*Time, time ticking, ticking, ticking away…

It would be too difficult for my tired brain to separate my first and second weeks from each other... so I'll just talk about both weeks. The report won't be much different, seeing as the past two weeks have been one huge long blur.

Saying so, however, here are some impressions...
1) we had an orientation meeting on my first day, in which I became even more unoriented (still didn't know my schedule, still had no idea about the lay of the land, still had no idea about the classes, professors, my classmates, campus facts, etc)

2) after figuring out that I did indeed have 6 classes this semester, but only met with 4 or 5 of them every week, I enthusiastically downloaded the syllabi, ordered books from the best online textbook store ever, I then found out that the professors like to keep us on our toes by changing textbooks the day before class. Nice, huh?

3) I have 5 of my 6 classes in the same room. Is that so my doctoral program resembles, as closely as it can, a prison?

4) I have a 4.5 hour break on my Wednesdays between classes. Or, at least I thought it was a break. no no. That time is time to meet with professors, go print out articles to read for the next class or day or week (depending on how far behind I am already), and go to my research meetings.

5) My brain can actually hurt. Kinda like how I'm sure my muscles that become flabby from disuse, did my brain become flabby? and is now sore b/c I didn't exercise it enough? I kind of hope so, b/c that means that after about 2 weeks, my brain can stop hurting and it'll be a lean, mean fighting machine.

After being assigned an unimaginable amount of reading to do, freaking out b/c some professors seem to think we'll have time to finish reading EARLIER than class and are requiring us to turn stuff in 2 days PRIOR to class (hullo? i'm a procrastinator. having the reading done EARLY does NOT work for ME)... oh. er, I kind of lost my train of thought. sorry.

I did enjoy my weekend. Bookish invited me over on Sunday for a day of entertainment. Namely, watching her DH watch football. Sounds weird, yes? But I can assure you, watching her DH and their menagerie of animals during the football games is indeed, highly entertaining. Who knew that watching competitive sports when you don't really care who wins could be so enjoyable? I mostly worked on the scarf for my ISE 3 pal, after ripping out about 10 rows I had knit after classes my first week. I'm a quick learner, so no more knitting from a chart on school days.

The only other moment that is worth mentioning this week... my mild myocardial infarction. Boston College might be a highly revered/respected institution of higher learning, but they need to learn a thing or two about organization. I knew I was missing paperwork from the school, but wasn't too worried. My cohort and I went out to dinner on Wed night to get to know each other, and when I got home, I had the missing paperwork in my mailbox. These papers were supposed to detail who my faculty advisor is, how many course credits they were going to pay for, how many hours per week I would be enslaved to my faculty advisor, and how much they were gonna pay me for said enslavement. I had been told the amt when they made me the offer, and the actual letter only awarded me HALF the monies. HALF is not enough to pay for my rent, much less any portion of other living costs. The only reason I got any sleep at all, is b/c I was so freaking tired (class for 6 hrs, 2 meetings, and dinner with 6 ppl I don't know very well... I was bone weary).

For those of you that know me...I was in bed by midnight. MIDNIGHT! Unheard of for me. To make my longer than necc. story longer, the director of training told me not to worry, that the faculty were aware of the error, and that I was going to be awarded the original amt offered. Dude. If they KNEW there was an error, why didn't they warn me about the erroneous info that was gonna be coming my way BEFORE it got to me? BEFORE I spent an entire day with my anxiety levels cranked up to level RED?

So. No classes tomorrow, but I stayed up to do homework. What is this world coming to?

*borrowing from my friend Joanne. Anyone care to guess? WITHOUT googling?