33/92 in October

That would be the temperature in Celsius/Fahrenheit today in Oakland, California. I'm sitting at my office hours and do not have all that much time, but I thought I would give a brief check-in.

My week started out quite well. The weekend involved a lot of time in Berkeley, as you saw and read about, but it also involved a large chunk of time thinking about the future on Sunday. For me, "the future" means next year - internships, jobs, possible ways for me to get back to Germany. And I found some. I found one position, an English Teaching Assistantship through Fulbright, that looked fantastic. The deadline for the actual applications isn't for another two and a half weeks - but Mills has its own preliminary interviews, and that deadline was Friday.

But you should always ask just in case. It pays off. I beat myself up for about an hour about having missed the deadline ("missed" - a day before, I didn't even know the opportunity existed) and then I wrote an email to two of the professors who are responsible for anything to do with Fulbright at Mills. One said "absolutely not, I'm sorry, but there really is no way now that the deadline has passed." The other one said, "We have one interview slot open on Friday. If you can get your Grant Request and Statement of Purpose ready by this Wednesday at 5 p.m., you can come have an interview."

Guess what I've been doing since then?

It has been so long since I've worked to a short deadline like this, given my tendency to get things done WAY ahead of time. Actually, it's been rather exhilarating. And they have both been written and I'm on the second draft, with several people reading them today so that the final draft will be up tomorrow.

Also tomorrow, I got two assignments back - my first short paper in RSS as well as my Algebra exam. Both went well, and I had a huge moment with my Algebra exam.  I looked at my grade (good, certainly, but not perfect) and realized that my mistakes were based on misunderstanding the question (in one case) and taking something for granted that I should have proven in all detail (in the other case) and --- I thought to myself, "But the grade doesn't matter, I really feel like I understand the material, and that's what's important."  I have NEVER THOUGHT SUCH A THING BEFORE. Grades have been WAY to important to me my entire academic career. Maybe this is a sign that I'm almost done. Maybe school has finally taught me that what is important isn't, in fact, what most of us are obsessed with. Grades < Understanding.  Took me a while, but I've gotten there after 15 years of school.

However, I can't ride that wave for too long. Since the student I was helping has just left, I have twenty minutes of my office hours to myself, and there's another paper to get ready for as well as a film exam a week from today. Epic treadmill of life, over here. I'll keep on running!

:)