Hodgepodge Month in a Hodgepodge Retrospect

What wouldn't I do for a peaceful weekend where I can sit and watch a movie...

It's already the end of October.  Where did October go?  To Arizona, to many beers, to much confusion about future and people, to campfires.  To the desert, forests, mountaintops, caves.  To hurried grad school research and cramming for midterms.  What a hodgepodge of a month.

Maybe I should change my attitude from "must apply to as many schools as reasonably possible, must get into somewhere and start grad school next fall" to "eh, I'll apply to 2 or 3 I really like, and if I don't get into any, I'll just look for a job for a gap year."  The only problem is, if I don't secure a job early, either, I can't get permission to stay in the US for a gap year.  I guess in that case, I'll just spend a year in Korea and apply for US grad schools from there.  So either attitude is cumbersome...  Well, I've already started investing a lot of time into looking at grad programs, so I'll just keep chugging along the best I can.  It's just stressful with GSA beginning this weekend; I feel pressured to prepare to meet everyone who might could be a potential advisor.

Feeling this lack of free time, always feeling obligated to do something related to school, and finding myself longing for off hours sometimes make me wonder if I really want to be in school (either as student or faculty) forever.  But, we always long for what we don't have, right?  (Why is that?  That's kind of cruel.)  And I wonder if I will get the same satisfaction with a 9-5 job.  Guess it would depend on what it is...  Okay, enough far-future thinking, back to the present.

It got really cold all of a sudden over the weekend.  To think that, in the beginning of the month, I was enjoying(?) 97-degree afternoons in Tucson.  Now it's in the 30s at night in Athens.

I've been going out a bit too much this semester.  Not sure when exactly it started or if I should be concerned...  I would like a peaceful weekend to figure this stuff out, also.

Well, here's to a late night of productivity (please!!) so I can celebrate a college Halloween properly for the first and last time tomorrow.