Snow, Spiders, and Sapiens

I know... at this very second I should be studying and going over my 800,000 note cards that I made but this is me taking a break. A very well deserved break I might add. This past weekend I spent about 28 hours studying. For once in my life, this is actually not an overestimate. This is legitimate fact. I don't know if you are aware... but there are only 48 hours in two days. 28 of which I spent studying. 16 of which I spent sleeping. 4 of which I spent driving to and from the library, eating, and taking little breaks.



Funny... that's exactly what I looked like at the lib.



I started with close to 12 hours at the library on Saturday with my friend Val. I was insanely productive that day. And then... it all went down hill from there. Towards the end of the day, I was attacked by a spider. A spider that crawled on my ear, down my neck and into my shirt. I then proceeded to have a very public freak out about this spider. For the next thirty minutes I proceeded to believe this spider was attacking me. I felt like Ron from Harry Potter. I now fully understand his hatred and fear towards spiders. My episode was so similar to his I felt as if I was in the movie/book. For those of you who have ever read or watched Harry Potter you know exactly what I am talking about. And I assure you my situation was the exact same. Except switch out hundreds of gigantic spiders looking to eat you for one small tiny spider probably the a quarter of the size of my pinky nail who I probably ended up squishing in my panic attack. Besides that... I'm sure you can see the resemblances of the situations.

Once I was attacked by this spider, I couldn't get it out of my head and we decided to call it quits that day. I promptly headed home, passed out, woke up and went straight back to the library on Sunday morning. I find I am more productive at the library. I usually do not tend to get as distracted. I don't feel the need to check facebook every 2 minutes. I don't have to spend hours looking at pictures on pinterest. There is nothing else I can do besides study. But when I am at my house, I have dogs, and tv, and cleaning to do. SO much cleaning... Have you ever noticed how when you need to do things you "suddenly" see just how dirty your house and surroundings are. And it is imperative that you clean EVERYTHING that very second... because without doing that you're homework is inexplicably going to get swallowed up into the mess of your surroundings and lost forever and how will you ever be able to study then!?! It's a logical, rational way of thinking about things.

But you don't have to worry about that when you are at the library. So off to the library I went Sunday morning. However, after being there for 5 hours I could no longer feel my feet or my fingers. I was pretty positive the second ice age had officially hit. And had I had a runny nose, it would have frozen into icicles. That is exactly how cold it was. I don't know about you but I am not an effective thinker when my brain is frozen solid and the nerves are short circuiting because they were not made to function in -55 degree weather and therefore can no longer send messages to the rest of my body. This was when Val said she was leaving and I took it as my cue to head home too and study there. Of course, when I got home it took me a full hour to get back into the swing of things. But eventually I went full force only to stop and eat dinner where I then went to sleep again.

This morning I woke up at 4:45 to re-read my notes. This is when I do some of my best studying. I HAVE to study right before a test to make sure everything is solidified and exactly where I want it to be. Without this... I will fail. Then I went and took my first final. After which, I was told I could miss 55 points and get an A in the class... that means I could get a 45 on the test and get an A. I studied for TWO days for this test when all I had to get was a 45!??? I went through an ice age and a spider attack for this! This would have been valuable information to know ahead of time. Obviously, I would still have studied and I would still have aimed for a high grade. I just would have allocated some of my time to my other four tests that I still have to take this week.

Now, I have two major tests left and two tests that are slightly less important. One test of which my teacher was smart enough to inform me ahead of time that I only need a 65 on the final. Which means... I will be studying for evolution for the next two days.


All of this is really hard to do when it is snowing outside. A form of weather that is hardly ever witnessed in the city of Las Cruces. So much so that I have a good 200 facebook updates in my home page about how it is snowing! This also happens when it rains. Precipitation in general tends to freak people here out. We drive slower, we try to leave the house less, and we generally sit at a window and stare outside for hours at the wonderful creation of water falling from the sky. You can only imagine how all of this water and staring is impeding on my studying.



This is my backyard... it isn't cold enough for the snow to stick to the concrete :(
BUT it is stil snowing so who knows.

Updated SNOW pictures!

Alas, I must tend to the radiation of Homo eructus out of Africa and into Europe and Asia which led to... you guessed it... MORE evolution and here I am a modern day Homo sapien. I blame them for my having to study for the horribly dreadful class of evolution. I'd be fine sitting around a fire in my cave eating the lion I just killed with my hand made spear. But nope... we just had to evolve.

The Awesome Idea Factory

Today, I started the last week of classes for this semester. I know, I could almost die with the excitement I am feeling about this! Notice the word "almost." I could almost die with excitement... if it weren't for the week of finals starting one week from today. I could almost die with excitement... if it weren't for my teachers having cumulative finals. I could almost die with excitement... if you didn't give me an entire week off and then expect me to come back with some magical burst of enthusiasm for just two weeks. See, it's a pretty darn big ALMOST. I guess I have to wait exactly 10 days for the real excitement to kick in.

I think the key to cutting out the almost would be ending school before Thanksgiving break. Sound like a good idea to you? Because it sounds like an EXCELLENT idea for me. I would much rather start school two whole weeks earlier if it meant that I got off from Thanksgiving to January. That would just be beyond spectacular. I know, I am lucky with the 6 week break that NMSU is already giving us but 8 just sounds like a better number.

It turns out... 8 IS a better number and let me tell you why. Apparently, the Chinese consider 8 a lucky number because it sounds like the word prosper in the Chinese language. Additionally, numerologists believe that the number 8 stands for business, success, and wealth. I don't know about you guys, but most of us college students tend to actually go to college because we want to get a good job, be successful, and make money. 8 also represents a type of momentum that comes from repetition of cycles. Isn't that what every semester is... repetition... over and over and over? A never ending cycle! I think I am making an excellent case as to why we should have an 8 week break. Really, I think I just solved all of the world's problems by simply evoking the enchanting powers of the number 8. Then we could stop all this Occupy nonsense and actually boost the economy (business), get more kids to graduate and actually get employed (successful), while all the while making money for ourselves and the economy (wealth). Just cut out this 2 week stretch and give our growing college student minds a chance to breathe a little. Uhh... does anybody else think this is the best idea ever? People should really pay me to come up with these brilliant ideas.

Unfortunately, I have not received a call about employment opportunities at the Awesome Idea factory... even though I'm at least a 51% share holder. So for now, I will hopelessly stare at the phone awaiting the call.

All the while... I will be destroying 85 trees. I did the math. It's at least 85. With all the notes, books, tests, and other paper material I print out on a daily basis, I am destroying trees. Lots and lots and lots of trees. Even though I can recycle this... recycling paper can only be done 3 times before the paper fragments shorten too much to be used again. So great. I am a mass tree killer. I feel so good about myself.

Just today I bought 500 note cards. 500!! I am not a person to study for tests on note cards... I just never really have done it before. But while in class, I somehow got the idea that since I have so many cumulative tests this year I should make note cards. Note cards were never really necessary because most of my teachers were kind, generous and smart and said that our final was only over the last section of notes taken after the previous tests. This year, my teachers are cold and conniving and all decided to meet up at their secret teacher convention that must have come to town. Turns out, the topic this year was cumulative test taking! I can only imagine what the key note speaker must have said.

"It's only 25 chapters PER class... and they only have FIVE finals in a row to take. That's only a total of 125 chapters at oh lets estimate only 3000 pages of material. That's nothing!!"

This was obviously received with thousands of screaming cheers from faculty all across the world... and thus it was decided that cumulative test taking was in this year.

I usually get away with only 1 or 2 cumulative finals but not this year. I bless the two teachers that decided to not have a final at all. Because I really couldn't take another several hundred pages of material to shove in my brain. It's already eroding at a rapid pace. I found myself sitting in evolution today talking about primates and how humans evolved and our brain size and next thing I know I was thinking about the brain I dissected in zoology. Which led to lack of brain in the sheep I judge/clean/work with. Which then led me to that persuasive speech I gave in seminar. Which made me think about how I only have 1 day left in communications which made me giddy and I started giggling and the evolution teacher scowled at me. See... it's already affecting my mental state. Giggling in the middle of an evolution lecture when the rest of the class is silent and you are staring off into nothing... makes you look a little bit like a crazy delusional mad hatter.

Therefore, this all led to the conclusion of making note cards... of which I have already reached close to 200 and I am only on one class. I am going to need to make another stop at the store this week. I probably have been avoiding this note card taking to ultimately avoid the many many trees I am inevitably killing...

And to think, had we only had off right after Thanksgiving, the teachers would have been happy and would have not felt the need to attend the crazy teacher convention. They then would have only had finals from the last section of course work and I would not be killing 85 trees.

All of this from my conclusions on the number 8. I know... awesome.

You are welcome.