What a Week!

Hello everybody!

So I decided to do things on Sunday today because yesterday was fairly busy and I was too exhausted to do much as the day went on. Let’s get started, shall we?

Last Sunday was really boring (sorry, not much to say in this section, I don’t do much on Sundays). We had testimony meeting which was stressful as usual, and I had a hard time drawing, so that wasn’t fun. After church I went home and mostly just wrote and worked on a comic I started on my computer for the rest of the day. I still hung out with my roommates, of course, but it was a really chill day.

Monday was a nightmare. We didn’t get hit as hard as the U did, but we still got a lot of snow, which was awful to travel through. I had Herpetology at 8:30 that morning and nearly died twice. The first time I almost slipped and fell, which is what I had expected, so I had left earlier than I usually do. The second time, however, a car almost hit me. There was a high amount of wind that morning, which made it hard to see well, and I don’t think the driver could see much better than I could. I don’t blame them for it, at all, since it was probably not their fault. The roads were absolute slush, and half of the side-walks weren’t cleared out. It was a nightmare getting to Herpetology, but when I did, Al was a little late and debated to give us extra credit. Spoiler alert: he didn’t, even though he almost crashed into somebody himself that morning (no, it was not me despite what Mom joked that night). After Herpetology, I don’t have any classes until Chemistry. I decided then and there I wasn’t going to go to the Chemistry if I went back home, and I wasn’t going to stay on campus for an extra 4 or so hours just to go to a review for a test that I was already studying for on my own. So I went home, and spent the rest of the day studying for my Chemistry test.

Tuesday was weird to say the last. I found out that my roommate from last year, Hannah Spears is in my nutrition class. We talked for a little while, and it was weird. She was impressed that I was graduating this semester which makes me feel… smart I guess? Mostly just out of place. I’m already kind of all over the place with how my age correlates to others in my classes. I also had institute which was okay. I really miss Brother Jacobs. Our new institute teacher requires people to socialize in class, and even if I have Maren, it gets loud and I don’t like it all that much. We’re starting to talk about all the bad things that happened to the Saints, which gets me a little more than worked up over all the injustices. That isn’t fun, so I’ve been trying not to think about it. After that was Epi and Rafael gave me an oreo, and I got to know Steven better. I really hope my group doesn’t think I’m too weird, because both Rafael and I were stuck on a tangent about gut bacteria and human health for a while, and I’m not sure the others liked that all that much. That class was spent reviewing for the test that I took on Thursday, so more on that later. I had my Chemistry exam that day, which I took. It was absolute torture. The testing center makes me so jittery not just form anxiety, but I just want to move or spin in the small seats that they give you and it makes testing so much harder. Thankfully, I still got an 82% on my first exam. I was hoping for an A, but I can settled for a B-. I’ll just have to do better on my next test. I then went and helped Maren with her bird corpse survey. We mostly just looked for bird accidents while talking about story stuff, so it was awesome.

Wednesday was an adventure. I had to wake Karin up to use the printer to print off my lab report which started the morning off on a bad note (thankfully she has forgiven me as far as I can tell). I then biffed it on my way to school which wasn’t fun. Then there was herpetology, where we started talking about the different genera of frogs (I have to memorize 23 out of 52 of the known ones… wish me luck). After that, I had my chemistry lab where we looked at the difference in protein between soy milk and cow milk, where we botched our soy milk results both times, so we took a hit of 1 point out of 20 to just be done with it because the lab just working for us. It kind of sucked. After that I had my Chemistry class, where I lost my phone outside of the classroom, and was in a panic for like fifteen minutes until I did find it. This almost made me late to my Herpetology lab, but I wasn’t late thankfully. In that lab we dissected a turtle and a snake. I soon exposed my nerdiness within minutes as I started to identify arts of the bones and musculature from memory (and was surprisingly right a good chunk of the time). I told me lab partners about how technically turtles have 5 and 3 chambers in their hearts at the same time thanks to partial separation of two of the chambers, how the lungs worked, and many other little facts that they probably didn’t want to know (*insert sweatdrop*). I don’t think they hated me that much. Hopefully.

With the snake, I was able to identify almost everything inside thanks to memory in our first snake, including the gender. Another group even had me come over and have me help them identify theirs as well. I messed up on the heart, because it was drier than the last snake heart I had seen, and because it was a different species, which I of course did in front of Al, which was humiliating. He then pulled out a non-dyed snake and had me try and have me identify the sex. It had a tail that quickly tapered after a certain point, so I said it was female. It was male- I hadn’t spotted the cloaca being a little farther down the taper off point, which was a little weird. Feeling even more embarrassed (I really want to impress Al since I’ve had him for another class before and he knows I like reptiles), I watched as he opened it and boy… was that snake fat. It had the largest fat reserves that he had ever seen. We made the joke that he was probably living off of McDonalds wherever he was previous to being captured. No wonder I mistook the gender! It was one fat snake! After this I helped Maren with her bird survey again, and went home, totally done with the day.

Thursday had me anxious for another test. I had no idea how to study for my Epi test, because it’s kind of like a math class mixed with English, where there are concepts to memorize, but it’s mostly a type of mindset that you adopt and then act with. It didn’t help that I was running very low on food, so I was living off of graham crackers for my breakfast and lunch. I had institute which was more talk about suffering of the saints which amped me up even more. Our Epi class was being taught at the Library that day, and I once again got to work with Rafael and Steven. They’re both really cool guys, even if I do prefer Rafael. I think he’s really awesome. He gave me another oreo and started another discussion with me about gut bacteria science. It made me happy. The library lesson itself was boring and about how to do research, which isn’t that hard? I don’t see why it was necessary, but okay. I need to work on that paper sooner than later, though. I’m doing it on HIV-1 treatment, which is interesting enough, but requires me to carefully pick through articles to understand the procedures. My Epi test went well, however. I got an 85.6% on the online portion, and I’m sure I at least did okay on the written portion. I once again got kind of hyper in the middle of my test which made it hard to focus, but I survived.

Friday was fun. The devotional that was given was by a really funny guy who bore his testimony about how he just put his faith in God with every decision. He had some hilarious stories and a quirky personality that kind of reminded me of Mason (which ironically was also the guy’s last name). After that they handed out banana-nut muffins for the treat which was amazing (so yummy!) and of course while I was talking to Maren, I see Rafael walking past us. I point him out to Maren, and she thinks he’s cute too :D. After another session of Chemistry, I headed home while Maren was in her lab and taking her test to take my Nutrition test. I got a 90% on that one (dang FDA questions), and spent the rest of the night relaxing with friends.

As for this weekend, I made plans with Maren to go and help her with the Great Backyard Bird Count for a class assignment, which meant a fieldtrip to the graveyard. We actually saw some birds before the storm-clouds came in with a cold front and scared them all away. After that we had to wait for Allie to finish her test and we went shopping for groceries. It was crazy at Wal-Mart, and I nearly had a shut down in the store from the sheer number of people crowding in around me (and I lost sight of Allie and Maren which freaked me out a lot). After that, I decided that I was done for the day- thus no blog yesterday. Today we had four speakers and a musical number in sacrament meeting, which was… busy on top of the confirmation of a new member (who was also cute—what is with the sudden influx of cute guys all of a sudden?). I still think it was crazy to fit that many into one meeting, but, hey, I’m not the one in charge. The lesson for Relief Society was taught by a convert to the church (she joined last year) about missionary work, which was actually really cool. I really liked the lesson.

Well, this has been a monster of a post, so I’m going to leave it there. Talk to you all next week (who knows, maybe I will do it on Sunday again- this counts as journaling).