Happy Hour X2

Now to update you on the rest of my first week:

My second day of classes went well.  My Development and Prevention Science class seems like it is going to be my favorite by far because it is all about creating prevention programs for social issues (exactly what I wanna do with my life).  The second class that day was about Psychometrics and seems exactly like a class I took in undergrad so it should be easy.  Thursday was my first day working in my research lab on what is called the OPEQ project (OPportunities for Equitable access to Quality basic education) where they are training teachers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on how to work with kids traumatized by war violence and sexual abuse and help them to catch up academically.  The topic is pretty interesting but for the first semester or so I will get assigned all the grunt work which means I spent Thursday and Friday sitting in front of the computer for 6 hours at a time researching reliability and validity data on academic assessments.  A little boring but will hopefully improve with time

Now for all my classes total I've been assigned about 250 pages of reading and two writing assignments all due next week, It has been hard to find time to do it though because there are so many introductory sessions and welcome sessions and happy hours and receptions etc. for the start of the school year, many of which are mandatory.  Thursday night I had to go to two different happy hours back to back, then come home go to bed and wake up at 4.  I hope it dies down in the next week or two or I will never get my work done! I still haven't even dented the readings due Tuesday and I'm scheduled to work a lot of this weekend. stressstressstress

but even with the stress it's still interesting enough to be worth it :)

First Day of School

Yesterday was very long and very tiring.  I went to work in the morning and then had two classes: Culture, Context & Psychology and then at night I had Statistics.  The first one seems like its going to be a TON of work but really interesting. Stats seems like its going to be really easy but boring, which isn't great for a night class.  I feel less anxious because at least one of my textbooks is arriving today but I think the classes I have today (Development & Prevention Science and Measurement: Classical Test Theory) are significantly harder, we'll see.

In the past when I have gone into a class expecting it to be hard I have put way more effort into it, so hopefully it will still be ok

Oh! Also a friend from home, Katherine, was in the city yesterday so between classes we had dinner and I bought her bubble tea.  It was great getting to share my love of bubble tea with someone!! She loved it and I was very happy :)

More later in the week!

Back to School

So friends, school starts tomorrow, and I have been having many mixed feelings.  My old therapist taught me that when you feel anxious and overwhelmed it helps to pinpoint the causes for each emotion, so here goes:

Anxiety/Fear:
-I am still missing two of my textbooks which they tried to deliver but I wasn't here to sign for it.  Good thing I'll be in class all day tomorrow... not. Still not sure how I'm going to get those.  I would ask my super, Rocky, to sign for them as he does for a lot of my packages when I'm not there but this has happened so often that he has started joking around about the big Christmas tip he better get, this makes me reluctant...

-NYU is a very high caliber school, full of ridiculously smart people.  What if I can't compete? I got so used to being at the top of every class in undergrad, what if I'm not here? What if everything is beyond my understanding? It will be like TJ all over again.

-I am sick of school.  All of my friends are getting jobs and starting their real lives, I feel like I got left back or something because I am still in school.  I don't want more homework, more studying, and more reading, I just want the degree so I can get the job.  What if I end up not liking it? What if this decision was a huge mistake? What if I get so burnt out on academics I can't continue?

-My schedule is going to be insane. Wake up at 4, work from 5-11am, go to class all day, come home and study, go to bed *hopefully* by 10 or 11, repeat.  What if I can't sustain this?

Excitement:
-I am finally going to be fully immersed in the subject matter that is my passion.  No more general education classes, *hopefully* no more boring classes, etc.

-I am going to be surrounded by the same 25 people in all my classes and they will all care about the same things I do.  We will all have the same interests and passions so I will finally have people that are genuinely interested in hat I want to do for a living (not that the rest of you aren't genuinely interested, but I know past a certain point you get bored of hearing about it)



Now as you can see my anxiety list is way bigger than my excitement list, this could be potentially worrying, or it could just be my usual anxious self.  We'll see what it's like and I will re-evaluate my feelings in a few days

Haircut!

First haircut in NY! I got bangs, I was super nervous because I've only ever been to one salon for most of my life with the same lady doing my hair since forever.  Also to add to my nervousness I could only afford to go to Supercuts which doesn't have the greatest reputation to it was a risk.  But in the end it was ok and I'm happy with it :)

Lamest Hurricane Ever.

So with all of the people texting me begging me to evacuate, telling me to be safe, telling me to prepare etc. etc. I thought I was going to get to experience history living through Hurricane Irene in NYC.  I thought it would be epic, something people would talk about for years.  I was so prepared I had massive amounts of food and bottled water plus two full pitchers of filtered water and I filled the bathtub with water.  I rounded up all my flashlights and candles, covered the windows, moved my electronics away from the windows, I kept all electronic tools for communication constantly charged in case the power went out so they would last as long as possible. Argo shut down for 2.5 days, the subways shut down, all signs pointed to epic.

and what happened? NADA.  There was a lot of rain and some mildly strong wind but no damage, no flooding, no power outage, no water service interruption.  BORING.  I know we were really lucky and I stayed up almost all night Saturday scared something was going to happen.  There are tons of people who were not so lucky and my heart goes out to them.  I just wish they hadn't hyped it up so much.

Anyway here are some pics of the whole experience

Park was empty right before the storm

Rainy mist moving in over the empire state building

Stores closed up shop

Argo closed all weekend

Some people ignored the park closed for hurricane signs

Sunday morning when the storm was barely over people flooded outside again

Empire state building still standing afterwards

This was the most damage I saw

Subways still closed

Mostly just debris everywhere

Some shops still weren't open Sunday

Yuck.

So my cousin is pretty cool ...

Shameless plug: buy her gorgeous work, I know I am

http://society6.com/Sammie_Jean

Earthquake

Apparently the shaking of my building and bookcases was the result of an earthquake in VA that could be felt as far north as here.  Logically enough, living in NYC, my first thought was not "earthquake!" but rather something along the line of "another terrorist bombing!?"  Luckily it was not a bombing and everyone seems to be ok :)

This seems to be the worst of the damage:

DC Earthquake Devastation

"Thanks to all of you for your kind words of support, as we look to recover from the devastation of today's quake!"

via famousdc.com