Internet-less Adventures

I know the title to this post sounds strange but...the internet at my college stopped working from 11am - ~8pm tonight. At first I was a little freaked out...how am I meant to survive without twitter/facebook/wikipedia/email/Friends episodes??, but after a few hours I realised that it was actually wonderful!

It's so rare that I get to be "disconnected" from the world. It happens a little at home (mostly because my UK phone doesn't receive emails), but now that I have internet in my room there it's so easy to just go on my computer.

It was relaxing not constantly getting bombarded with emails and feeling like I needed to be online working on things (but actually most likely procrastinating). And, one of the best parts of it was that no-one else had internet, so the rest of the world wasn't expecting me to be emailing them back etc. I certainly wouldn't like to never have internet/email, but it was sort of nice to be free from it for a few hours today.

In other news:

My first day of classes was fine (although there was a bit of upset when I realised that I'd started my last ever Chemistry class. It sounds a bit ridiculous, but the entire focus of my academic life for the last 12ish years has been science/Chemistry and it's sad and a bit scary to be coming to the end of that). I still haven't decided what my second class is going to be (I have to take a Chemistry class and my thesis counts as two classes, so I just need one more). I went to one today on Words and Song Lyrics that seems interesting but I'm worried that it might end up being a lot of poetry/lyrical analysis, which isn't really my thing.

I emailed my thesis advisor and set up a meeting for Thursday. I also started going through my introduction and added a new section to it (which is important, it's about how and why magnetism even exists).

My thesis is due in:

71 days (giving myself 5 days for binding at the end)

=~10 weeks = 1704 hours = 102,240 minutes = 6,134,400 seconds

I drunk a lot a lot of tea today. Which is a good thing. But also possibly a bad thing. I felt exhausted after my two hours of class today so took a looong nap (not good...I think I might be anaemic. I barely eat red meat at school and my multivitamin doesn't contain iron. Anyway, I've changed (temporarily) to one that does and I'm making a conscious effort to eat iron-rich foods - eggs, chickpeas, spinach etc). When I woke up from that I had a killer headache, which the boyfriend suggested might be from an electrolyte imbalance from drinking so much tea. Anyway, I put salt on my dinner (which I rarely do) and I'm going to stay aware of that and try to increase my salt intake, which should hopefully help.

I have a clear day tomorrow, which really means a whole day to work on my thesis. My plan is to spend the morning in my room, plowing on with the introduction (I also need to read the full thesis guide and come up with an outline/list of compounds before my Thursday meeting, so if I finish the first run through with the intro I'll move onto that). I'm planning to spend the afternoon in lab doing whatever I need to do there (and if there's not much to do there I'll go back to what I was doing in the morning! Or start writing my chapter for this week...)

How would you spend a few hours if your internet temporarily stopped working?

My trip back & Back in Lab....

I'm back to school and back in lab. My trip back from DC was fine, which is obviously a good thing.

My trip in DC was great! It was really nice to just get to relax with family and not have to worry about work. My aunt and uncle are very laid back people which helped with the whole relaxation thing!

When I was there, I noticed that they basically live in a fairytale world, and their children certainly do. They're fairly well off, have an incredible house and their kids can do pretty much whatever they want (and have the resources to do it). My family is, I think, in a similar financial situation, but we always had many more rules. For example, we had to be downstairs at 7am to eat breakfast together. If we weren't (which happened very rarely, only if someone was jetlagged or something) we certainly had to make our own breakfast. My cousins, on the other hand, get food made for them by their mum at any time of the day. They're also pretty much allowed to eat anything. They have a "nanny" who bakes a lot, so they always seem to have cookies and muffins around. In my family we could eat that sort of thing, but only really as dessert after a meal.

I was thinking about these two types of parenting. Both seem to have been fairly successful - all three children from both families have turned out relatively well. My cousins certainly had a more laid-back childhood than we did. On the other hand...I'm not sure if I would have switched places. Yeah, it's a pain to have to be downstairs at 7am for breakfast, but it did also mean that we had "family time" every day, and I'm not sure if that's something I would have wanted to sacrifice....

Home!

So, I'm home now, which is great. I'm home for about two weeks, and then I'm going to spend the rest of the summer in lab.

In my first two years of college, I found home very stressful and it made me quite unhappy. I'm not really sure why, but I think it was a combination of the hormonal contraception (got much worse after I started taking the pill) and also sibling rivalry (my sister is literally a genius. She's much smarter than me. I just try to hang onto the idea that I'm much more socially adept, which will hopefully serve me better, or equally as well, in the long run. More about that later I'm sure.). Anyway, since all the revelations of junior fall, I'm starting to really enjoy coming home, and I find it much more relaxing now.

Since I've been home...

My sister actually isn't here during the week, as she's working in a physics lab at a university a few hours from home. It's actually kinda nice. I get to see her on the weekends which is good, but it means that I also get a lot of time with my parents without her around (which helps with the sibling rivalry/my feelings of insecurity).

My skins gotten better. In an earlier post I think I talked about how the new sunscreen was making my skin worse. My boyfriend's 21st is on Saturday, and I really want to look good for that. I've stopped using the old sunscreen, and I'm also using a new facewash and I've also been using blackhead removing strips, which seem to be working.

I've missed a few days of vitamins, which isn't great. I need to get back up to speed with those. At home it's a little harder to take them at night, because I'm not sitting around at my desk working, like I am at school.

I've gone to the dentist, and found out that my messed up gum is more serious than I though, but not a total disaster. (Warning: Gross bit) About 10 days ago I managed to cut (cheesewire) the gum behind my last molar on the left side on the bottom (I don't have wisdom teeth) using floss (maybe, it seems a bit unlikely). Anyway, I either did it or exacerbated an existing problem with the floss, and I've partly split my gum open. The dentist doesn't think it'll ever fully heal, but it will close up. I could have surgery to remove the extra piece of gum that's currently attached to the tooth, but he doesn't really recommend it. He's given me some antiseptic type stuff to put on it to prevent infection and told me not to really floss back there (it's okay to do it occasionally and carefully).

I've been bored. I haven't really had all that much that I've needed to do to be honest. Being bored is kinda a nice feeling though, and it is nice to be able to sit around and read fiction books.

I found out that Louis died. We have two dogs (border collies), who are 10 and 11, which is fairly old for a dog. We had a choice of puppies originally, and I absolutely fell in love with Louis, and didn't like the dog we ended up getting at all (I love him now though!). Anyway, Louis is the dog that I loved who is the brother of our current dog.

I've relaxed. I feel much more relaxed and health at home which is good.

I've stopped using the nuvaring (temporarily). I'm not going to see the boyfriend for the whole summer, so it doesn't really make sense to stay on it (especially given how expensive it is!).