February 04, 2003

OChem Till You Puke

I did OChem for 9.5 hours today. Yes, that's nine and a half hours. 1.5 hours of lecture, 4 hours of lab, 2 hours of study group, and 2 hours spent doing problem sets. Yes. I feel like puking at this point. My brain is clouded with the thoughts of random organic reactions, and I can barely think about anything else at all. However, while at the library, working on problem set #2 today, I spaced out for a moment because one of my favorite songs came on, and my usual (library) tradition when this song comes on is to just listen to it, and not do anything.

I guess it's one of the few times I allow myself to be contemplative, because most of my day (and life) nowadays is spent running from one place to another, desperately trying to keep up with all the time commitments and classes that I unintelligently take on. Anyway, when this song came on, my thoughts digressed from the Diels-Alder reaction for one moment, and I considered the book I was currently reading for my English 166 class, Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin. We had just covered how one of the main themes of the novel was life after youth is past is inevitably unhappy.

Well, that's not exactly what the teacher said, but I'm tired right now, and so I'm paraphrasing. OK, now I realize that I just quoted my paraphrased thought, but oh well. Typing backspace or moving the mouse is just not worth it. Pardon this digression from my original digression. Now what I was thinking about when this thought came to me was that for so many years now, I have maintained this very theme as the truth of all life, and seeing it presented so aptly in this novel, I wonder now whether it's an inevitable factor of life, or just something cynics use to justify their identity.

Is it in fact true that happiness beyond youth is impossible, and any semblance of it is just an illusion, whether it be through hobbies, family, or work? From my perspective right now, it seems very difficult to interpret this, because I can barely define happiness anymore. In high school, I knew what happiness was, but recently I've been feeling like life is just getting progressively worse, and it's completely out of my control. And yet, I'm not depressed, and if anyone asked, I would even venture enough to say that I'm happy. I like my classes, I have tons of friends, I've got lots of interests, goals, and objectives to pursue, and of course, there are my material pursuits. Despite being tired, I don't think I would have it any other way, because after completing every goal, I feel like I have so many more, still left unfinished. Getting back to my original point, I feel as if though my cynicism and bitterness are beginning to slowly but surely fade, and I don't know what to make of it. Whether it's a result of growing older, or perhaps just involving myself in more activities and not being so one-dimensional, I'm pretty sure I've lost a lot of the cynicism I once used to have.

While on this topic, I just wanted to comment on how important it is to maintain balance in life, especially for me. I think the decision to take this English class was a wise move, rather than four technical classes again, because I think my brain needed a break from too much of the same thing. Last semester I felt as if though I was doing the same thing for every class, and felt a lot more exhausted, not only physically, but mentally. However, by taking this class, I'm allowing myself to think in a completely different way (you know, left vs. right brain stuff) and because of that, I feel more attentive in everything. I was also thinking about classes I might take in the future, and I'm pretty sure that henceforth, I never have to take more than 3 technical classes per semester to graduate. This also means that I can take at least one writing/creative class per semester, which I'm pretty excited about.

It's getting pretty late, and I just wasted the last two hours trying to configure Apache to run some of my CGI scripts, but it was all for naught, because it still doesn't work. I guess I'm really just feeling tired, so I'm gonna bring this rambling entry to a close.