Getting Old
Feb. 12th, 2005 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trickykittySo I was able to make it to two out of the three birthday events for Angeline. The dinner was planned and I really had the good intentions of going to kareoke and perhaps Denny's afterward, but I knew I had a lot of school work to accomplish the next day and desparately needed sleep. But the neighbors decided to throw a party which caused me to rejoin the group for Shithead-fest at Denny's.
The neighbors' party made me feel old. Waking up at 2am and being a grumbling grouch because I know the work that I need to get done today and all of their noise is keeping me awake. It's the only reason I turned down kareoke (schoolwork), rather than out of pure fear of making an ass out of myself trying to sing in public. In the car is one thing I can handle, but singing before a crowd? I unfortunately realize that I'd rather be with close friends just drinking and drinking and playing Shithead in a seemingly quite apartment or restauant (oh, and perhaps a little more drinking) than be at a loud party with obnoxious kids who haven't quite grown into adulthood yet.
AAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!
Did I just say that out loud?? Admitting being an adult is still too damn new to me. Inside I still feel like a kid. But have a loud party of 18-to-early-20-year-olds next door to you when you just skipped out of kareoke in order to actually sleep and see how old you feel then. I think a lot of it comes from the fact that I've spent 10 years playing around at loud parties and now I realize how important my work with school is to me.
I went to my first official meeting as a McNair Scholar (http://www.uta.edu/soar/mcn/mcnHome.html). I'm getting nervous about having to create my own first real research project. I've had a lot of fun scanning people's brains last semester and this, but I'm finding that it's not exactly in line with what I really want to work on. Sure, creating a one-to-one relationship between areas of the brain and thinking patterns are right up my alley, but for some reason I'm just no longer as interested in it as I was when I was first asked to participate. I'm even trying to decide if I want to get involved in the fMRI training coming up either late-spring or summer or just scratch that for other projects. The fMRI will be a wonderful asset to my undergrad transcript, and the learning experience would still be awsome, but I'm worried that I'll be pigeon-holed into having to sign up for a grad program that continues in the direction of brain scanning. I'm getting jaded with the equipment and the long length of time that it takes to run these experiements which really don't show as much as you would think.
Along with trying to keep on task with my goals, I'm worried that my first project will either be not good enough to gain notice of the graduate schools or will just be too overwhelming and far-reaching to complete within the summer time allotted, or for any of the professors to think that I could never actually do what I'd like to do. Like I was saying during lunch with Smokey and a neuroscience friend of mine, I sort of liken it to the Wright brothers getting their first plane off the ground and being told by everyone that it couldn't be done. But I guess that's just a part of my nature to ignore what everyone else says and push forward in the areas where others fear to tread. (The angels don't fear it - I believe they're on my side.)
The neighbors' party made me feel old. Waking up at 2am and being a grumbling grouch because I know the work that I need to get done today and all of their noise is keeping me awake. It's the only reason I turned down kareoke (schoolwork), rather than out of pure fear of making an ass out of myself trying to sing in public. In the car is one thing I can handle, but singing before a crowd? I unfortunately realize that I'd rather be with close friends just drinking and drinking and playing Shithead in a seemingly quite apartment or restauant (oh, and perhaps a little more drinking) than be at a loud party with obnoxious kids who haven't quite grown into adulthood yet.
AAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!
Did I just say that out loud?? Admitting being an adult is still too damn new to me. Inside I still feel like a kid. But have a loud party of 18-to-early-20-year-olds next door to you when you just skipped out of kareoke in order to actually sleep and see how old you feel then. I think a lot of it comes from the fact that I've spent 10 years playing around at loud parties and now I realize how important my work with school is to me.
I went to my first official meeting as a McNair Scholar (http://www.uta.edu/soar/mcn/mcnHome.html). I'm getting nervous about having to create my own first real research project. I've had a lot of fun scanning people's brains last semester and this, but I'm finding that it's not exactly in line with what I really want to work on. Sure, creating a one-to-one relationship between areas of the brain and thinking patterns are right up my alley, but for some reason I'm just no longer as interested in it as I was when I was first asked to participate. I'm even trying to decide if I want to get involved in the fMRI training coming up either late-spring or summer or just scratch that for other projects. The fMRI will be a wonderful asset to my undergrad transcript, and the learning experience would still be awsome, but I'm worried that I'll be pigeon-holed into having to sign up for a grad program that continues in the direction of brain scanning. I'm getting jaded with the equipment and the long length of time that it takes to run these experiements which really don't show as much as you would think.
Along with trying to keep on task with my goals, I'm worried that my first project will either be not good enough to gain notice of the graduate schools or will just be too overwhelming and far-reaching to complete within the summer time allotted, or for any of the professors to think that I could never actually do what I'd like to do. Like I was saying during lunch with Smokey and a neuroscience friend of mine, I sort of liken it to the Wright brothers getting their first plane off the ground and being told by everyone that it couldn't be done. But I guess that's just a part of my nature to ignore what everyone else says and push forward in the areas where others fear to tread. (The angels don't fear it - I believe they're on my side.)
