Stress, stress, and more stress...

I'm trying incredibly hard to stay on track this week, which is why the blogging is ebbing from the first three days. The last month or so in a nutshell:

1. Visit UC Davis for 4 days. Take the last 4 of my flights and then go home, not much worse for wear, but certainly a few days behind.
2. Catch up on homework that got put off because I was traveling.
   
3. Work on a group project. Group projects are almost always extremely stressful for me.
4. Decide where to go to school (UC Davis... yay!).
5. Finish writing my honors thesis... stay up until 5AM the night before it is due (haha that was fun!).
6. Have two exams within a week of the thesis being due...
7. Go to the Math/CS department dinner. Win awards.
8. Catch up on all of the homework that built up while I was writing my thesis.
9. Run into a bunch of very professional fundamentalist christians (I didn't capitalize christian for a reason: most Christians are nice people, although I disagree with them on most things. These people were not nice.) trying to tell students not to have sex, not to be gay, not to be a woman having a real job or wearing pants, and not to believe in anything science tells you. I found this to be particularly infuriating, although I kept my head.
10. Get so stressed out that I can't be around people... go to a councilor to work out how to communicate the fact that I need to be alone more effectively.
11. You don't even want to know how much homework I had last week.
    
12. Do my honors oral exam. Get honors! Realize that now I have to revise my honors thesis.
13. Work up a stats presentation at the last minute with my partner (no... this was a different group project, and my partner totally rocks!)
14. Go to an awards ceremony. Get awards I already knew about. Yay!
15. Finish writeup of stats presentation.

I'm currently on number 16, which is write a 50 minute presentation of my honors project to show to everyone!

Now don't get me wrong, I'm really happy with everything I did and I'm really proud of myself. But I'm at the end of my rope. Luckily, after tomorrow I have very little left to do until exams start (Friday). It's just that I know I haven't been able to keep up with everything else very well. I pretty much gave up on a problem for one of my classes because I just couldn't work any more.

One other problem: while I'm working my butt off to try to get everything done in a reasonable period of time, everyone around me (ie my neighbors, not my friends, who either almost or exactly as swamped as I am) are partying. Late at night. So I don't even get much sleep on top of it.

As for right now, my boyfriend is bringing me a glass of wine. Aww... how sweet! I guess I will sleep tonight.

The next blog post will be more fun. I swear!

Air Conditioning

I have a confession to make: I hate air conditioning. It's not that I don't understand why other people like it. But it has never once helped me out. More often, I find myself wondering how to deal with the temperature difference. I spend way too much time trying to figure out if I want to freeze or bake. The would you rather die in fire or ice question becomes more and more relevant.

For some background, I'm from upstate NY. Upstate is not exactly AC weather. In my town, the average high temperature in July is 81, and it drops to a comfortable (if you're not me) 57 at night. I love 75 and above, but often shiver below that. Right now, the AC is on, I'm in my room with the window open and I have my sweatshirt and sweatpants on. It is 88 degrees out according to my computer, but I'm freezing in here.

Hence the AC rant. But seriously, I don't like the severe temperature differences. Sure, it feels nice to go to 65 after being out in 90... but only for a few minutes. Then the chill begins to set in.

Living where I do, I'm sure that other people actually need AC so that they don't overheat. But then I've never lived anywhere like that. I'm hoping I will make my peace with AC out in Davis next year, but then, who knows?

Ah... the AC just turned off. Excellent! Now maybe I can focus on writing my response paper!