Doctors and Doctorates

So, long time no update. Life has been pretty good of late. I have more friends in the area, polo is going well and taking up a lot of my time. Alexander is in Boston which is lame, but we've done the long distance summer thing before and I'm going to visit him in less than two weeks! I'm very very excited. Of course mostly to see him but I've also never been to Boston before, or Massachusetts at all (no offense, people who live there, but that is just the dumbest of the state names). Apparently he has all sorts of things planned out for us but I won't find out till I get there. Cannot wait!

The one big stressful thing in my life currently is this whole grad school deal. I finally started looking in-depth at programs and so far have a few I really like. Namely: UC Davis, UNC Chapel Hill, Bucknell (PA), and Macquarie University (Sydney). I'm not done looking yet and I'm not really sure how to find more or narrow down, all of these were picked by looking at what research the professors were doing. The real problem is that only one of them is in a city that I really want to live in, and that's Sydney. I want to live near the ocean. I just do. UC Davis is only a couple of hours away and I hear very good things about the city, but Bucknell is in a landlocked state and Chapel Hill is not even really day-trip distance from the beach. I know this may seem like a silly requirement and it isn't one really but I just feel happier when I can swim in the ocean, or at least see it. I don't know why, I'm just drawn to it and I've lived smack dab in the middle of the continent my whole life. I know I posted on my other blog about this at some point but honestly Sydney is the only city I've ever been in and thought "Yeah, I want to live here." There are a lot of other places that I like, don't get me wrong, but Sydney is the only one I've ever actually felt strongly drawn to. Which is a problem, because it is a million zillion miles away from everyone I care about. I really liked the research they were doing, I love the city, it's on the ocean, it's near the mountains, it's in Australia...but 2-6 years that far away from everyone? I have no idea how to make that kind of decision. I have always been terrible at decision making and my basic strategy is to ask everyone I know what their opinion is and then do whatever I was going to do in the first place. Getting more perspective does help, it often helps me realize what I really feel and what's important, but sometimes it makes it worse. I've only brought it up with a couple of people but so far it's only made it more confusing. Either they've said "Oh that would be so cool, you should totally do it! The loneliness will be worth it" in which case my reaction is "but but but EVERYONE I know will be so far away. For YEARS. I can't do that!" or they will say "Yeah, I mean, that sounds cool but I couldn't do it, it would be too rough and I couldn't be that far away for that long." In which case my response is "But I want to! I'm not going to chicken out just because it will be hard!" So, yeah. Not helping. I have no idea what to do to make this decision, other than look more closely at the programs, email professors, and that sort of thing, which should really be my next step anyway but is awfully scary because then it's less theoretical.

 The other big thing in my life has been doctor visits. I don't know why but since I've moved here things that have always sort of been a problem but not that medically significant (so I thought) have finally seemed worth mentioning to a doctor. For instance, I've been given a lot of shit over the years about how often I fall asleep during other things. Alexander says in the almost year and a half we've been together he can count on one hand the number of times I've stayed awake through a whole movie with him, no matter what time of day it is. I slept through classes in high school and college, even though I was taking notes, chewing gum, jiggling my foot, and drinking water I just could not force myself to stay awake. I pass out in the car, I fall asleep in public sometimes, often I have trouble getting through more than a page or two before I pass out when I just want to read...it's frustrating. In college I figured it was because I never slept enough. I don't think there was a week for those four years that I got a good 8 hours every night for 7 nights straight. And in California because we worked in the desert and it was the summer the only way we wouldn't burst into flames during our job was to start work at 2:30 or 3:00am, which meant going to sleep at 6 or 7pm which was just not happening in a house with no AC when I had west-facing windows. There was no way. So I spent the whole summer sleep deprived, too. But now I get seven or eight hours most nights and it still happens. I fall asleep during game sometimes. I fall asleep all the time, and it mostly seems funny or annoying, not like a real medical problem, except that I am a 23 year old woman, not an 80 year old man. So I mentioned it casually to my therapist who told me to talk to my doctor who gave me a little quiz and said I probably had a sleep disorder and needed to see a sleep specialist. I had that appointment today and they want to do an extensive study which would mean me staying there all night covered in electrodes and then all the next day also covered in electrodes to see what's up. Scary and expensive and maybe not worth it, but also, it would be really great if I could just watch a two hour movie with my friends without missing half of it. So. I don't know. First we're trying changing a few simple things and keeping a sleep diary. They even told me to drink coffee which I don't think a doctor has ever told me before. I hope these things work and I don't have to do ridiculous stuff (although, it would be cool if I got to see my brainwaves, and sleep science is really fascinating to me because it doesn't make any sense). It just seems like the silliest problem to have.

 So, that's pretty much my life right now. If you have any advice about grad school or living far away, I would love it. I will probably let you know how Boston goes. So excited! And now I have to get ready to go play polo! It's a hard life, you guys.

Too Much Love to Go Around

So I've figured out my problem. It's not the worst problem to have, but it is frustrating. It turns out that I love too many things. Allow me to explain. This afternoon I biked over to the zoo. I like the Vilas Zoo but it always makes me realize how spoiled I was growing up with the Minnesota zoo, and makes me miss the animals I got to know there the summer I interned, but I digress. While at the zoo I just got this tremendous feeling of excitement. Even seeing a few animals in too-small cages looking bored makes me so happy. I watched the orangutans playing and using the tools in their enclosure for almost an hour. Every exhibit made me want to just jet off to wherever that animal comes from and study it for a year. How stupid I had been, I thought, thinking I should take time off before grad school! I should be in Africa right now studying giraffes! Or lions. Or in Borneo studying orangutans. Or even in Wyoming studying bison or prairie dogs. I resolved to go home and watch Life and start seriously looking at grad school programs.

 On my way out of the zoo I checked my email on my phone, just to see if anything important had come up. I had a reply email from a very prestigious ballroom dance studio that I had recently applied to. I knew from Magpie trying to get a job there that they start out with a quick little dance lesson just to see if you're the kind of person who they want to hire and then they train you for several months and then you get a contract to teach. I got the email at 4:15 and it said I should come to the little intro lesson at 5:15. I have never biked so fast to try to get home, jumped in the shower for long enough to get the sweat off, called to make sure it was okay that I'd be late to what is essentially a job interview, and got there as fast as I could. We did two of my least favorite dances, rumba and salsa (although to be fair, I only don't like salsa because I don't know any moves in it) but it was so fun! I have missed ballroom so so badly. Everyone was great and I love learning new follows and I even lead a little bit and wasn't horrible at it! It turns out that even for the training portion they would want me five nights a week, so I have to put off applying until after polo season ends, which is too bad (although he said they're constantly hiring, so it could be a great thing in the fall!). But at one point while he was talking he mentioned "but you don't need to worry about that unless you're competing, which is 2-4 years down the road". And my heart jumped. Competitive ballroom dancing! I want to do that! Now, I'm not going to say it's impossible to be a wildlife biologist and a competitive ballroom dancer, but it is very difficult and highly unlikely.

I was lead to believe growing up that as you grow up you find that one thing that you love and just want to do forever, work hard to get into that field and be good at it, and then be happy. Not only is it not that simple, but I can't even decide what it is I truly love! I'm sure this is a common problem, and I'd much rather want to do too many things than not really want to do anything, because at least whatever I choose I will be happy. Unless I choose wrong and then am miserable forever. I know, I know, there are no right and wrong choices, there are lots of ways to be happy, you never know how things are going to turn out or why something happens the way it does but I have a hard time making myself believe that. Some people end up with life-long regrets and I don't want to be one of those people. Probably the answer to that is to be the kind of person who doesn't live in the past but makes the best of what they have and keeps moving forward until they find happiness whether or not it's what they set out for but...I don't know, I just want to do well at this whole "life" thing. The other obvious problem is that just about every animal in the zoo made me think "I need to find a program right now where I can go into the wild and study these!" which...I can't. How in the world am I ever going to find grad school programs with interests this broad? I'm most interested in mammals and birds, and I know I want to study behavior and/or hopefully contribute to conservation. How in the world am I supposed to narrow that down? I mean, a lot of people have told me that a good way to find a grad program is to find professors who are doing research you want to be a part of and see if they have space/money for you. I tried writing down all the people I would want to work with from a book that Ken lent me and found that I wrote down just about everyone who wrote an article. I don't know how to even begin to make this decision. I mean, it should be easy, right? If I love so many things I should be happy no matter what? But somehow I fear it won't work out that way. I don't know. Logic and worry have never gone together, I suppose.

One Year Later

Well it's been a year since I graduated from college. It was very very strange going to see graduation this year. I've seen my friends graduate before but this time I was continuously flashing back to what it felt like to be sweltering in those black robes and to have all the speeches be about me. I have to say, our speeches were better. Scotty B (the president) talked about how Beloit College is like turtle sex (the video is up on youtube if you don't believe me), Ben Pascoe handed out milkshakes, and I don't really remember the guest commencement speaker but I feel sure he was more uplifting than this years' who was interesting but also talked a lot about how depressing the world is right now and how it is the graduates' job to fix it. I had nearly as many people to hug and say goodbye to this year as I did last year (although it helped that two of them will be coming to live with me in a couple of months and more will at least be heading to Madison). I also got to see a couple of my professors (for all the time that I've spent in Beloit since graduation I've never gone back to the Bio floor or seen any of the professors, mostly because I worry they'll judge me for my work choices and ask me when I'm going to grad school) but it was much less stressful than I thought. Mostly because it was Yaffa and Carl/Carol, I think, and they seem much more okay with the idea of taking some time off and doing something fun and interesting than, say, John or maybe Ken. But I'm getting off topic. It's funny how the end of the school year seems to be affecting me about as much as it usually did during college (although not as much as last year, obviously). I've been visiting Beloit weekly or every two weeks and so I'm really really going to miss seeing everyone this summer (especially Alexander, although he's staying with me right now which is lovely). Also, when I visit next year I won't get nearly as many hugs or shocked and excited expressions (people ask me why I never told them I was coming down, it's because of how much fun it was to tap them on the shoulder and see them do a double take and then grin and give me a huge hug. That did not get old and now it will happen a whole lot less because I don't know many of the sophomores - who will be seniors next year but will always be sophomores to me - nearly as well as I knew the juniors - who just graduated). So, I'm feeling a little sad and nostalgic and even a little weepy as summer begins. On a brighter note, though, I survived my first year out of college! How exciting is that? I had not the slightest idea where I would be now one year ago and never in a million years would I have guessed I would be getting paid to work with polo horses. I have an awesome job, I will only be living alone for another two and a half months and then I will get two lovely roommates, my wonderful boyfriend of almost a year and a half is sleeping a few feet away and when I finish this I will wake him up so I can teach him how to ride a horse, I live in a beautiful city with friends and more friends will be flocking here soon. It's a great life but I'm starting to get a little antsy to do something else. I mean, obviously I will be in Madison for at least another year, but maybe it really is time for grad school after that. Or at least a change of scenery. I don't know. Everything was always changing in college, I would be doing something completely different every semester, always meeting new people and moving and planning for the future and so it's hard for me to wrap my head around staying in one place and doing one thing for very long. Maybe I should learn to but maybe I should not force it until that is what I want. I have no idea. I'm still very much figuring this whole thing out. But I've done a really good job of it this first year, and I think I'll continue to do that, so everything will be okay. *knock on wood*.

The Beginning of a Healthier Life

Today was a good day. I had my first therapy session in years and I'm feeling really good about this psychologist. It's nothing super major or anything but there have been some things that have been sort of gnawing away at me for a while, and I think this is going to be very good for me. I went to yoga tonight. It was a detox class, which is very intense in a very different way from other classes I've been to. I like it. I'm going to try to go much more often, or go back to dance, or something. Just riding and all the barn work that goes with it is not enough exercise, even though I am tired when I come home. The yoga studio is right above Fresh Market so I stopped there on my way home and got ingredients for dinner tonight: locally made pumpkin tortellini and spinach salad with blackberries. I'm going to study for the GREs before bed tonight (actually, I've been sort of having fun studying so far. I haven't gotten to the math part, I think that will be less fun, but I just really love words). From here on out I am going to be healthier and happier and more positive and things are going to be wonderful. Not that there won't be missteps and bad days, but I think this is the start of something very good.

Life: Going Pretty Well, Actually

So this week has been pretty amazing so far. My mom came to visit which was lovely. She brought my bike which is also lovely. She bought me new books and got to see where I work. I got to be the one who knew where to go, which is incredibly rare. Overall, I was just really happy to see her.

Work is going very well, too. Well, today was not so great. I got stepped on, nearly bucked off, and two horses ran off (back to the barn while we were riding in the field, nothing terrible, but still scary and bad, because it made my bucking horse much worse), and I almost got kicked in the face. Not a great day, but also a great day if you look at it differently, because I didn't get bucked off (actually, I was fairly safe the whole time, I'm lucky to have a really good seat, but it was still scary) or kicked in the face, and my toes are not broken, just swollen and in pain. But in general, my job is becoming slightly more about learning polo which is very exciting and fun and complicated. Mostly I am happy because this is the sort of thing people (including me, if I had the funds) would pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to do, and I am getting paid to do it! Pretty awesome.

On Monday I headed down to Beloit for a quick visit and there had been hints of some sort of surprise. On my way down I got a call from Alexander saying he had been kidnapped by Plains Walkers and I needed to save him. When I got there Stitch and Brianna were cackling evilly and said they had stolen him and I must play them in Magic to get him back. Then Alexander appeared only long enough to toss me a small package and disappeared back into his room. It was my very own deck of Magic cards. I've been playing Magic occasionally for years, since I was little and my brother needed a partner when his friends weren't around. I've never been very good at it but recently I've been playing a lot more and having a lot more fun with it. I've never had my own deck, I've always just used other people's. So who would have thought that a Magic deck would be one of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever gotten? He picked out a playing style and theme I would like (it's elephants!), picked the best and the prettiest cards, play-tested it extensively to get it just perfect, and then orchestrated this whole tournament because he knew he'd have some homework and other stuff to do before he could hang out with me Monday night. Sooo lucky. So happy. :) And for the friends who played along! It was a lot of fun!

And finally, on Tuesday Brianna called our future landlord to find out if we got the apartment and he said yes! I am so excited! We will sign the lease on Monday and then I will absolutely positively have fantastic roommates and a gorgeous place to live for a whole year, and I won't have to go apartment hunting again for at least a year! So happy!

Food Accomplishments and Modern Adaptations

Guys, I went grocery shopping! I know this doesn't sound like a huge accomplishment to anyone else, but it is to me. You see, lately I've been on a diet I like to call "too lazy to go to the store". It's not that I haven't had the money, I have foodstamps (which are wonderful by the way), but I hate going to the grocery store smelling like dirt, hay, and horses, plus I'm starving by the time I finish work and you're not supposed to go to the store hungry. But then, by the time I get home and shower and change all I want to do is eat and veg out for a while/take a nap. It's a problem.

But! Today I went on my way home. I was incredibly hungry and I didn't have a list, which are both things you are not supposed to do, but I think I did a fairly good job of not getting a huge amount or stuff that looks good now but I will never eat. I hope. I'm still having trouble mastering this whole "buy enough food to last you for a while, but not have any of it go bad" thing. I think this will be greatly remedied when I have roommates. If I buy stuff for a salad I basically have to eat it every day until it runs out or it goes bad before I can eat it all. And you can never buy just enough to make one recipe for one person. There's always leftovers and what am I going to do with one ounce of ricotta cheese? Yes, I probably should have figured out something instead of just letting it go moldy on the shelf in my fridge, but what's done is done now.

For the most part I got simple fresh ingredients to make sandwiches/wraps which is a good amount of "making something" for me. It's better than just boiling some noodles and putting canned sauce on them, but not as prohibitive (to a lazy person like me) as a whole meal recipe. I also got berries, because I had a lot of foodstamp money I knew I could spend. I am really really excited about them. I hope that I can manage not to eat them all this afternoon, but to eat them all before they go bad. Bad berries are the saddest thing, and they happen so fast!

My other huge accomplishment today was that I went to the grocery store hungry and I managed not to buy any sweets!...Sort of. I was in the bakery section oogling the doughnuts, cakes, and cupcakes for a while and thinking "I have so much money and it's not really mine..." but! I mustered all my willpower and pushed the cart away. I did, however, buy the ingredients to make cupcakes. I have decided that if I want sweet things I am going to have to work for them. I want to get better at baking, that way I feel some sort of accomplishment before I reward myself with deliciousness, plus if I have that many I am more likely to share them instead of just pig out alone in my room. Maybe. The only potential flaw in this plan is that I bought pre-made frosting. There is the slightest possibility that I might just eat that. But I'm excited about baking, so I don't think I will.

I don't know why grocery shopping is one of the hardest parts to adjust to about being an adult, but it really is. I think it is how we are raised. I grew up going with my parents to the grocery store occasionally and my job was chiefly to beg and whine for the things I wanted and see how many of them I could get, like so many young children. Our parents worried about how much and which of the real (read: boring) food stuff to get, I just argued for more fruit and cookies and the most sugary-looking cereal. And then in college I pretty much only shopped for a couple of necessities (like peanut butter) and whatever I wanted in my room that Commons didn't offer (similar to the things I whined for as a child). Now as an adult I walk into the grocery store and go "Okay. So. Real food. How does that part of the shopping go, again?" And I constantly have to stop the little voice in my head that whispers "It's your money. It's your kitchen. No one will tell you not to get that box of double stuff oreos. And maybe on your way out you should wander past the ice cream section..."

But actually, I've found that shopping for myself I get less junk food than I did when I was with my parents or the few times I did the shopping for the household. I actually feel more guilty about it. It's weird. I still usually splurge for something small, like hershey's kisses, that I can munch on occasionally to get my chocolate fix, but nothing like the ice cream and bars and whatever else we usually kept at home.

I have also discovered that the adaptations I developed for dealing with college are hurting me now in more ways than just food. Throughout school, I worked hard. I also worked a lot. This meant that the few times I didn't have classes or a huge project or anything I needed to be doing right that second, I would lay down, watch a show on Hulu or Netflix, or take a nap. Whenever I could I needed to let my brain shut off so that it could keep functioning on overdrive the rest of the time. Sort of like how people evolved to need to store up any fat they could find whenever they could because it was rare and their body needed it. Now we have it everywhere, and are giant sacks of fat. Now I have free time all over the place, I don't even work full time, but my body still thinks it needs to shut down whenever it can so I spend a lot of my days laying around, taking naps, and watching things on Netflix, even though I don't need to anymore. Actually, I could really use some mental stimulation.

Yesterday and today I've been pretty astoundingly productive for me, but I still go home afterwards and collapse. Right now is a bad example because I'm sick, so I kind of needed to, but I need to start trying to break this habit and adapt to being my own motivation to use my brain. Starting, I think, with studying for the GREs. I need to start doing it in earnest. I don't know if I'm going to apply for grad school this fall or not, but if there's any chance I am I really need to work on studying now. So. This is the plan. At least...ten minutes every other day. Yeah. That sounds good to start out with. We'll see how it goes. I also need to start working out again. Taking a break isn't helping my back as much as I thought it was, and my job is just physical enough that I don't feel like doing anything else for exercise afterwards, but not physical enough that I don't still need to. Yes. So this is the plan. That and get better at food. Starting slow. Sounds good, right team? Okay, ready, break!

Fishion Accomplished!

I have fish! Two of them! One of them is a Black Moor so I obviously needed to name him Othello. The other is a Ryukin (I think) who is tentatively named Puck. I needed to go with the theme, he's one of my favorite characters, and plus this little fish seems lively and inquisitive. We shall see how much of a trickster he becomes. I am very excited because I've never been the sole care-taker of an animal. I've never picked out my own pets. You would think, considering how much I love and want to surround myself with animals that I would have had more pets by this point but I have not. I am both very excited (more excited than I feel normal people get about fish, but in my opinion that is their loss) and very afraid that I will accidentally kill them. But! This will hopefully cure some of my Efficiency Blues as mentioned in the previous post.

Other big news: Tanya, Brianna, and I decided on an apartment! I'm trying not to get my hopes too high because we haven't applied yet (I left a message for the guy who showed it to us this afternoon, but he has yet to get back to me, then again, it is Saturday). But! I can see our life there and it is excellent. I like it a lot and I'm glad we all had the same number one choice. Let's hope we get it!

This past week was great. Alexander came to visit and we played mini golf and went bowling. Turns out we are both terrible at both (our bowling scores were lower than our mini golf scores. Ouch) but I am slightly better at mini golf and he is slightly better at bowling. Also, he physically swept me off my feet and carried me over a particularly large puddle, which was one of the greatest things ever. But most importantly it meant that he was there for a very important phone call.

Thursday morning I got a call from the recruiter who got me my cheese job. She wanted an answer immediately on a lab job that paid very well and was full time, meaning I wouldn't be able to continue with the horses. It was in my field much more than the cheese job, working with cancer and doing lab tests that I did in school. It was tempting, mostly because of the money, and I did seriously think about it. But she only gave me an hour because it was really competitive and I would have had one interview on Friday to decide if they wanted me and I would have had to agree ahead of time that if they wanted me I would say yes (head hunter rules are weird). I decided (with the advice of Alexander who was lovely even though I woke him up to council me, and my father, who was just lovely) not to take it. I mean, when else in my whole life will I get the chance to ride horses for a living? And yeah, maybe I could be happy in a lab job, but I could also be miserable. I know I love riding horses. If I gave up this chance I think 10 year old me would come into the future and kick my ass. When I was growing up I always said I would rather do something I loved than be rich. This is a lot harder to cling to when you're looking at rent and student loans, but I'm proud of myself for choosing happiness. I need to try harder to let go of my worries and experience the fact that I am doing something amazing right now. Yes, I need another job, yes, I could use more money, but I am incredibly lucky and lucky that my parents are willing to help me out to do something I love. I am 23 and if this isn't the time to be poor but happy, I don't know what is. So, that is what I am going to do, to the best of my ability.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have some fish to feed.