I had my first group meeting as an official group member today. My advisor, Dr. Shear, announced to everyone that I had officially signed on with them, and people clapped. It made me feel both happy and a little ridiculous at the same time. But luckily the group is full of pretty funny individuals, so the meeting was fun as well as scientific.
Unfortunately, I started losing focus during the second half of the meeting due to pure physical exhaustion. After staying up late to finish my personal statement for the NSF fellowship, I was woken early by Otter barking (ugh). This resulted in my struggling to stay awake during both the second half of the group meeting and all of my Physical Organic class. Needless to say, I'll be listening to that lecture over again tomorrow. I retained nothing.
Then I began to grade papers, until Dr. Shear called me to his office to discuss the research proposal I had written for my fellowship application. He proceeded to systematically dismantle the entire thing, then help me piece it all back together. Luckily, I was able to revise it and get the entire thing submitted with an hour to spare before the deadline. I definitely feel lucky to have an advisor that is so helpful and adept at giving constructive criticism, it makes the entire process way easier. Now, all I can do is cross my fingers and wait. Which means all of you should probably cross your fingers as well. I'll take all the good luck I can get with this application, especially since it was all thrown together 5 days before the deadline.
Tomorrow should be a calmer day now that the application process is over with. Pretty much every available moment until Saturday morning will be spent studying Physical Organic. That's right, my next monster exam is this Saturday, and I am scared to death about it. So I'm going to go to bed before I can think about it any more. Lucky for me, my Physical Organic textbook works as a wonderful sleep aid.
