6 credits, get!

Alrighty. We're just about finishing up the second semester over here. As such, I've just rounded off the second semester practical. I haven't gotten my final grade yet but I know I've made it. This means I just got 6 more 'study credits'. About that, I have no idea what kind of measures or whatever they employ in other countries. All I know is that when you go to uni here in the Netherlands, they've got this kind of system to ensure people who won't be able to handle it can't continue. Basically all classes in the first year have a set amount of credits bound to them, and the only way to earn the credits is by passing the course. I'm not sure about the details because as of yet there's no sign of impending threat heading my way, but I'm pretty sure that somewhere a few months from now, we'll be assessed by the higher-ups. It will be a very simple evaluation: by that time, you've got to have earned a set margin of the total amount of points that can be earned in the year. If you haven't made it, you're not allowed to continue with the study. I'm pretty sure there's also some rule that says that when you've received this binding negative advice, as they call it, you're not allowed to come back and try the same study again, whereas if you know you're not gonna make it and you quit a month ahead, you'll be able to start over in the next year. The good thing is that there's no extra effort required; just passing all your classes nets you all the credits you need. It's why I feel no need to dally on the particulars while so far I've passed everything.

But I digress. Horribly. What I was going to say was that we finished up this practical, Project Biochemistry, by holding a mini-symposium. This meant that the groups all had to give a presentation and make a research poster. I happen to have been in an awesome group and as such we did quite well: we got a 7.5 out of 10 for the presentation, which is only half a point lower than the highest mark, and we got an 8 for the poster, which is the highest mark. It's good to know that something good came of the fact we had to get up at obscenely early o'clock. ;).

Also, in other news, I'm currently listening to a newly devised playlist that holds all of the songs that were played in the first two seasons of Supernatural. Or, well, the ones I could find, anyway. I think it's good reference for some good ol' rock. I don't listen to that shit enough. 

Anyway, since I've tempted you with Supernatural and therefore possibly conjured images of Jensen Ackles, here's another one :D<3.

Pretteh. :). 

~Levyathan

My head hurts.

So it's been a rather long time, huh? Sorry about that, it just keeps slipping my mind. Inspiration does strike every now and again, but it's always at the most inconvenient of times. Right when I'm about to fall asleep at 2 in the morning, or in the middle of a lecture when I haven't got my lovely laptop-chan with me. The problem is that by the time I get around to writing anything, the inspiration and will to write have generally dissipated. Thankfully I have a very bossy friend who keeps nagging at me to start blogging again (yes, that's you, mister FussyFang xD). No matter that I haven't really got much to say, just this talking to myself - or rather, a hypothetical audience - works quite soothing sometimes.

Anyway, something's happened to make me resuscitate this dead concept. I fainted in the practical lab monday morning, and I had the brilliant luck to fall from a stool I was sitting on with my head at about standing level (not a very logical description, perhaps, but bear with me please) and end up with the back of my head on the floor. Obviously I'm quite unsure what happened since I wasn't actually conscious for it, but it's probably comparable to standing upright and falling straight backwards, cracking your skull onto the ground. Except, you know, my skull didn't actually crack. Thank god for that.
But even without that, the fainting itself was pretty scary. I've never fainted before, not ever. At first I thought I was going to barf, but then I saw this sort of haze coming into my vision from the edges. It closed in on itself, and the next thing I knew I was on the ground, completely disoriented, feeling like I'd just woken up from a normal dream and wondering what the hell I was doing on the laboratory floor with my head feeling like someone'd stabbed a knife into it. Luckily both the assistents present knew first aid and they helped me get up slowly and aided me in getting my body back under control. I was really shaky and pale, though, and I'd scared the living daylights out of my lab group. Not to mention myself. I found the Huygens building (where us scientific people are generally located) actually has rooms with beds in them, for people who need to rest.
Because of the unfortunate area of impact, there was a pretty good chance of a concussion. I didn't feel the signs, but everybody kept cautioning me to warn somebody as soon as I started feeling sick or light-headed, or got a huge headache. I haven't felt well since it happened, but the doctor ruled out anything but a very mild concussion, which is not dangerous as long as I keep my rest. As such, I opted not to go to uni today, rather I've slept in and taken everything slowly. I have only the occasional flash of headache, but the bump on my head still hurts like a bitch. I'm actually morbidly curious what color my skin has right now, as it feels like a sort of plum-purplish. But perhaps that's exaggerated.

As it happens, tomorrow is going to be a day where the only class I have is Molecular Structure, which I'm pretty sure I can afford to miss. As such, I'm heading on home in a while. It'll be good to be around my family for a while. I never hate living on my own, but it sucks most when I feel awful. There's just something sad about being sick far away from home.

Okay, this has become unexpectedly long. I was going to say some more stuff about totally unrelated topics but I guess I'll leave it as is.

Cheers!

~Levyathan

Finals Incoming

It's true. I'm barely a couple of months into the year, and yet I'll be finishing my courses in the coming two weeks. (Or, y'know, I will if I manage to make it through without having to re-do any of the tests). It's a weird feeling, considering that I've spent six years in middle/high school having the same courses all along.

Anyway, it's not as if I'll be totally rid of them. Maths 1 is simply becoming Maths 2 and, similarly, I'll be getting subjects with a different name but bearing a huge resemblance to the ones I've had so far.

Apart from all of this is the fact that FINALS ARE COMING. Which means I'm up to my ears in electrons getting --EXCIT---ED and zooming around in orbitals instead of plain ole' orbits. There's also a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo and complicated formulae with (oh joy) the units expressed in different ways than I'm used to. Really, what's the point of changing Fz for gravitational force to simply Z? (For the record, it's called zwaartekracht over here ;)).

I did do an awesome job at the weekly Maths 1 tests we had. Well, maybe not strictly awesome, but awesome enough that I met the requirements to skip the final. One down, four to go.

Another thing entirely: I saw this movie yesterday night. It's called "The Grey", it's about Liam Neeson (Qui Gon Jinn, of course) and some other guys who's plane crashed in the barren wilderness where a pack of humongous wolves start hunting them down one by one. It wasn't an incredibly interesting movie, all things considered. It was cool, but kind of pointless and slow. There was however a poem that the father of the main character had written which was basically really cool.

Once more into the fray

Into the last good fight I'll ever know

Live and die on this day

Live and die on this day

The way he said it gave me chills. That's the kind of thing I find really cool, though I wouldn't be able to put a finger on the exact reason if you'd asked me. 

But yes, I should probably get back to my fantastic date with the fifth edition of "Exploring Chemical Analysis".

I'll talk to you on the other side of the finals.
Or, perhaps, in the midst of them.
We shall see.


~Levyathan

The title is unrelated

Yesterday I met up with a couple of friends from high school and we went out to a bar. It was great fun and we should totally repeat that sometime. I guess it was made doubly awesome (although I do kind of feel guilty about it) by the fact that I didn't spend a penny. I got through the night on rounds from everyone.
It was probably helped along by the fact that prior to going to the actual bar, we all had a shot of Smirnoff Triple Distilled (or, as we've come to call it, 'Triple Gross') which according to the label contains 37.5% alcohol. It wasn't even that gross, it just burned a whole lot, going down.

Either way, we had a great time, I caught up with some other friends and colleagues, and after all these adventures I didn't even wind up with a hangover. I'm basically a boss.
And probably just really lucky. I know at least some of the others aren't faring as well as I am. I feel bad for those guys.

Now, something I haven't told you guys yet about the practicals is that every week a couple of people have to stay after hours and make sure everything is left the way it should be (we call 'em "zaalcommissarisen" or "zaalco's", which means as much as the supervising director for a certain lab hall). They also have the duty to bring cake which all of us can enjoy during the breaks. This week it is my turn, and so the house is smelling delicious with the aromas of fine bakery.
By the way, practical lasts from 8:30 to 17:00, with breaks from 10:00-10:30, 12:30-13:30, and 15:00-15:30.
The half-hour breaks are spent with the people from our own lab hall, and that's when the cake is devoured, while 12:30-13:30 is the regular lunch period and we generally spend that together as group 6. (Meaning the people I went through the introduction with. We're still all pretty close, which is awesome.)

Meanwhile, my romantic troubles are ever-present. >,>. I make my own life difficult. I think that probably even if I drank as much as I did yesterday (which wasn't over the top, but I was a bit further gone than I normally go) while he was around, I still wouldn't be able to look at him for too long or talk to him out of nowhere or try and get him to dance with me. His presence basically incapacitates me and I hate that but I see no way to change it.

Ugh, infatuation.

Anyway, I'll leave you guys be for a while so I can finish my Mechanics 1A assignments and hopefully start writing a report about the experiment we did to calculate the dissociation constant for methyl orange. I have to hand it in by Tuesday, and I've also yet to prepare for the analysis we have to conduct this week. I'm doing that tomorrow and hoping I don't have much else to do by then, so yeah.

(Also I can't really make heads nor tails of Act 6 Intermission 3. I'm constantly like 'oh hey there's new pages  oh wait this is kind of strange. what. what is even happening. aight awesome. I guess. oh it's the end already.')

But really this has been it.
Imma ollie outie.


~Leyvathan

Lalalalala

I should really be doing productive things right now. I'm really not.
See, there's this test coming up on Thursday. It's for my Biomolecules course. Biomolecules is, quite frankly, the most boring course I've ever had. Not that the material itself is particularly horrible or even uninteresting, it's just... the guy who teaches the course is the worst public speaker. It is simply impossible to stay alert during lectures. It just doesn't happen.
Which basically means that my usual method of breezing through new material by paying attention in class and not having to study a lot is rendered useless. I'm going to actually have to study this. I'm still putting it off, though.
It's something that's known as SOG (or 'studie ontwijkend gedrag', being something like 'study evading behavior', except that's a really sucky translation) and it's something I exhibit large amounts of.

On the other hand, the practical today went pretty okay. I went most of the day without feeling dumb, which is a good thing, surely. It kind of sucked, though, that a couple minutes before the end I knocked over my measuring cilinder and the top broke. Meaning I now have a broken piece of glass in my cabinet in the chemical lab, because it happened after five so the glass storage room was no longer open. This also means that the very same cabinet is full of flasks I borrowed but was too late to return. Next week, then.
Also, if I'm lucky, when I bring the broken cilinder to Michel (the guy who keeps the glass, so to say) he'll tell me it's fixable and I won't have to pay for the broken piece of equipment. There's a chance, because it broke above the actual measuring part, if you know what I mean.

So anyway, I may or may not be heading into the city in a couple of moments to meet the candidates for election for the study union board. (I don't know about English, by the way, but in Dutch we have two distinct things - there's 'studievereningingen', or study unions, which oversee the activities but also aid in for example the purchase of books for a certain study (or, in this case, cluster, but nevermind that), and there's 'studentenverenigingen', which is more aptly translated to 'student unions' and contain many students from different studies who generally drink and party a lot. I'm not perfectly sure because I didn't join one, but that seems to be the gist of it.) I'm not yet sure whether I'm going, but I guess I might as well check it out?

I'll continue this soliloquy at a later date. ;).

Ciao,

~Levyathan

Tempus Fugit

A month has flown by.

Seriously, it's really strange to consider the fact that I've known all these people, known this life, for a month already. On the other hand, it feels as if we've been together for years. It's a strange experience.

University, after a month, is becoming less impossible and more of a tough challenge that can be overcome if you're willing to give it the effort and time it's gonna take.
So far, that effort and time have been surprisingly limited, although I've not yet had any exams and therefore this beautiful bubble may yet come crashing down. We do have little tests for Maths every week, but there's this awesome regulation that allows us to skip the exam entirely if we get a good enough grade on all of them. I've been doing quite well, so there's hope for that. :').
Tuesdays mean practicals, ALL DAY. I don't hate them, really, but I'm not really good at it.. I'm always walking around like a crazed monkey, trying to get my stuff in order and I never finish on time. But hopefully it's gonna get better. Apparently it should, so we'll just hang on to that.

Altogether, life in Nijmegen is great. It's so incredibly convenient to live close to the uni. Also the city center isn't far at all, which makes cycling home in the wee hours of the morning on Thursday-technically-Friday that much less of a gargantuan task. (What is even up with my spellcheck that it doesn't recognize 'task' but gave no problems when I misspelled it as 'taks'? x'D. Anyway, I digress). The previously alluded to outings on Thursdays are a lot of fun, even if it feels like you're dying on your feet. This week and the next see actual parties on Thursday, rather than just going to the bar with a couple of friends. Beestfeest (loosely translated to Beast Party) this week promises to be good, as does the Pitcher Party that's coming up next week. Next week we've also got the first-years' swimming activity. Basically all of the first year Molecular Science (the cluster of Molecular Life Science (which is what I do), Science and Chemistry) people who sign up are going to hit the pool together, after which we'll go party hardy at the Pitcher.
...As luck would have it, I've got my IB 'graduation' ceremony on the day after. I wonder exactly how alive I'm going to be by then, but I suppose that's part of the charm ;).
Also, I've picked up a lot of expressions and words I would never have gotten into the habit of using had I stayed home, I don't think. It's quite funny. :'D.
Also, I've said the word Thursday far too often in this paragraph. D:.

Sadly, the sudden surge in cute guys in the immediate vicinity has not done me a lot of good. Maybe it's my fault for crushing on one guy too quickly and then being too much of a chicken to do anything about it. Could be, certainly. Either way, my romantic troubles continue because I can't man up and just say something. Sigh.
I've even got a willing wingman, who's a great guy and really patient with all of my nagging and confidence issues (which have been getting less, I gotta say), but I find the idea of using someone to get where you wanna go with a guy to be weird and just wrong, I guess? But then I'll never get there on my own, at this rate.

There you go, first world problems.

...He's really cute, though. :').

Okay, now, I've probably forgotten half the things I should have said. But who knows, maybe I'll think of them later and give you guys another update ;). Although I wouldn't be surprised if most of you have given up on me by now... Ahwell, I know I'll always have some of you guys. <3.

...(Speaking of which, it's good that things have been picking up again lately because it's been awfully quiet for a while. I've kind of missed you guys. :'3)


P.S.: Listen to this album it's great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6Ue0QG8dxw
Okaybye. ;).

Cheers,

~Levyathan

Honestly

I must admit; if you'd told me on sunday morning that by the second night of the introduction, I'd be having two reasonably hot guys sleep over in my not-huge room, I'd have stood on a large, populated town square in my underwear along with but not restricted to aforementioned hot guys (also in their underwear), I'd have taken bites of a cucumber wedged between a guy's legs (what an experience that was), I'd have had some serious mouth-to-playing-card-to-mouth action with yet another reasonably hot guy (that was a really cool game, basically we had to pass along a playing card by sucking air into our mouth, creating a vacuum. Then we had to pass it to the next person by having them press their own mouth onto the other side, releasing the vacuum and having them create their own.) and I'd be writing this to you guys pleasantly buzzed after a long day and a couple of hours out, I probably wouldn't have believed you. 


~Levyathan

Listen

I know I keep saying I'll start up again and then a month passes with no posts. That's why I've decided that this time I'm not going to say there'll be more frequent updates.

In more important news, I'm writing this post from my new room in Nijmegen, a 1.5 hour's drive away from home. Yesterday I moved, and it was hell because the weather is horribly warm and just basically unsuited for anything but lazing around.
Which makes it a little annoying that from today until next Sunday, I will be participating in my university's Introduction Week. It's going to involve a lot of roaming around the city and activities and whatnot. I've actually got this whole schedule thingie but I haven't even read all of it yet, I will just prepare for it day by day, I guess.

Either way, I'm really excited, although it was weird to wave goodbye to my parents last night, knowing I wouldn't be seeing them for two weeks because I'm now technically living somewhere else. It's two weeks instead of one because the day after the introduction week (which ends in a weeked camping experience that's supposed to leave you dead tired) I have to be at the uni at 09:00 for a remedial course of maths. I'm not quite sure I need it, because I can mostly follow maths pretty well, but it's free and I did have a 6/10 on my end list... Anyway, it's better to do this extra thing and have it turn out I don't really need it than be stubborn and not do it and have it turn out I do need it.
Also it's a lot easier to ask the professors for help in the future if I grab onto this opportunity to show that I'm willing to work to be better. It would be quite audacious to refuse this offer of help because "I don't need it" and then come crawling back when it turns out I did. That's not gonna warm anyone towards me. x'D.

This does mean that while I've got a friend now who's coming over to my place here so we can head to uni together to sign up, she probably won't be here next week, since she basically aced maths.
However, it's probably not so bad, because the introduction is mostly meant to get us to meet other people and make friends, as well as to become familiar with the city.

I'm pretty stoked, but also kind of hesitant. Let's hope it's gonna be great. :'D.


See you when I see you,

~Levyathan