Gym-phobia

I’m on one of those fitness phases. Where I somehow find this strong initiative to exercise. I don’t know where this motivation came from, but I’m going to go with it as long as it lasts. I love it. It’s like riding a wave.

I used to be an active person. When I was little I played every sport out there, but I guess most kids did (most middle class, suburban, first world kids, anyway). Through Jr. High I was on the basketball team (not because I’m that great; just because I’m tall. I was active, that’s why I stuck with it). In high school I was on the running team (my height could no longer make up for my lack of aggression on the basketball court). First and second year at university I went to the gym now and then. I’d only gone maybe five times total during high school. I have this thing with gyms where they intimidate me, and it’s seriously become an impediment to a healthy, active lifestyle, and to the body I’d love to have one day. It’s not really the gyms themselves that intimidate me… it’s kind of complex.

I guess it’s partially rooted in my prejudicially negative attitude toward macho, athletic, straight guys. Read homophobic. I'm presuming they'd be homophobic, I know… it’s an issue I have, but I’ve had few positive experiences with guys like that. I’m trying to work on this, I don’t like prejudice, but anyway, that’s part of the issue. Doesn’t help that a lot of them are hot, either.

Also, since I don’t go to the gym, and never have in a really consistent way, I feel really inexperienced when I go. I don’t know what a lot of the machines do really, or how to use some of them correctly. Plus I’m really skinny, so I know that my appearance would automatically give away that I don’t work out and don’t know what I’m doing. I could even live with the fact that I couldn’t lift that much weight at first, if only I was confident with the equipment, or a routine or something. Which machines to use, how often, for how long, how many reps.. .etc. I figure I need to buy a book, or do some research online, or find a friend who goes to the gym (I don’t have any close ones – well, I had one but he’s away for the summer).

Plus at heart I’m lazy. But that doesn’t fit with my current fit of athleticism lol. The one thing that I’ve been consistently good at since I was little was running. I’ve been running off and on my whole life. So when I want to be active, when I really, really, want to be active, and it doesn’t involve a gym, I go running. For me this requires good weather, and it’s only just gotten nice here. Canada is cold. So for the past few weeks I’ve been running. All over the neighbourhood, and it feels awesome. Of course, my ideal body would be more muscular than my current one, and running isn’t going to bulk me up any, but it is fun, and I can do it, and it’s good for me, so I do it. I’ve also started to do crunches and push ups and things like that, which don’t require a gym either.

I realize, of course, that I need to just get over this whole gym-phobia. I need to just go, and maybe even get a trainer for a few times, to get me started on a routine. A grocery store nearby has a nutritionist you can talk to for free, so maybe I’ll go chat to them about the best food to eat for bulking up.

I can’t see me starting this right away though… partially because of all the reasons I’ve just mentioned, but also ‘cause I’ll be going away for July to French camp (“Explore”: http://www.jexplore.ca/english/index.html), then getting my wisdom teeth out (ugh), and then going to France in September. So is this just a big excuse to not go to the gym? Probably yes lol. I’m sure I’d go if I had a group to go with. But I don’t.

Anyway, time to eat. Chicken and salad I think I’ll have. Later.

Attestations

I got accepted! To a wonderful French university to study French for the year. I'm excited! And "Attestation" is the title of the document, as in "Le Directeur atteste que.." I got accepted. So I understand now lol.

Next step; get a law school deferment for a year. I'll probably need even more luck for this one :)

May

After exams and thesis were all done, I enjoyed a resurgent social life for the next two weeks – making up for April. Graduation was on the 10th. So surreal to be graduated. Feels good. Work started on the 19th. I’ve been working on the publication a bit, though mostly when I haven’t been out in the field with P and/or other lab workers, I’ve been lazing around doing nothing lol. Online, or reading, or sleeping, or watching tv, or hanging out with friends. Staying up late, sleeping in. Today was a completely nothing day. Doing nothing all day is somewhat depressing, so I won’t be able to do it again tomorrow- I like being busy far too much.

I emailed the university in France the other day, wondering when I’d find out if I got accepted or not. They said they’d sent my “attestations” on the 20th. I was like, “attestations” ? What? Translated from French to English, attestations means… attestations. Big help. Dictionary.com gave me, like, testimony or evidence or something. Evidence I got accepted? Hopefully. How long does it take something to get from France to eastern Canada?

I got accepted into the Explore program, so I’m off to study French for 5-weeks for most of July and some of August. I’m really looking forward to it. And once I get there, if asked, I’m going to be gay from the start. Last time I never brought it up, so everyone assumed I was straight. I don’t want a repeat of that. One of the many reasons having a steady boyfriend would be nice is just that I could refer to him casually, thereby coming out in a non-confrontational, response-requiring way. I might even make him up to use him as a conversation insert. No… that’s a bit desperate… but I could refer to dates I’ve gone on… or something. I don’t know. Meh.

The lawn will be mowed for the second time tomorrow (by me). Leaves still haven’t appeared on trees yet. It actually snowed on the 11th. Hopefully we’re rid of snow now. It kind of feels like it’s been raining/overcast for two weeks. I think we’ve had two days of sun. Blah.

I still haven’t gone running. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow, too. I’ve been reading the Twilight series, by Stephanie Meyer, for a few days. Rachel is obsessed with them, and lent them to me before she left for BC for a few weeks. I’ll be done the last one by tomorrow. Twilight was better than New Moon. They’re good books, for teen lit. A bit mushy in parts, but I enjoy a good romance now and then.

Watched the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy the other day. It was good. Beth’s in love with the show – and it is good, but I don’t mind if I miss it, type thing. I’d rather watch Ugly Betty. But anyway, it was a good episode. I cried surprisingly hard at the part where the young terminally ill couple were talking before he got wheeled away for the experimental surgery. So sad!

Anyway, bed time. :)

Thesis' finale

I’m in one of those I-love-my-life moods. Everything’s been going so well; my thesis, my marks; my social life. J’suis content.

Of all of my procrastinations over the past four years, my thesis ranks among the most stress inducing. I suppose that’s a fitting way for me to end my degree; leave the biggest thing the longest and then deal with it while juggling exams at the same time. Fitting because this is how I’ve most consistently operated at university. And somehow I end up pulling through. If doing this degree has taught me anything it’s how to cram, and how to do enormous amounts of work in incredibly small lengths of time. This is definitely a useful skill, though I really won’t be putting it to its best use until I couple it with doing things ahead of time as well. THEN I’ll be able to accomplish so much more, so much better. That’ll come. I think it’ll arrive when I attain some higher level of maturity in my work-ethic. Hopefully during law school.

A&P ended up going surprisingly well – it pays to have copies of old exams. That’s definitely a plus to being in fourth year, for me anyway. My social network has grown exponentially, where I’ve made the most new friends this year, and first year I only really made a few. And now that I know so many people, information about courses, and old tests, and tonnes of useful stuff that helps you do better academically is at my finger tips. Anyway, after A&P was through on that Saturday, I had one more exam, invertebrate zoology, on Tuesday, and then my defence on Wednesday. P set a deadline of Monday at 9am of having my whole thesis done, and turned into my committee. I was insanely productive that weekend, stayed up all night Sunday night, and emailed the whole thing that morning at 8:59am or something like that, might’ve even been 5 minutes late, but I wasn’t stressing. Through the night everything had just.. come together. It was partly the Intro that needed work, but mostly the Discussion. I’d been jotting down so many ideas, putting post-it notes on so many articles, scribbling outlines of how I wanted to get across particular ideas, re-arranging and re-writing bits from my proposal from the fall. That night it was all assembled. It was definitely not as polished as I’d wanted it to be – all the other sections had gone through multiple drafts and edits. The Discussion didn’t. But I had such a feeling of relief that morning! I finally had a completed thesis in my hands. No, it wasn’t the final draft, that wouldn’t be turned in till after the defence. But it was something substantial.

Cramming for invert wasn’t pleasant. There were a couple of major phyla I had to skim, but I was pretty solid on most of it. A 2h nap in the afternoon helped a bit. Got almost 7h of sleep. The exam on Tuesday went alright, not as bad as I’d feared anyway. That day I had to make the powerpoint presentation for the defence itself. Sara, the second of my supervisor’s three honours students, was so much better prepared than me. She’s very studious. Very much an ahead-of-time person. Anyway, I bumped into Shannon briefly on my way home from the lab that night- I haven’t really mentioned her lately, she was enormously stressed out. She had two theses to do, one of which was an extra course she took on in order to graduate with a particular degree. She procrastinates worse than I do, and that’s saying something. She had a bit of break down the moment I saw her, and then sort of recovered and told me all about where she is with the thesis and everything else that’s been stressing her out lately. I have a far less stressful life than she does. Her family’s insane. Anyway, after almost two hours of catch-up with Shannon, I went home, ate, and then stayed up till 4am ish doing the powerpoint. I have a thing with powerpoints where they have to be awesome. I have an artistic side that doesn’t get out much, and I love it when I get to do anything with design or whatever. So this powerpoint was damn good by 4am. My defence was at 11am. I slept till 8 or 8:30, arrived by 10:30, and delivered the presentation. I felt it was kind of shaky, like, flow-wise, but everyone said it was great, even P, my supervisor. I enjoy public speaking in general, and I think that being an ok speaker made up for the fact that I hadn’t really had time to practice the presentation. There were lots of questions, but they went well too. Immediately afterwards was the defence itself, where I go into a conference room with my committee and they grill me and see if I really know my stuff, and comment and suggest changes to the penultimate draft of the thesis. I was almost too over-tired to be nervous lol. I spoke a lot, I spoke my mind, I wasn’t afraid to semi-ramble when I was confident in what I was saying, because I knew that the defence is where they gage how much you know, and how well you understand and can actually defend the thesis. One of the committee was on speaker phone, which I didn’t mind. I have a good student-teacher relationship with each of my committee members. I’ve done well in classes with each of them, and I feel comfortable going up to any one of them and talking about biology stuff one on one. So that definitely contributed to a comfort level during the defence. Anyway, at the end, they put me out in the hall, had a short discussion, and then emerged to congratulate me on a job well done. I’d passed lol. That’s all you know at that point- you don’t get an actual mark till you make the suggested revisions, and then submit it.

So my exams were over the defence was, too. It was almost a weird, anti-climactic end to the whole thing. The revisions were supposed to be done by the following day, but my stress level was way down. That night there was a get together at a pub in town for honours students, like me, and faculty. It was really nice.

I ended up finishing the final draft of the thesis by Friday morning. P sent me an email back simply saying: “enjoy your weekend!” It only dawned on my gradually that the whole thing was over. *sigh* -still feels good :)