(USC) Life According to Elizabeth

In less than 32 hours...I will be seated, probably rather uncomfortably, on an aisle seat of most likely an Airbus 380. I won't have a single thought in my head about school, midterms, research, work, medical school, water polo, community service, committee obligations etc. I'm guessing that's because I'll be asleep as soon as my bag is securely under the seat in front of me, but if not, it's because I'm going to be so stoked about my European adventure springbreak, that I won't even bother to worry about all that stuff. I am so amped just thinking about it!

Now I just have to get there. Because in approximately 24 hours I will be seated, definitely very uncomfortably, in a seat in SGM 123 most likely tanking my Bio exam. I'm so angry of it is standing in my way of my tour of Madrid, Salzburg and Munich. But alas, it is. My final obstacle to spring break. And it's HUGE. I mean like seriously, I would rather take any other test than this one. I like the stuff as I'm reading it (cell communication and respiration, photosynthesis, mitosis, meiosis, and metabolism), but it's just so much. And it's on a Friday afternoon! The Friday afternoon before spring break. Rude. Hahaha. Totally would have been ok with it last Friday. But since it's tomorrow, it is now a personal affront to my springbreak plans. So I'm going to kick its butt. Hopefully. That would require actually studying. So I guess I should get to that. 

So it's taken me a little longer than I expected...but I think I'm starting to get my school legs back. My break was great, but not particularly relaxing, so I didn't come to school as refreshed as I would've liked. Then everything seemed to go straight into 4th gear, and I guess it caught me off guard. But whatevs, now we have a 3 day weekend coming up, so I'll have time to really get my stuff together. Despite how hectic some stuff seems at times, I also seem to have a lot of down time. The first week of classes is always misleading because you don't have labs or homework and teachers let you out early. So I probably shouldn't count on as much free time from here on out. But I'm stoked about the stuff I have to do. I really like my classes so far. Well maybe not physics so much. But bio and environmental science seem cool, my engineering class will probably be good, and I'm in love with my Arts & Letters course. Now it's our on-season for water polo, so I have practice 4 times a week, which keeps me in shape and is a pretty good stress reliever despite the big time committment. And I'm working a ton in the lab, but I'm kind of excited to see how the experiment turns out so I don't mind too much. What else? The community service program seems off to a decent start; we got a lot of people to sign up at the involvement fair.

Now if I could just make time to get to the grocery store, I could stop living off peanut butter sandwiches, and I'd start to feel back on top of things. Wish me luck.

So I thought I'd just give a brief summary of my weekend thus far...it's been a little crazy. First, to get things started for Halloween, from 11PM-1AM Thursday night, my church group played our annual Broomball game. It's like hockey, but with brooms. I've heard it is supposed to be played on ice, but we don't have that in LA. So we just ran around the church courtyard. It was pretty nuts. Most of the brooms broke, and everyone was being checked all over the place. All in good fun of course. Then we had a pinata, I know, we're real mature. And it was Dora the Explorer, so I felt kind of bad hitting it.

Then came Halloween on Friday. I wasn't feeling it. I was functioning on very little sleep thanks to Materials Science and Bio exams Thurs/Fri, but I had volunteered to work at this carnival, so I couldn't go to bed. The carnival was actually pretty cool and fun. It was a few block away, put on by a church for families/kids in the neighborhood to have a safe place to trick or treat and play games. All the kids were in costumes, so cute, and super stoked about the free candy everywhere, so even though I was dead tired it was a good time. But then my friend made me go out with her and all her other friends that I don't know. I helped her do her costume (I didn't have one, not enough time to go shopping), and then proceeded to play designated driver for the night since I was the only minor. Awesome. But whatever, it was a riot.

Yesterday I went to the men's water polo game against UCLA. We beat them 6-3. Wasn't even a contest really, but super fun because the guys are so good it's incredible. Obviously I'm biased since I play polo, but seriously it is such a better sport than football. It takes more coordination, brain power and fitness, has constant action instead of all this stupid downtime, only takes about an hour instead of all freaking day, and is free to watch. Plus the guys are beautiful. So that was fantastic. Then I went to the first half (barely) of the homecoming football game. Mostly I just went because it was against UW and I have a ton of friends who go there, so I wanted to be able to give them a hard time.

Finally, today I was planning on getting up early and taking the bus to this huge flea market/swap meet in West Hollywood because I wanted to find some funky jewelry for my mom for her birthday. But I missed the bus after running to catch it in the rain, had to wait an hour for the next one, and then ended up not knowing where I was when I got off. And to top it all off, when I was about to cross the street from the bus stop this crazy chick going way too fast blew through the red light (I thought she was going to hit me so I jumped back onto the curb) and nailed this poor guy who spun completely around and smashed into another guy. I had to stay for an hour to give a statement, didn't end up making it to the swap meet because I had way too much to do, and luckily caught a ride back to campus with 2 other witnesses of the accident who happened to be fellow Trojans. Ridiculous.

This week has not been good for me...and it's only Wednesday. It started out really promising, I rocked my Diff. Eq. exam on Monday. Which is the irony of ironies considering my track record with college-level math. Then yesterday I had my chem exam, which I figured was going to be tough. But I've been going to the weekly review sessions, and could do the homework in my sleep, so it shouldn't have been as brutal as it was. First off, it's never a good sign when you can't do the first problem on the test. It didn't get much better from there, and to top it all off I just forgot (I'm being serious. It sounds ridiculous but it's the honest to God truth) to do the last page. Wonderful. The average was a 54 and only 3 people got above an 80 (no As); I got a 44 (not too bad considering I left off 1/5 of the test). Then this morning I had my Statics exam. I was pretty positive it couldn't go worse than my chem exam. Wrong. This time, out of 4 questions I really only answered 1.5. And I didn't even forget any; I just didn't know how to do them. Again, I don't know why it was so bad. I thought I was fairly well prepared. So needless to say, I really wish this week would just end. But alas, I have two major material science homework assignments (which I haven't started because of all the studying, and I hear they are really hard), a bio quiz, and a chem lab write-up due tomorrow, my boss picks this week to start picking up the pace in the lab, and I have a community service program to start from scratch, and water polo practice. Jealous?

But about 10 minutes ago (and 30 minutes after I had already lost it), I got some pretty excellent news. My chem teacher, realizing the horrificness (I'm pretty sure that's not a word) of his exam, has decided that we can drop our lowest score of 4 midterms. Thank God. So things are starting to look up. Plus, I'm going to Panda Express tonight, so it's not all bad.