this semester, including in his worse class, which he passed (he chose to do it pass/fail as opposed to graded). He got one B and the rest of his results were all B+, which is a pretty good result.)

I still haven't told the boyfriend about my grades because I don't want to upset him and overshadow his good achievements. On the other hand, I would like to tell him because we share everything. On the other hand, I don't want to upset him.

Does anyone else have this kind of problem? Any advice?

Anyway, just a quick update!

New York and Grades

My mum was in NY today, so the boyfriend and I spent the day there and then met up with her for dinner, which was really nice. It was also great to get off campus - the boyfriend is so so much more relaxed and happy when we're not on campus.

With regards to grades...I'm still waiting for one of them, but so far I'm really pleased with them. I got a B+ in my lab work (which I'm pleased with as I didn't think I was going to do that well) and I got an A in Sociology, an A in my engineering class and an A in my Chemistry class. I am so super pleased with those results (and my GPA is looking much better as a result of them!). (I'm still wavering a bit about whether my A in Chemistry was fully deserved. I am so pleased with it, but I really wasn't expecting it. My entire grade in that class hinged on my final paper, which, due to the professor not wanting to set an exam, made up 100% of the grade. I did work hard on that paper, and I certainly understood my stuff for it, but it just seems like I worked much less hard for that class than my other classes. On the other hand, I guess compared to everyone else in that class I did work hard and learn and achieve a lot.)

I can't believe that a year ago I got B-,B-,B-,A-. It seems like I've come so far since then! I'm not sure if it's because I'm taking easier courses/am more settled into everything here or if it's because I'm getting better at school! To be honest, I think it's a combination of both, but it's certainly nice to see my hard work paying off.

I've talked about the academic support here before, but I really do think it's incredible. It completely helped me to turn my grades around (from averaging about a B to an A-). I think I said in an earlier post that the boyfriend and I are going to talk to the head of that program tomorrow in the hopes that they'll be able to help him a bit as well (despite the fact that he's gone before and didn't find them helpful). Fingers crossed for that...I'll let you know how it goes!