The Emotional Process of a Master's Exam

Step 1:  Two weeks before your exam, you suddenly realize that you don't know everything about your project (or math in general) and you have your first jolt of adrenaline sending you into a panic that will not subside until much later.
Step 2:  Now that your adrenaline has kicked your butt into gear, you will begin a grueling process of reading everything that you can to gain a little more background in your weak areas.  Simultaneously, you start to go through all of your notes from all your classes, and you realize how much you've learned in two years.  You also realize how much you have forgotten.
Step 3: After the initial panic has set in, you spend about five days in "ultra-fast" mode.  Your heart pounds constantly.  You have a headache.  You can't stand things that are wasting your time.  Your anxiety makes you want to throw up constantly.
Step 4: Your body can't handle "ultra-fast" mode for more than five days, so you suddenly feel a little release as your body stops producing some of the "ultra-fast" hormones/chemicals.  However, you are now into the oscillation stage.  Every hour of every day, you start to ride a roller coaster.  "I'm going to do fine... I'm going to fail!!!!... I'm going to do fine... I'm going to fail!!!"
Step 5: If you haven't already, you will check out of most things important to you.  Blog posting is gone.  Conversations with your dear husband are kept to a minimum.  You will stare into space with words like 'Cauchy', 'Galois theory', 'R-module', and 'dead unicorns named Clopen' running through your head.  Your throbbing head, of course.
Step 6: As if constant torture throughout the day isn't enough, you will begin to have nightmares.  Then worse will happen, and you will start to wake up regularly throughout the night thinking about math.
Step 7:  Wash, rinse, repeat.
Step 8:  People start saying, "Good luck!"  As much as you appreciate well wishes, each time they say that you'll think you're going to die because doesn't that mean that your exam is really soon????
Step 9: With only a few days left, you finish all your homework due before the exam, and all that you're going to spend your time on now is reading your paper, reading your notes, and trying to cram everything in your head before your exam.  To stay remotely sane during this step, you play your Glee Pandora station nonstop while singing along to all of the Broadway songs and rocking out to anything upbeat.
Step 10: The day before you panic all day long.  Headache headache headache.  Enough said.
Step 11: Try to sleep the night before the exam.  Good luck!  You'll need more luck sleeping than for your exam since you've spent ten steps preparing for your exam!
Step 12: Get up, get ready, get to your room early and make sure things work properly.  Look down and make sure you remembered to put on clothes.
Step 13: Spend two horrible hours listening to yourself talk.  You say mostly intelligent things, but you'll cringe as the occasional stupid thing comes out.  Assume that your committee has a buzzing in their ear each time anything not perfect comes out.
Step 14: Pass your exam.  I mean, you took thirteen steps to get here.  You deserve it.
Step 15: Say silly things.  Realize how tired you are.  Feel relieved.  However, wonder why the headache and panicked feelings aren't immediately gone.
Step 16:  At some point, the stress will break.  Perhaps you will spontaneously burst into uncontrollable sobs for over half an hour.  While sobbing, you might also sometimes be uncontrollably laughing.  Your husband might look at you funny.  Just saying.
Step 17: Go to bed... and worry about the fact that it could have gone worse.  Seriously.  You have all these worry hormones in you, and it's hard to break the habit.
Step 18:  Try to go back to normal life.  Notice that the colors of the world are brighter.  Laugh more.  Make an omelette for breakfast.  The headache will gradually subside, too.

Happy Earth Day and Good Friday!

I have been overwhelmed recently as I prepare for my Master's defense next Friday.  However, I have missed writing, and I wanted to reflect a bit and then send my well wishes to anybody who reads this.

If you celebrate Earth Day, I hope that you have time today to appreciate our wonderful planet and perhaps do a little something out of that appreciation.   Today I want to remember that this amazing planet God made that provides us with food, oxygen, water, beauty, recreation, and many other things.  Through these things, I experience God's love.

Also, for those who find Good Friday significant, I hope that you have time today to reflect on how God showed His love through sacrifice.  Today I want to remember that God came to earth and died because He loves me and was willing to die to make up for all the times when I'm less than perfect.

I hope to return to writing more regularly after I pass (!!) my exam, but until then... Happy Easter and best wishes!

Great website about the plastic in our oceans

I devoted one post to the problem of plastic, these guys devote their lives.  I stumbled upon the website, and I think that the research that they do and the change they are trying to inspire is great.  I especially appreciate this post that they did regarding misconceptions about recycling plastic.  I hope that you learn something, too!

Good drying rack vs. Bad drying rack

 Recently, I wrote about our flimsy plastic drying rack that finally cracked in a way that made it unusable.  We went through a process of deciding what time of drying rack would be best.  We considered chrome because we thought it would be sturdy and long lasting, but from reviews that we read, the ones on the market seem to be fairly cheaply made, and they tend to rust. Instead, we decided to look for a sturdy wood drying rack.  Instead of relying on Amazon.com for one of these, I  found this website and liked what I saw.  We got the small size rack, and it holds about the same amount of clothing as my old one.  At the bottom of this post you can see the old drying rack and the new drying rack.

I like the fact that the rack is lightweight but feels like it won't break.  It is fairly narrow and probably could blow over if it's pretty windy, but I think that in general it seems like it will stand up well to regular use.  It was pretty expensive, but I think that it was a good investment that will last far longer than the three years the old $15 plastic drying rack lasted.  Additionally, from what I could tell, the money was going to a small business instead of a large company, which I find appealing.

My only "complaints" about the ordering process was that the man we ordered from did not notify us when our order shipped, even after we emailed him asking if it had been.  However, it came a week after we ordered it, so it really was not a big deal.  The other unfortunate part was the fact that it was shipped with a styrofoam wrapper around it and a fair amount of additional plastic.  Fortunately, you can always find someone on Craiglist looking for free packaging materials, so I know that we won't have to throw it all away, but it was a downside worth mentioning.

All in all, I'm pleased with our purchase, and I feel like I can recommend this product!

My "one-a-day" challenge

There is something about the ground near a college campus.  It must be screaming, "Throw things on me!" at a frequency that only the college student's subconscious can hear because students certainly are good at obliging.  Actually, that's probably not it at all.  Really, I think that people around here just tend to be careless.  Or drunk.  Or both simultaneously.

The thing is, when I see garbage or recyclables on the ground, I feel like I should pick them up so that they don't end up going down the sewer and ending up in the waterways.  That becomes a monumental challenge when there is a monumental amount of garbage on the ground.  I do want to do something to help the problem, but I can't allow myself to take on all of the world's issues by myself or I will probably ending up balled up in the corners with tears running down my cheeks.    Enter in the one-a-day challenge.  I decided to make it my goal to pick up one piece of garbage each day I'm out and about (which is about six days a week).  Plastic is given priority since it's hard for me to see a piece of plastic on the street without imagining an albatross eating it and dying as a result.  Also, I don't want you to believe that it's challenging for me to find a piece of garbage each day.  I sometimes even pick up more than one piece of trash, but the challenge is to do something and not feel like I'm failing for not doing everything.

Would you like to join my challenge?  Or do you have another challenge that you have given yourself?

How to recycle!

This post is primarily motivated by my fellow apartment dwellers.  In the last months, I have taken pounds and pounds of trash out of the recycling bins that did not belong in there.  Styrofoam, plastic bags, a fleece blanket, clothing, bags filled with a mixture of unsorted garbage and recycling, containers filled with food, bags of just garbage including sopping wet paper towels and cigarette butts.  Of course, I'm not Super Woman, so I can't keep all of Corvallis' bins perfect.  These issues are probably at the very least annoying to the workers at Allied Waste.  Additionally, by improperly recycling you can even damage the recycling machines or soil other peoples' clean recycling so that it all gets taken to the landfill.  As an example, plastic bags jam the machines (Allied Waste is regularly sending messages pleading for people to stop putting any plastic bags in the bins).  Also, if you put food waste in the bin and it spreads over clean recycling, you'll likely be the cause of all of said recycling being taken to the landfill instead of recycled.  So, here are three basic steps to make the recycling process work properly.

1. Try to not need to!  What I mean is that you should hopefully be trying to need to recycle less by creating less waste in general.  For example, perhaps you can buy things in the bulk section (using a reusable bag, perhaps?!) instead of buying it off the shelf with all the the included packaging.

But for the things you still need to recycle...

2. Go to the website of your garbage pick-up company, and learn what they accept and what they don't.  Here's the website for those of you in Corvallis.  For example, it might surprise you that they don't accept any plastic bags (although they can be taken directly to the recycling depot) or paper drink cups (did you know that most of them actually have a plastic layer?).  However, you might be equally surprised that they do accept milk cartons and aseptic containers like the ones broth comes in.  If you have questions, you can always call and ask.

3.  Now that you know what recycles and what doesn't, make sure that you sort things out.  If glass needs to be in a separate bin, make sure it is or you might be contaminating recycling or even endangering someone with the glass shards.  Also, remember to rinse/wash your containers free of food substances.

Attitude and helping the environment...

My friend shared this article on Facebook, and I thought it was pretty nicely done.  I would encourage you to go and read it because it shows how we are doing silly things to make ourselves think that we are actually helping people and/or the planet.  In the article, numbers three through six are the ones that really pertain to the environment.

What I wanted to do here is address the idea of attitude because I think that this will be the catalyst that will cause positive change.  In particular, I think we should get the idea that we can "be green" without significantly changing anything that we do out of our heads.  Here are some examples.

• Driving a fuel-efficient car but still driving a lot still is a strain on resources.  Walking, biking, and using public transportation while having a fuel-efficient family car that is used only rarely would help.
• Recycling a lot of stuff still uses a lot of resources and energy.  While recycling is better than throwing things away, we should also focus on bringing less into our home that needs to be thrown away or recycled.
• Buying a reusable shopping bag and then not using it or throwing it away before it is completely worn may actually use more resources and energy than using disposable bags.  However, if we each have a few reusable bags that we use regularly and mend when needed, this would certainly be great.
• Having efficient heating in homes is great, but if we continue to build bigger homes, it perhaps doesn't actually save any energy, especially if you consider the energy needed for the resources needed to build the house and then furnish it.  If we improved efficiency while decreasing our house sizes, that would help!
• Biofuels help us not to use gas in cars.  However, they cause us to use farmland for fuel instead of food.  Additionally, chemicals used in farming are often derived from oil!  Instead, we should spend time developing a good energy source and/or use our cars less.

Additionally, monetary savings should not be the only motivation for changing out behavior.  We should hopefully feel driven by our ethics and values.

All in all, as I've said before, I think we all need to seriously consider what we are doing and figure out what effect we are actually having when we do what we do.  With this, we will hopefully be humbled and motivated to change our attitude.  When this happens, we will then have an attitude that will make us ready to accomplish good things.