what have you done today to make you feel stupid

4th week of my return to undergraduate study, and i'm starting to empathize with my teenage peers. but only just a little. at first, it really bothered me that they seemingly mindlessly walked out into traffic, walked in bike lanes, and did EVERYTHING (including driving mopeds, walking out into traffic, and using public toilets) while talking on cell phones, many of which actually coordinated with their outfits. but i've been thinking: maybe they just look absent because their almost-but-not-quite-full-grown-adult heads are swimming with the deadlines and homework and the social obligations that i get to keep hearing about from the girl who sits behind me during math class. i get it, school and being a teenager are hard work. check. but your clothes are still stupid. especially your glasses.

the class progress report goes something like this:

español 102.
starting to come around. the ta is a native speaker, so it's really difficult to understand what she's saying half of the time, and i totally bombed my first quiz, but i'm starting to bounce back. we'll see how the test goes tomorrow.

biology/zoology 151.
i have officially registered for honors biology, which i am excited about. it will make my solid 8:40am to 4:20pm wednesdays 3 hours longer, but honors credit will be sweet. this is the only class that i have done zero studying for all semester. the classes that have regular, graded homework are totally monopolizing my homework time. gonna have to work on that.

math 112.
trying hard to resist the urge to set my ta's office on fire.*** today, rather than fielding questions about the homework assignment, which usually takes up at least 15 minutes of our 50 minute class time, he wanted to "jump right in" and take questions at the end. he never got to the end, however, because he spent 15 minuted teaching us a completely irrelevant and poorly executed "parlor trick" (he called it that when someone said, "wait, what's going on, and why do we need to know this?" he said, "you don't. it's a parlor trick.") with the quadratic equation formula. grr. now i'm not going to get full credit for my homework because i needed clarification on a problem, which didn't get explained in the previous lecture. and this is all after i emailed him this weekend asking what page number our assignment was on, because it wasn't on the syllabus, and he emailed me back saying, "it's outlined on the syllabus." thanks, man. you're a really big help. turns out it was on there, just in the wrong column, and with a letter in front of it. would it have fucking killed you to have simply typed the letters "3" and "5"? i realize that, as an undergrad, i need to take on a huge responsibility for my education. but i didn't spend $3,000 on tuition for a class that i would probably do better in if i skipped lecture all together. i can read the book for free. and it's not an asshole.

in other news, i went to farm and fleet last week to get some gloves and some jeans, and ended up picking up a flannel. it seemed weather appropriate, was and comfy and on sale, so now it's mine. it has terribly satisfying snap-buttons down the front, on the pockets, and on each cuff. it's soft and warm, and is quickly becoming my security flannel. almost the first thing i do anymore when i get home is take off whatever other warmth article i'm wearing and put it on. i'm pretty sure that if i die during this whole school thing, i'll be found, drowned in a pool of relatively useless information and eraser dust wearing this shirt. flannel = love.

the heart update:
the short story is that, starting a few days before classes started, i was having weird and unrelenting episodes of irregular heart beats. beats that i could feel. and they didn't feel right. so i went to the er, where i was monitored for a few hours, and told that i have "palpitations" and that i should follow up with a primary to find out why. so i did, ended up wearing a holter monitor for 24 hours and subsequently getting put on a low dose beta blocker, called nadolol. the summary from the holter pretty much said that my heart rate has a really huge range, but that my average was 80 beats per minute, which is just a tad high. however, there were periods where my heart rate would, at rest, shoot up to 117 beats per minute for no apparent reason. i also had episodes of fairly harmless premature atrial contraction. so the beta blockers. right now, it makes me feel kindof high after i take it, which is usually right before bed, but there is also a lingering feeling of fatigue that i'm hoping will go away as my body adjusts. right now, the plan is to be medicated for 3 months, then stop and see what happens. woo for health insurance.

*** note for the office of homeland security:
i'm not really going to set his office or anything else on fire. i'm being dramatic. take me off your list.

Comments

[Shirley]

News flash: everything about the quadratic equation is irrelevant. (Now watch you get bombarded with furious comments from geeky people. *grin*)

Yes, your side effects will go away, probably in about a month (maybe even less). What I'm more concerned about is your blood pressure. Beta blockers override the sensors in your heart that tell it to beat faster and/or harder, which is great in a time of stress (some doctors even prescribe them for anxiety, especially the situational kind - like public speaking, because they force you to be "calm"). However, if your blood pressure is low for whatever reason (and being the little slip that you are, you don't need much more of a reason), your heart can't increase its load to compensate. So: watch out for dizziness or lightheadedness.

I've actually been thinking about getting a cell phone. I saw one the other day that would, like, totally match my shoes.

Just in case the snarkiness and unsolicited drug advice didn't give me away, I'll just keep you guessing and sign this...

[brrri]

nice to hear from you, auntie :)

[brrri]

ps
the np told me that i should be super aware of dizziness as well, especially considering my size, my already almost freakishly low blood pressure, and the fact that i almost can't help myself from falling asleep when i'm sitting still.

the side effects are mostly going away, which is good, but i am becoming more dependant on (oh so counterproductive) caffiene, which i tend to sip on throughout the day rather than slam right away in the morning.

the thing that's the most funny is that i can tell within an hour of the meds wearing off. i take them about an hour before bed, which has been around midnight or so, and i'm totally arrythmia free until right around 4pm, give or take that hour or so.

i'm such a sensitive creature.