No, really, take your time....

I don't have anywhere to go. I'm just sitting in my car, waiting in the line for you to figure out how to use the parking machine. But go ahead. Take 10 minutes to figure out how to put the little piece of paper that you got when you ENTERED into the machine. I understand. Really, I do.

There is this little group of restaurants near USC. I use the term restaurants loosely, because it's really just fast food, but at this point in my life I'm holding onto non-dining hall food for dear life. In typical Los Angeles fashion, there is a definite lack of parking. There's a small parking structure under the apartment building that these restaurants are attached to that offers 45 minutes free with validation. So that's where we always head and it's a pretty good deal. (Although the whole paying for parking thing is a general frustration. But we'll save that for another day.)

Pretty straightforward right? You enter, take a ticket, go about your business (remember to get validation!), and then exit. However, I've noticed something odd the last few times we've been leaving. For some reason, we get stuck behind people that cannot figure this process out. For whatever reason (my guess is stupidity), they sit at the arm, seeming to expect it to go up without any action from them. Or they put the ticket in and THEN realize that they needed validation ($12.50 for parking?! That can't be right...what do we need to do to make it less? Let's just run into the building and get the validation right now....nevermind all those people waiting behind us!)

I've even had a couple of people start backing up when the arm doesn't go up for them. Just put their car in reverse and start going back, without signaling out the window or anything. Everyone will move for them, because after all, they're important! This leaves everyone further back in the growing car line very confused. After all, why would you reverse back into the parking lot when you're trying to leave?

It's an increasingly frustrating situation that I've encountered. One that I am anxious to leave behind when I venture out of school in a week. Because really, what does it say about the students who attend this university if 1 in 4 people can't work a parking lot pay machine?

Moments before Midterms

There are two different moments that I'm talking about here: the moments leading up to a midterm, where you're either madly rushing to cram as much information into your head and onto your crib sheet as possible, and the moments leading up to getting a midterm back from your professor and seeing how you did in comparison to the curve.

I'm experiencing both at the moment (hah!). I get a midterm back in about 30 minutes, and I take a midterm in about 2 hours. This being my third, and final, midterm of the semester, I have given up on the last minute studying and have instead spent several minutes in random click-age of facebook. Because, quite honestly, I can't bring myself to care to study for another minute.

How different than my undergrad years, when I would have 5-6 classes and 2 midterms in each class! I seemed to always be up for studying for each of those, diligently staying up all night if it was needed to learn as much as I could to beat the curve. Somewhere between there and here I must have decided that it is not worth it. It is not worth the absolute misery that comes from pulling an all-nighter. It is not worth the headaches and backaches and neckaches that inevitably arise from being hunched over a book and papers for hours on end. It's just....not worth it. If I don't know the information at this point, then I don't know if I ever will.

I think being a grad student has made me lazier. 3 classes and two jobs and I whine about not wanting to do anything...so very different from undergrad!

Grad School...blah

I wish someone had told me how much grad school is NOT like undergrad.

I wish someone had told me that I would be happy to finish 1/2 of a homework assignment...and get 1/2 of the point for those problems.

I wish someone had told me how much I would hate listening to lectures online. And how much the knowledge that those lectures exist online would make me not want to be in lecture.

I wish someone had told me that it's not worth it at first...because what you think you're interested in enough to take in grad school will quickly become what you hate the most.