a figuring-out-what-do-with-your-life retreat

that was what i went on last weekend. i came back to the real world and decided i had no idea what i was doing in texas. this feeling was likely exacerbated by a few factors including, but not limited to, a drastic drop in temperature in the austin area, talking to a friend from hawaii, being generally under stress from work and not enjoying my three hours/day of commuting two days/week. a mentor of mine kindly threatened to track down every email i had ever sent her which expressed any frustration with what i had been studying in oceanography and the suggested i go to medical school. i'm not quite ready to give up on research though. i think i just have to find my niche. or at least that's what i keep telling myself. it would be quite nice though to not be in school this spring, work part time and help plan the ride to alaska the rest of the time...and maybe then i'd actually have time to go on a bike ride *gasp*

one of my labmates is also a triathlete. she came to grad school to study biomechanics because she thought it would be really cool because she was an athlete and despite all the warnings she got from people not to do it. i'm not sure i had as many warnings as she did but i can appreciate the comment. she's antsy to graduate asap now and is kind of losing interest in the school thing. i think i make things worse sometimes by thinking that i'm the only one who has no idea what i want to do. then i talk to a few people and realize that i'm in good company most of the time. while this doesn't solve the problem, it's nice to know other people don't know either.

to digress to the aforementioned cold weather comment, i have been wearing at least two shirts at any given point of the day for the last two days (at least one being long sleeved) and jeans. this feels weird. take today, for example, the sun was shining, but when you walked outside, it was rather brisk making one walk a little faster to class. and i walked into the kitchen the other day to find one of my roommates there sporting a polar fleece vest and wearing a wool hat. i laughed, but appreciate that i'm not the only one here that's cold.