Well, it wasn't a great week.
I'm actually up to speed schedule wise, at least. I may even be getting physics a bit better than last semester's material, although the chemistry we're working on is clearly harder than last semester. And then I talked to some of the grad students in the Chemistry department who're in charge of helping undergrads. I didn't really get much out of that little review session, but it was a good thing to go to, and I'll try to do it again. So you'd think things were going well. Not so.
I got really stressed. I'm not sure why. It's probably because of Chemistry getting so much more involved. Whatever the cause, I didn't handle it well. It's kept me from falling asleep until ridiculous hours (despite trying to get in bed by 10 or 11). So I've just been lying there, awake, trying to sleep, for 3, 4 hour stretches. With no luck. I ended up skipping some classes last week, just because I couldn't deal with going on 3 or 4 hours of sleep. Doing that makes everything worse, of course. Not just because I can't cover the material, but because being out of class makes me stress even more. Which makes the insomnia even worse.
Needless to say, this can't continue.
So I'm going to start using sleeping pills, I think. I made a bad habit out of those in college, and it took me a long time to be able to get back to sleeping without them. So it's really not something I want to do. But I can't miss any more classes, and I personally can't manage to go to them without sleep the night before.
Apart from academics, I've been using my time well. I'm up to speed on the reading in everything, I'm starting all the assignments a good bit before they're due, and I'm getting time to cook up tasty and healthy food for a change. I finally made a beef stew I really liked the other week (tip: using wine instead of beef stock really helps the flavor. The beef itself gets it tasting "beefy" enough. Lots of fresh herbs helped too).
My lab partners are set now. I'm in a three person group for Physics, and one of my partners there is the Korean I worked with last semester. That's great, cause he's really smart, and he's easy to get along with. The other person seems a bit slower, but it should be fine. In chemistry my lab partner doesn't seem quite as good as last semester's either, but we'll get along fine.
