Friday, June 10, 2011

Back in College, Week 2: Complete

I am so motherf-ing tired right now I can hardly think straight.  I can think.  It's just in all sociological terms, since both of my classes are in Sociology and I had tests in both classes today.  In fact, I just finished my first online exam.  I got an 80/90, which is not good considering it was an open-book, open-note exam.  I had some trouble with detailed information on the last few theories we read about since I didn't have the correct materials to be able to read the exact information we were being tested on in the last few days.  I broke down and took a third trip to the bookstore and REBOUGHT copies of the big book and the correct book for this class.  I'm sending back what I got in the mail yesterday, keeping the abridged version of the big book AND keeping the big book because I found it incredibly useful for the test.  I'm just going to cut my losses and have to sell the books when I'm done with the class.  I've thought about going, returning the books once a week for the full price, then buying them back again in a few days just like I did this time.  But that sounds like a lot of work, and there's the risk of accidentally returning the books to the same cashier twice and according to the Rational Choice Theory of criminology, if I do the cost/benefit analysis, my getting caught and possibly sanctioned is not worth the money I'll save trying to do it that way.  I wish my prof could read this so she'd know that I'm not as stupid as I seem.

I think I did okay on the other test I took earlier.  It was definitely more difficult than I thought it would be, and although I pretty much memorized the notes, and the information from the discussions we had in class, a lot of the questions were on the content of the readings we were assigned, and while I did read all of them, I apparently didn't retain the details I needed to have retained.  I'm hoping that my paper and presentation and attendance/reading scores will help to neutralize the bad test scores I will have gotten (as you can see, I'm not anticipating doing any better on subsequent tests).

And so my weekend begins.  I got a bit sunburned today, but the weather is supposed to be equally as nice this weekend as it was today so I hope I get to spend some more time outside.  I need to get all my laundry done and get it all put away because this disorganization of having it all piled up in front of my closet is killing me.  But that's really all the expectation I have for myself for the weekend.  Two days go by really fast when you want them to go slow.  It won't help that I want to sleep and sleep and sleep, but I can't.

I'll take Phoenix and Nali to the dog park tomorrow or Sunday.  I can't take poor Lucky and Duke because Duke is officially broken.  He needs to have surgery on his knee(s), especially the one he hasn't been putting weight on since last weekend.  I wouldn't be surprised if he needs to have the same surgery Rainey had.  The problem is that getting him back and forth from house to house would be really hard, and no one can afford surgery like that for him (ex-husband's family could, but they're far too selfish to pay for that since it would benefit my sister and the rest of us in some way).  I'd gladly take out a loan for it if I could, but I don't think my credit is up to par yet.

With my not getting the amount of sleep I'm used to, or at least having a day in between to sort of recoup, I've been thinking about sleeping and dreaming a lot.  My dreams give me this strange sense of peace, tranquility, safety and security that I can't really explain.  I have this whole separate dream-persona, except that I'm almost exactly the same as I really am, I'm just not suffering from any of the psychological problems that plague me when I'm conscious.  I dream about having boyfriends and perfect relationships, I dream about moving into gorgeous apartments, I dream about needing surgery (and you totally can feel pain in dreams - I had one where I was convinced I had appendicitis earlier this week and I can vividly remember the pain), I dream about traveling and being outside...and I always feel truly wonderful.  Even when the dreams are distressing in some way, it's a different type of distress that I experience in my waking life and it's far more tolerable.

I like me when I'm busy and when I'm forced to do things and be somebody and be present.  Although I'm totally exhausted from waking up at the ass-crack of dawn 5 days a week, working, then riding my fat ass up the damn Hill to school and then requiring my brain to put forth more effort than it's been forced to put forth since at least EMT school, then either going home and reading or going to my parents house and helping with the kids, I am a part of the world and I'm responsible for the decisions that I make that get me up and out of bed and from place to place, and that's something  I can take pride in.  There's nothing driving me to do what I have to do other than the fear of losing my job and the desire I have to do as well as I am capable of doing. Having depression and being depressed for so long gave me every excuse to be lazy and to be absent in my own life, but I feel like I'm past that and I can reach my potential with some kind of pizzazz.  

Okay, my eyeballs are drying out from staring at a computer for the last few hours and my brain is pretty much fried.  Also, I replaced the screen on my bedroom window (which was ripped and kept letting moths into my room) and it's perfect in every way.  Hopefully I can remember to jot down some of the gendered stereotypes that we've discussed in class that I have never let interfere with my intention to do or be something, tomorrow, because I think it would be interesting to take a look at that from the perspective of having the knowledge I've attained in the last two short weeks.

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