MIA for 4 Weeks

Hey~ As some of you may have noticed, I kind of disappeared for a month. ^_^" This was because I was extremely busy with studying for midterms this past month and I had no time to do any blogging or make any videos (or even watch Suugaku Joshi Gakuen T_T). 

The Thursday that just passed was the climax for all of the studying I had been doing the weeks before hand. When I knew the schedule of my classes and when midterms would be, I was dreading March 8 because I knew that it would be the toughest school day I had ever faced. I had 2 midterms scheduled on this day and because it was a Thursday, I also had a lab to deal with. Because of the midterm conflicts, I was able to write one of my midterms in the morning, but it would be a very long day nonetheless.

This is how that day went: 

5:00 AM - Wake up, shower, eat breakfast and study 

6:15 AM - Head to school with my school bag filled with snacks, green tea, notes for my 2 midterms and my lab stuff 

7:00 AM - Write my first midterm 

8:30 AM - Finished my first midterm and went to buy 2 sandwiches, which will be my lunch and supper 

9:00 AM - Studied for my second midterm at the cafeteria and ate my first sandwich 

11:30 AM - Climbed a hill to get to the library. It's also the same building where my lab class is located. I had to wait outside for 15 mins because the building was evacuated and closed because of a chemical spill that caused a fire. 

11:45 AM - Headed to the library to prep for my lab. Struggled with the library printer. Studied some more for my second midterm. Headed to the lab with my lab partner. 

1:30 PM - Working on an experiment in the lab (which I'll eventually have to write a lab report on, which takes 20+ hours to do @.@) 

5:30 PM - Lab finished an hour earlier than usual. Headed to the building where my second midterm is held and studied some more with my friend. Ate half of my second sandwich. 

6:30 PM - Write my second midterm and I also finished the rest of my sandwich during the midterm

8:00 PM - Freedom! 

8:30 PM - Watched Big Bang Theory and passed out on the couch. 

I can't believe I survived it. The days leading up to it were very tiring and difficult to get through. Even though I can "relax" now, I still have quite a few things left to do before exams start, but at least I'm over that mountain. ^_^" I should be blogging in the next week and possibly do a video if I have enough time in between catching up and studying for all my classes, so please look forward to that. 

Also during this month I was away, I did a lot of thinking concerning what am I going to do after I graduate.

Growing up, it seems obvious to go from elementary school to high school to Cegep and then university. But I'm not sure how obvious it is for me to go to grad school. I talked to one of my TAs and she said that if my heart is not into research and if my end goal is not to be in research, then I shouldn't go through grad school because it will be very long and tiring for me. But if I'm able to find a job and I suddenly want to go into research, then I'll be readily accepted into grad school because of my work experience. I definitely think I want to take the approach of working and using my skills that I've learned the past 3 years and take my time looking for a lab that does research I feel strongly about or feel very excited about.

One of my friends, who has already been accepted to grad school, continues to encourage me to pursue grad school. So for her, I've been looking at labs when I have some time, but I think I really want to work and have a 9-5 job. Research can have really long days and I spent 4 months last summer doing an internship at a lab where my days were almost always 9+ hours everyday. That summer was already very difficult for me, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to do years of those kinds of hours. But I loved the research they were doing at that lab and I asked if I could do my Master's there, but once they found out about my less-than-the-requirements-to-be-in-this-program marks, it was a no go, which I had been afraid of but expecting all along. It broke my heart, which is why I'm so hesitant to look up other labs. Honestly, I'm just going to take it one day at a time and put all my efforts into graduating.