Oh, man, I'm thwarted

That title's courtesy of my chemistry professor. I haven't mentioned him yet, have I? How can I best describe him.... Ah, yes: Michael Gambon, playing Dumbledore. You know that little beard ring that Gambon wears when he's playing Dumbly? Well, cut off the beard there, make him bald-ish, and that's my chemistry professor. I mean, right down to the way he wears his half-moon glasses, and the bags under his eyes. He even has the same intonations, and moves about the room with the same energy. Incidentally, he's a nice guy but extremely intimidating, and there's really no choice but to call him "Professor."

My friend Emma pointed out that Snape taught Potions, not Dumbledore, but as far as the dispositions are concerned, I'd much rather have Dumbly.

So this is something like the beginning of week five (I've already lost track). The big deal is that the first exams in all my classes are this week. Now, it's been years since I've had science exams and, as I mostly took non-testable classes, years since I've had an actual sit-down comprehensive exam. I'm a little nervous, but I also have a whiteboard in front of me upon which I drew, earlier this evening, glucose, maltose, alpha 1,4 linkages, amylose, amylopectin, alpha 1,6 linkages, fatty acid, triglycerides (saturated and unsaturated), a phospolipid, a steroid, a theoretical and a natural amino acid, a description of peptide bonds, a ribose nucleotide with a purine, and a 2 prime deoxyribose with a pyrimidine. From memory. BE IMPRESSED. I'm not too nervous, but we haven't had any quizzes or exams yet in that biology class and so I have no idea what the testing style will be like. In Dumbledore's chemistry, we've had three quizzes already, so I'm not as concerned. Still, why does it always seem that tests fall in the same week, and sometimes even on the same day? Well, probably for the same reason that TV shows have ads at relatively the same times: Most shows are structured in the same teaser-act 1-act 2-act 3-etc model, so they take their breaks at roughly the same times. Classes, too, especially science and math classes, probably operate under similar structures, and so have major exams (if they're over about the same number of chapters, as these are) at relatively the same times.

Whew. A lot of qualifiers. And it doesn't really make me feel better, but there it is.

Apparently H1N1 was reported at my school. Since this is months after the big panic when everyone and their grandmother was reporting it in their backyards, I'm inclined to believe it. Sucks, though. I don't want to get sick, especially since I've been fighting some hybrid allergy-cold thing since Friday morning, and as much as I'd rather not even have this over the next couple of days, I'd like to fall to influenza even less.

I think I mentioned I'm doing some kind of weird tutor-teaching on the side? I met with the deans of the math and English departments last week, so that they could "assess my suitability" (my phrase). The math guy was nice; he ate sunflowers all through the interview, which basically boiled down to "Can you teach basic addition? Can you teach pre-calculus? Can you use a graphing calculator? Cool. Nice to meet you." The English dean, on the other hand, was a lot more verbose, and we actually got to talking for a while. I found out that she was 38 before she went back and got her Master's, and now she's a department head. Coming out of that meeting, I had a major, major ideological crisis that basically consisted of "Jesus, I just gave up a Master's, WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING." But then the more me parts of me came in and said, yeah, it's cool, but what did she do until she was 38? What did she do between the age of 38 and when she took her current position? See, I wanted to be a professional writer, no holds barred, for the payoff; but I want to be a doctor for the journey. Too Hallmarky? Maybe. Still, I like writing along this path a lot more than I did when I was an English major. I'm still proud of my degree, by the way.

I hung out with the group of gays last weekend, but ... ah, more of that later.