It's a newborn afternoon
Mar. 1st, 2011 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daemonelixI FINALLY QUIT!!!!!! It was only a matter of actually informing my thesis advisor, but now at least I can't change my mind again! This is a serious problem, actually, because I have changed my major ... well, let's see: I've told people I was majoring in Environmental Science, Geology-Biology, Human Biology, Psychology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Linguistics, Hispanic Studies, Education Studies, Environmental Studies (which is a different thing than Environmental Science), Computer Science, Applied Math-Biology, Computational Biology, Statistics, Applied Math, even Cognitive Science (one of my least favorite things ever) ... something like that.
Right, back to more important things. What's most pathetic is that for most of these majors, I only took a class or two that could possibly count; yet, I still was convinced for even a short amount of time that I wanted to devote my life to it. Yes, that's correct: devote my life to it. I'm not really sure what I'm thinking most of the time, or why it ever seems rational.
I had something else that I wanted to say, but now I've forgotten.
**five minutes later**
Right! I really hate quitting, it makes me feel pathetic and like I'm fulfilling all sorts of stereotypes, but ... I'd rather actually like what I'm studying and be happy than fight the stereotypes on principle, just because. It would be nice to want to want (yes, you read that correctly) to 1) study natural science, 2) stick with anything for more than a few weeks, 3) pick a topic and dive in, but none of things really fit with my personality and my particular skill set. So. I am sick of trying—
Also, there is a guy who just broke the ice machine, such that it is now spewing ice out, which is piling up on the drain part of the soda machine. One of the supervisors came over, fiddled with the ice dispenser, and it stopped. Go figure. I thought people were at least intelligent enough to try such an obvious solution.
—I am sick of trying to do things that CRUSH MY SOUL, like lab work, just because I wish I liked them. I suppose part of it is that for a while I figured I would get used to it, but ... unfortunately, listening to music while doing lab work doesn't reduce the boredom, watching movies while doing lab work doesn't reduce the boredom, planning fic doesn't reduce the boredom, daydreaming doesn't reduce the boredom ... I have now accepted that doing lab work is just SO FUCKING BORING that it would squash me like a little bug if I tried to do it for any length of time. (And last summer, it basically did squash me like a little bug, so I have actual evidence of this.)
When I spent hours and hours on Sunday night with my music and a transcript from the second Obama-McCain debate, recording all their pronouns without getting bored once, and without even getting distracted once (that I remember, anyway ... not that I trust my memory), I am willing to take that as a sign.
Also, "figured XXXXXXXX out" is NOT a grammatical sentence in my book. I can't say something like "I figured that Bertha would go to the grocery store to pick up food out". That just doesn't make any sense, and yet the article that I have to read for Language Processing insists that it is an example of a perceptually difficult but nonetheless grammatical sentence. :P
Edit: I think maybe I only like noun phrases between "figure" and "out". So, I don't really have a problem with "I figured her really long, difficult-to-pronounce, exotic, Tagalog name out," (in reference to another student in one of my classes), but I don't like as much, "I figured what her really long, difficult-to-pronounce, exotic, Tagalog name was out". (By the way, Tagalog is officially one of the coolest languages I only know a tiny little bit about! Infixational morphology!!!!!!!)
Right, back to more important things. What's most pathetic is that for most of these majors, I only took a class or two that could possibly count; yet, I still was convinced for even a short amount of time that I wanted to devote my life to it. Yes, that's correct: devote my life to it. I'm not really sure what I'm thinking most of the time, or why it ever seems rational.
I had something else that I wanted to say, but now I've forgotten.
**five minutes later**
Right! I really hate quitting, it makes me feel pathetic and like I'm fulfilling all sorts of stereotypes, but ... I'd rather actually like what I'm studying and be happy than fight the stereotypes on principle, just because. It would be nice to want to want (yes, you read that correctly) to 1) study natural science, 2) stick with anything for more than a few weeks, 3) pick a topic and dive in, but none of things really fit with my personality and my particular skill set. So. I am sick of trying—
Also, there is a guy who just broke the ice machine, such that it is now spewing ice out, which is piling up on the drain part of the soda machine. One of the supervisors came over, fiddled with the ice dispenser, and it stopped. Go figure. I thought people were at least intelligent enough to try such an obvious solution.
—I am sick of trying to do things that CRUSH MY SOUL, like lab work, just because I wish I liked them. I suppose part of it is that for a while I figured I would get used to it, but ... unfortunately, listening to music while doing lab work doesn't reduce the boredom, watching movies while doing lab work doesn't reduce the boredom, planning fic doesn't reduce the boredom, daydreaming doesn't reduce the boredom ... I have now accepted that doing lab work is just SO FUCKING BORING that it would squash me like a little bug if I tried to do it for any length of time. (And last summer, it basically did squash me like a little bug, so I have actual evidence of this.)
When I spent hours and hours on Sunday night with my music and a transcript from the second Obama-McCain debate, recording all their pronouns without getting bored once, and without even getting distracted once (that I remember, anyway ... not that I trust my memory), I am willing to take that as a sign.
Also, "figured XXXXXXXX out" is NOT a grammatical sentence in my book. I can't say something like "I figured that Bertha would go to the grocery store to pick up food out". That just doesn't make any sense, and yet the article that I have to read for Language Processing insists that it is an example of a perceptually difficult but nonetheless grammatical sentence. :P
Edit: I think maybe I only like noun phrases between "figure" and "out". So, I don't really have a problem with "I figured her really long, difficult-to-pronounce, exotic, Tagalog name out," (in reference to another student in one of my classes), but I don't like as much, "I figured what her really long, difficult-to-pronounce, exotic, Tagalog name was out". (By the way, Tagalog is officially one of the coolest languages I only know a tiny little bit about! Infixational morphology!!!!!!!)