Surprising growth.

I shouldn't be content.

I am sitting above the terrace at the Wilkinson Center, slowly eating an English muffin with egg and cheese and mulling over all the things I have yet to do.
Three a.m. came all too early last night, and waking up just before my eight-o-clock chemistry class followed all too quickly. My hair, though, actually looks decent, and I'm in a semi-professional outfit (dark jeans, collared shirt, black dress coat) that is working pretty well for the five minutes I spent getting ready. My skin is clear, my hair is clean, my eyes are red and I am eating breakfast for probably the second time this semester. It's a miracle, and though all the work I have yet to do has not been erased, I've stuffed it in a sulcus out of sight to deal with when I feel like it, because right now, I'm okay just sitting here.

This morning was my last chemistry lecture, and after class, I went up to thank the professor that knows me pretty well by now. He said he hoped to see me in his biochemistry class junior year, and I told him to count on it. I'll be there. Not only is biochemistry fascinating (I might consider it as a major were it not for the focus on quantitative analysis--I prefer biology to chemistry), my teacher is certifiably brilliant, and his class and my writing class are the only two I think I'll miss.

My voice is still tired from last night. I spent two straight hours explicating plant and animal metabolism on the basement white board for half of my biology class. Glycolysis, decarboxylation of pyruvate, Krebs Cycle, electron transport chain, chemiosmotic phosphorylation, light reactions, photophosphorylation, Calvin Cycle...yeah. There's a lot of material, and trying to cover it all comprehensively and in-depth at 11:45 pm sapped my energy, but it was stimulating, all the same. If I can't be intellectually stimulated in biology class, I've made do by holding review sessions and simply answering questions--thanks to the questions I've been asked and to my lab work, my critical thinking skills have skyrocketed, as has my ability to think on my feet. I've had to hold my own at lab meetings where I've been grilled on specific protocol details I'm called upon to not only remember but analyze at the drop of a hat. I've defended and designed my experiments and learned to account for each variable I alter (or don't), and I've had to respond intelligently and concisely when asked questions in lab--I have to know what I have, what I need, how long things take, whether or not I can fit a project into my schedule under someone else's deadline--thinking back, I've really grown a lot, and I'm grateful for the opportunity.

I'm going to compose my application essays for the Jerusalem Center now. Wish me luck.