you know what i wish? i wish that the blood tests i had yesterday would just say that i was hypothyroid. then i could explain everything wrong with me without having to take any personal responsibility for fixing them. oh, and laziness is a symptom of hypothyroidism, too, so i could even explain my lack of desire to fix anything. IT WOULD BE PERFECT. instead, i believe, i have neither thyroid problems nor anemia and my sleep is just fucked up because of anxiety and my anxiety is high because i'm depressed and i'm depressed because... well, i guess if i knew that, i wouldn't be depressed?

school is school. done in two more years, but some days that feels like forever. other days, like not long enough, and i wonder if a phd would make me more hireable? phd in sustainable development from columbia? in law and society from nyu? in government from the new school? maybe i should do something totally different and go to rabbinical school and spend my life writing on law, environment, and religious ethics? (the most interesting option by far.)

but for the moment, it is just this stuff. don't even have the interesting things other people do, working on their theses and dissertations and such. i am just doing problem sets and having tests and making presentations.

this week, i've learnt: how a heat pump works, how the electrical grid is monitored and managed in the US, how public benefits funds work, how to use excel to solve simple linear programs, what postmodernists think about conflicts of interest, how CERCLA was developed, and what the bali action plan says (it's boring, don't read it).

mayhaps i should have gotten a social science degree instead of this one? damn.

oh, and hey, i thought that teleflora commercial was funny. i am, apparently, an idiot.

a list of things:

1. i am sitting in the divinity library. i work here. it's a methodist school and there are a lot of methodists here, even though i still don't know exactly what that means. one of my coworkers is considering 'converting' (do you have to convert to move from one denomination to another?) to anglicanism and i told her that sounded like the really boring christianity.

2. the other day, i do believe i was the first jew anybody had ever met. i still find this shocking.

3. i'm in my second semester of my masters in environmental management and in my fourth semester of graduate school. i am taking one of the most spectacularly boring courseloads i could have imagined.

4. while i hate microsoft office 2007, i just got a set of three licenses for $75 and you really can't beat that.

5. i am in love with kate spencer and manhunter. also barbara gordon. i want to be a superhero and it really bums me out that this will (probably) never happen. probably for the best, i don't look great in tights.

6. current love: root beer. currently reading: understanding and responding to climate change from the national academy of science. big plans: bull mccabe's on saturday night, despite the cold.

7. current sadness: law firm rejection letters. boo.

(eta) 8. go do thelittlebang. no, seriously.

so the not-so-well-kept secret is that law school sort of sucks. i mean, there are parts i really like. contracts class is actually genuinely fascinating, and we spent a whole day on the theory of promises, with no case law at all, which left many of my classmates totally irate. i, however, really liked it and immediately went out and ordered roberto unger's "critical legal theory." my torts class sometimes rises to the level of actual hilarity, even if i haven't learnt anything about torts. and civil procedure is perfect for me, with its obsessive attention to detail and obscure rule cross-referencing.

but the reading is slogging. i feel no compulsion to brief or take notes or do anything other than thake copious marginal notes. writing assignments are tedious. legal research is less exciting than it should be.

and i have no friends yet. which is the hardest part for me. so all my brain wants to do is get depressed and have me cry a lot and lay in bed and get sick so i can't eat. but of course i can't do that, because it's week three of four years of this stuff, and i've got to suck it up.

sometimes, i think of ljing about the stuff i do every day, the individual cases we talk about and such. but then i figure, if it's kind of boring to me, i'm sure it'd be REALLY boring to you.

far more exciting is that we now have TWO bunches of kittens. harry, hermione, draco, and ron are settled in beautifully. draco and ron are on their way to adoption, even though ron is literally brain damaged, poor thing.

in our bathroom, we have our new litter. they are shy and hissy and still a bit feral. i hope they will socialize well. their names are schroedinger, tesla, barton, and nightengale. the last three are all black and schroedinger's a black/brown/cream tabby.

if anybody wants pictures, we have a million. and nothing says YAY like pictures of kittens, right? if you live in the triangle and want to come socialize our kittens, come on over!

thought i'd give a brief grad school update. not that anyone was waiting with bated breath to hear about my exploits with applications, but. maybe somebody was curious.

so, in the end, i only ended up submitting 4 applications: william & mary law, unc law, duke law, and duke university nicholas school (the school of forestry & the environment). this was after my crazy list of twelve schools and worries about money and etc etc.

but then, before a bunch of my applications went out, i 1) realized that i don't want to be a geographer, as cool as it'd be and 2) got accepted to the nicholas school.

duke is my first choice. while i ideally want to be in the joint j.d.-mem (masters of environmental management) program, i think i'll probably take the nick acceptance (and the money they offered me) even if i don't get in to duke. and, if lawschoolnumbers.com is any indication, a lot of people have already gotten their acceptance letters and i've heard nothing, which leads me to believe i'm probably not going to get one.

i did get in to william & mary, and they offered me a scholarship, too. but i would rather be in north carolina, so yes. the real question is what i will do if i get into unc-chapel hill law but not duke. both carolina law and the nicholas school cost the same amount, though i guess the nicholas school would be more prestigious. i'm just waiting to get back all the envelopes, so i can sit down and make a real decision.

now i'm kind of terrified about coming home to a big 'ol duke rejection, though. sigh. that's not what i needed to think about today.

FINALLY, all of my grades came through. and they're really quite good. i'm just kind of bummed because... they seem a little nonsensical. like, i got a better grade in ECON than i did on my thesis proposal? or my natural disasters class? (i must've pretty seriously screwed up my paper...)

meh. at least last semester is over, i guess.

so, incidentally, my anthro final went so well. like, i'm thrilled with it. now, econ isn't looking QUITE so hot. but i've... i'm feeling resigned. like, i WANT to study, but i can't. my brain keeps wandering off or turning to goo and now i've got a rather ugly headache. but i'm making my cheatsheet. and that's helping me review, i suppose.

stupid econ. i'm so glad i never wanted to be an economist. i'd be a terrible one, really. THOUGH, i did figure out both how the money multiplier works (1/R, duh!), and how to figure out the multiplier for GDP increases. which, you wouldn't think that'd be such an accomplishment. but it really was.

so, there is a really interesting scientific program in tanzania that i JUST learnt about, taking place next summer at lake tanganyika. i think i'm going to apply, mostly because i'd get to do some real scientific research (oo!) and because it's free (avoiding getting a job!). i don't think i have a snowball's chance in hell of getting one of the 14 spots they hold for undergrads, because i have no actual scientific background (just soft-science and policy), but hey... you never know if you don't try, right? though, if the two professors i just emailed won't write me recs, i'm not sure what i'll do. hmmm.

oh, adventure. as if i don't have enough to worry about right now.

why am i awake at 10 til 7 on a day with the crappiest weather we've had here in nyc in a long damn time?

oh! it should be obvious! i'm going on a boat tour of the hudson river.

this is just freakin' ridiculous.

okay. i'm a nutcase. but i have to spend a moment saying:

holy fuck, what the hell am i going to do my thesis on? i should reallyreally know this already.

also, i decided to wait until next year to apply to law school, so that i don't have a nervous breakdown this fall.

(my thesis! the hell!)

did you know i am an environmental policy major? do you have any idea what that means? i don't, not really. except that i am taking ( the world's most boring courseload ) this fall.

stupid things:

classes started, oh, TUESDAY. and online registration is already over so now i have to go to the STUPID office and register. dude! i just found my id! i'm a commuter -- i didn't even SHOW UP on campus until tuesday morning! why do they make this so GODDAMN hard, especially when online program filing doesn't end until, oh, NEXT FRIDAY?

god. sometimes this school is so unbearably, unforgivably STUPID.


groan. i bet they're gonna charge me for this. they enjoy charging me for stuff like this. i just got my stupid registration hold removed because THEY lost my financial aid papers and then were like, "well, can she call us?" "no," my mother replied. "she's in AFRICA." "can she fax us?" "what part of 'in AFRICA' didn't you understand? i mean, really?"