Thursday, November 19, 2009

I'm In A Good Mood 'Cause I Just Ate Lunch At Jimmy John's

So, just to clear things up from the last post, I now have my meds refilled, and things don't seem quite as horrible as they did last week.

But before things got better, they got worse. I have news which last week seemed like the end of the world: I'm not going to graduate in the spring.

And the reason WHY I'm not going to graduate is because of 11 credits of upper level classwork outside my major that the college sprung on me at the last minute. What jerks. This news really got me down, and I felt like I was a failure. Graduating on time has been a big deal to me. I saw it as a way to prove that even though I skipped around to a lot of different schools, and even though I hated college for the first two years, I could still finish with the "successful" kids and walk to the platform with my head held high. Now that I'm not going to finish at the same time as most of the kids I went to high school with, I feel let down. Like I'm the last kid to stagger over the finish line, huffing and puffing and about to faint.

I was feeling that way up until Monday when I got back to school and started thinking about it a bit more. What does this mean, that I have to go to school through summer 2010 to finish? Well, it means that I won't have a "summer" this summer, but I was expecting that anyway because I was trying to get a job in the works for the minute after I graduated. It means that I have to live up in the cities for the summer, which I was already planning to do because we have the house rented through August (look how nice that worked out!). And third, it means I have to take three or four upper level classes outside my major. Which means I can take anything I find any subjects that I find remotely interesting as long as I have the prerequisites (which I have a lot of, having taken about one of every class during my college jumping years)! And THAT means that I can spend the whole summer TAKING AGRICULTURE CLASSES and I don't need the grade to graduate, I just need the credit which means I CAN TAKE THE CLASSES PASS/FAIL SO I DON'T HAVE TO STRESS ABOUT GRADES!!

Turns out, this could be a really cool summer, provided that I can find some new friends to hang out with (and convince some old friends to come up to the cities more often). I don't want to spend the summer being lonely. BUT, I think I can turn this into a good thing.

So anyway, that's the news. I have to finish this semester, then I'm going to Mexico, then another semester, and then summer classes, and THEN I'm done.

And speaking of next semester, here are the classes that I picked during sign up, but they might change, as I was forced to pick a bunch of classes I'm not really interested in because the Anthro department has LAME classes next semester.

1) Religion and Culture, and
2) Philosophic Anthropology. Both of these are taught by a prof that I have this semester, and I have to say, I'm not impressed. He's dry and boring, but he's easy to get along with.
3) Sex, Evolution and Behavior. I'm SO excited for this class, and not just 'cause it has the word sex in it. I've genuinely heard good things, and I love learning about how evolution influences our behavior.
4) Archeologies of Colonialism. This sounds more like a class mom would like than one I would like, but my options were EXTREMELY limited. These five classes were the only ones I could make work with my schedule, weren't writing intensive (I'm going to be writing my senior thesis this semester, so I don't want too much other writing), or project based. Basically I need to save time and take classes that don't require tons of out of class work, as I'm going to be buried in my senior thesis for the rest of the year.

So there you go. Classes.

And in other new news, WE HAVE A MOUSE IN OUR HOUSE!

I went into my room last night, flicked on the light and was looking at a paper on my desk, when all of a sudden I see something move out of the corner of my eye. At first I think that I must just be seeing things because it looks like nothing is there, but then! Suddenly there's a little mouse, about 2/3rds the size of Moshi, just scurrying across my floor and out of the room under the door! I tried to follow him, and I think he might have gone into the broom closet, but I couldn't find him again. I'm hoping he's the only one of his kind in the house. Besides Moshi, of course.

And now everyone's laughing at me because I have a pet mouse in a cage, but I don't relish the idea of a house mouse running over my face while I sleep. Is that so unreasonable? Anyway, I spent an hour out trying to find a live trap, which I couldn't at 11:30pm on a week night. No surprise there. And I didn't want to buy one that kills the mouse because I honestly don't believe that it's right to kill an animal because it wants warmth, shelter and food. What would happen if you needed someplace to get out of the cold and someone poisoned YOU for it? They're just trying to live and be mice, and I'm just trying to live and be human. Neither one of us should get killed for that.

But I still don't want them running over me in my sleep.

So, since I couldn't find any live traps I went online to find out how to deter mice. First I cleaned the whole kitchen, floor to counter tops, did all the dishes, swept up any crumbs, and got rid of any garbage. If there's nothing to eat, they won't come around as much. Next, I found out that mice really don't like the smell of peppermint oil, so I soaked a few cotton balls in peppermint and placed them all over the house, so now our house is clean and smell good! Win win!

Today, though, I'm gonna go find a live trap. And a bed frame, I hope. Even though I like sleeping on my mattress of the floor, this experience has made me a bit iffy on it in the winter time.

Wish me luck on my search!

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