One of my favorite things since coming to grad school are the evenings that I come home and get to talk to one of my faraway friends. Sunday it was Kent, a few weeks ago it was Christina and Daniel, tonight it was Carter. He is in Austin, and gets to have dinner with Leila! I like hearing about everyone else’s lives, and though it makes me sad that I can’t be with them always, it has been a relief to realize over the past few months that moving doesn’t mean never seeing those you love again.
Today began horribly. I was stressed, it was cold, I was tired, and I didn’t think there was nearly enough time in the day to finish everything I needed to. I wanted to cry. It’s the first time since I graduated from Tech that school had stressed me out so much. Sure, all quarter I have complained about how much homework I’ve had, but I never felt hopeless until today. I’d forgotten how horrible it feels. I can’t believe I survived all of spring semester last year feeling like that! Ugh!
But I managed to get some good studying done between lunchtime and 4:30, when the aero/astro department threw a holiday party. It was really nice! All the professors came, and we had good food and free beer. Quite a difference from Georgia Tech, where getting professors to mingle with students was like pulling teeth, and alcohol was nowhere to be found. The alcohol policies can be chalked up to the fact that Stanford is a private school, while Tech is public. I don’t know what’s to blame for the professor discrepancy.
From there, I joined Emily and Valerie to go to Roble and watch the end of quarter dance performances. Nick was in ballet this quarter, and so he was dancing. It was good.
Then home to talk on the phone for a while, and now I’ve got just a little bit more studying to do for my fluids final tomorrow. Off to finish up.