It's always hard to keep this updated during school. I'm feeling completely overwhelmed and worried this semester, more so than previous semesters, and I'm not sure why. Each semester I think, "Ahh, next semester should be a lot easier, " but it never turns out that way.
Some school stuff that I should be working on:
- My wetlands project. I need to finish collecting plants, start identifying and mounting them, take soil cores, fill out my delineation and ORAM (Ohio Rapid Assessment Method for Wetlands) forms, make a list of invertebrate and vertebrate taxa at my site, and write a report. Since I've changed my wetland site about 4 times now, I actually have plants from three sites, and not enough from the site I finally decided on. Have you looked at the plants outside? Yeah, they're dying. I need to collect and ID before they're all gone. I also need to draw a map of the dominant vegetation zones before all the leaves fall off the trees (which most of them have). When I'm out there it sounds like it's raining because there are so many leaves falling. All of this is due towards the end of the semester, I probably have 6 weeks to finish.
- My first wetlands lab practical. I have 60+ plants I need to identify by sight (family, genus, and species). And these are mounted plants, not nice living plants out in the field. Right now I only know about ten. I also have to go to some wetland I've never been to before and fill out an ORAM form for it. This practical is on November 2nd.
- My writing intensive paper. The outline is past due already and I haven't turned it in. The rough draft is due in about a week and even though I told Dr. Grafton my topic was sex change in fish, I'm thinking about changing it to physiological effects of fasting in penguins. By the end of tonight I need to decide on a topic, download and read as much primary literature as possible on it, and write up an outline to turn in tomorrow.
- Upcoming evolution test. I haven't looked over my notes at all. Dr. Hoeh has sent about 8 files for us to look at, as well as 3 phylogenetic trees to construct, and I haven't looked at any of them. I'm really behind in this class and I really need to start studying. Test is on October 28th.
- Japanese homework and quizzes. We have homework every night and at least one quiz a week. I actually enjoy this work, but it just takes up a lot of time.
Other school stuff:
- I've already started scheduling for next semester (supposedly my last semester). I'm taking Ornithology, Vertebrate Zoology, Biogeography, and Japanese ll. I also have a course called Senior Seminar that I need to take to graduate, and I'm having the hardest time ever signing up for it. There are only 6 spots left in it! It's really a huge mess and too complicated to explain.
- I need to go change my catalog year or else I won't be graduating at all.
- After 7 weeks of feeling very dumb and lost in my wetland class, I got an A on our first exam! There were only 3 people who got an A.
- I got a 100% on my first Japanese exam. I can't even remember the last time I got 100% on an exam. Especially one without extra credit.
- I wish I was an art history major.
