Summa Cum Laude

After 7 years, I am finally finished.  I walked across the stage at Comcast Center on May 17.  I heard "Summa Cum Laude" after my name was called.  I shook Javier Miyares' hand, and a bit later, I moved my tassel from right to left, along with 1,000 or so other graduates of University of Maryland University College.  

I thought that I’d make a bigger deal of graduating.  It still doesn't feel real. I still feel like I face a long struggle toward a distant goal, and I suppose I do.  I just don’t know what the goal is now.   In an entirely predictable instance of careful-what-you-wish-for, I’m actually a little depressed that the whole ordeal is over.  What to do now?  

I hung up my gown and my honor cord and my Phi Kappa Phi medal, and I'll wait for the university to mail my diploma later this summer.  I lost the tassel in the parking lot. 

That's not all that needs examining

Weeks (no, months) of filling my head with phosphate groups and Punnett squares and all sorts of other things that really don't belong there, and the CLEP exam has been cancelled because of the (stupid and stinky) weather forecast.  I'm rescheduled for March 6, which means three more weeks of waking up in the middle of the night screaming "The homozygous recessive expresses the trait!  36 molecules of ATP!"

If I were actually capable of learning Biology, this wouldn't be such an extinction-level event for me.  I'd just enjoy the snow day tomorrow and plan for an unpleasant morning on March 6...no worse than root canal (which isn't that bad, by the way). Sadly for me, though, I have no aptitude for science whatsoever.  I'm good at passing tests, and so my efforts have been focused on memorizing just enough to get me through the exam. I have absolutely no hope of retaining any of this unless I continue to beat it into my cement-like skull every day.

Onward.  The Protists survived their demotion from Kingdom status, so I'll live through this.  Meanwhile, maybe male fruit flies will eventually learn sexual responsibility and then we won't need to worry about how many of their 112 offspring are heterozygous for red eyes.

Biology Insults

1. "Stick that in your thylakoid disk and photosynthesize it".

2.

Well, that's one, anyway.  Use it the next time some smug, supercilious specimen of plant life offends decent people everywhere with its insufferable autotrophic boasts.  Autotrophs, are you? You can create your own food out of nothing, can you?  So if I just switch off the sun, and then take away your CO2 producers, you'll still be as green as the day you sprouted, will you?  Let me know what your ficus has to say to that.  Nothing, that's what it has to say.  As it sits there, rooted in its soil, speechless in the face of the hard truth you've just laid on it, that's when you say "so stick that in your thylakoid disk and photosynthesize it,"  Then tell it it reminds you of some algae that used to grow in your pool.  BURN!

Well, maybe you don't want to descend to that level.  (Not that I'm worried about the plant's feelings. That ficus is no better than algae, and I can tell you that I'd sooner associate with some decent algae I've met than with some of the trash I see at the plant nursery.)  But if you have your own pool, do you need to tell the whole damn world about it?  Tone it down, One Percent.

Double-Stranded

That's apropos of absolutely nothing other than molecular biology, a subject for which I have no aptitude. As I (halfheartedly, haphazardly, and reluctantly) studied, I thought that "Double-Stranded" would make a funny funny post title.  It only works, though, if I can tie a sharply witty observation to a biological principle.  But I can't. So I won't. Years of grueling study, and I'm still slow on the uptake.  It's probably genetic.

Higher Education and Suits in Chancery

I'm studying Biology now.  I've spent about 30 minutes distracting myself online, and now I have to update my blog (because my reading public, left hanging since mid-December, anxiously awaits a new installment) and then I'll fold the clothes in the dryer and maybe run the vacuum, so that after a full 70 or so minutes of thinking about preparing to study, I'll have actually begun to study.

Full disclosure: I abandoned that last paragraph in mid-sentence, studied for a while, did who even knows what else, and then returned to finish this post about 8 hours later.  Adult ADD is no joke.  This is why it has taken me 27 years (which, in fairness, includes a 20-year total hiatus) to finish my undergraduate degree.  But finish I shall, in about 3 months.  I'll take the CLEP Biology exam in February, then I'll take my very last class.  This is official; my adviser has confirmed that I correctly interpreted my most recent degree audit and that I'm really and truly almost done.

I'm reading Bleak House now.  I don't know if Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce will ever settle but I know now that at least some things come to an end.  I'm just not sure what I'll do when it does.

(Full diclosure #2: I went back to read a post from my old blog and found a tag that, when I wrote it, made me laugh myself silly.  Having forgotten about it for 3 years and seeing it again, I laughed just as hard.  At least one person thinks I'm HILARIOUS.)

Bring me the head of Charles I

Because, as Mr. Dick often said, the trouble from his head has gotten into mine.  Why, you might ask, does it take me nearly two hours to write a single paragraph?  Could it be, perhaps, because I stop and ACTIVELY LOOK for distractions and diversions after every single sentence I manage to choke out of myself? My work habits suck, and my attitude is no better.

###

Would you have been a Cavalier, or a Roundhead? Neither would have appealed to me, and I don't guess that abstaining was an option.

###

Which Cromwell would you invite to dinner, Thomas or Oliver?
I'm Catholic, so I assume that neither of them would come.  Just as well.  They were terrible dinner guests.

Defensor

16th-century Augustinian monks and English kings really knew how to sling insults.  I can only imagine the Twitter war between Henry VIII and Martin Luther had social media existed. Damnable and vile pestilence. #fideidefensor, #heretic.

The 11th Hour, (almost) Literally

Word count is just a suggestion, right?  I'm 500 words over, give or take.  This whole thing is held together by the very flimsiest of spit, glue, and Rube Goldberg arguments, and I'm pretty sure it won't hold up to scrutiny if I take out even a sentence, let alone 2 to 3 paragraphs.  Apparently, I learned nothing in freshman comp.  Damn it.

The Bilge is Back

Where to even begin?

I'm sitting on my couch, watching "As Good as it Gets"; rather, I'm half-watching it while I start some preliminary reading for a class that starts on Monday. Jack Nicholson is yelling at Greg Kinnear: "I'm drowning here, and you're describing the water!"

That, I think, would make a funny post title. And that quickly, the bilge is back.

I started blogging six years ago, and continued more or less regularly for 3 1/2 years or so, before dropping off the face of the Internet sometime in 2010.  No particular reason, really, other than that something had to give.  And as far as that's concerned, this isn't any better time than any other to try to start blogging regularly again.  I'm still (still. STILL. STILL!) in school, God help me. I'm almost done, but "almost" means at least two, possibly three classes and one more CLEP exam between me and my diploma.  It's possible (likely) that I'll either post so infrequently that I'll forget that I even have a blog, or that I'll just abruptly stop one day.

***

It's two days later now.  The class that starts next week is a history class on the Renaissance and the Reformation.  I wanted a class on the Middle Ages, but none were offered and I wanted to take my last (last!!!) elective this semester, so it's the Renaissance and the Reformation for me.  I know pitifully little about either, and I'm all agog so far.  It won't last though.  Four weeks from now, I'll be up to my neck in Henry's wives and Martin Luther's theses  and Chicago style and I'll be cursing the day that I was born.   More likely, I'll be blogging about writing a paper, rather than actually writing it-drowning, in fact, and describing the water. 

***

Blogging has changed so much since I've been away.  I feel like Zelig. I did used to have a Twitter feed on my sidebar (I was an early adopter with Twitter, in fact), but I haven't yet learned how to smoothly integrate writing with audio-visual content with social media with syndication/feed services.  So I'm blogging for the Stone Age. No sidebar, no links to anything, no social networking, and no Redditing, Stumbling, or Pinning.  I'll get around to all of that later, maybe.  Right now, it's nice to be back.