1st Week of (2nd Year) Grad School

Hey Kitties! How is your PI treating you these days.
Today I caught my PI playing a little golf in the lab. Can you imagine a PI that cool. He had his ball and stick (I do not know anything about golf so...) and everything and was swinging, my you very gently, at the ball.

So my life has turned even more complicated because the semester has begun and because I am doing research at UCSF instead of UC Berkeley. I haven't been able to register because Berkeley somehow messed up my account so that I would be owing them $5,560.05.... Yeah I love the way they added that extra 5 cents, it is artistic really. For a whole 2 months they've had me call every department on Earth to see if it is that department I owe. Like if I have nothing to do.

In the mean time it is only the first day of classes and I got to lab at 3pm and will probrably be here sometime after 9pm.

I don't know what is going on with me but I've been having anxiety attacks. No really. My heart pumping like if I were in the middle of a 30 mile race, my body sweating, my head hurting like if I were about to get a migrane, my chest tightening. Carlos keeps telling me to go to the Doctor, but I hate going to the doctor and these attacks only happen every other day. Yes I do admit they only used to happen every 3 years. But whatever.
What may be the cause of these attacks, well it is definitely in part the fact that I have my first lab presentation next week, the fact that classes started and therefore I have NO idea how am I going to get any decent work done, and then there is this $5,560 mysterious debt.
Last week, in order to have my western blot complete and to be able to attend a GSI mandatory meeting I woke up at 4 AM. At 4:30 I drove to San Francisco and washed my membrane, placed it in primary antibody and then in the cold room. Then I split some cells, made sure everything was okay and went back home for breakfast and then drove to my GSI meeting. I met up with Maria and we had tons of fun making fun of all the speakers and reading primary papers. Sometime in the middle of the meeting I looked around and her and I were the only ones reading papers. We met some of Tania's friends. We had a little chit chat. The GSI meeting lasted until 4pm. By then I wanted to die. I went home thinking I could get some shut eye but I had to meet with a new 1st year student. I didn't get shut eye. I barely had something to eat.
By that time, everyone who saw me told me I looked tired. I freaked out the 1st year by telling her that I had woken up at 4am that day and then by telling her all the truth about our lovely little academic department. All the nitty gritty details. I have to admit that some where in the middle of me telling the 1st year everything and teaching her how things work at Berkeley. In the middle of that I smiled inside. Not because I was killing Berkeley but because I was preventing her from feeling as lost and confused and misplaced as I felt last year. Carlos complimented me for going the extra mile and going to re-assure the new student. That felt preatty good too. I went home and I don't remember what I did, but it wasn't sleep.

How can I be feeling so anxious and yet so excited all at the same time? I am sure if they would try this experiment (in-vivo graduate student role) on a monkey the monkey's hair would fry and it will turn into a zombie? Did you guys get that?

It is a well known fact that the later in the day you work, the more tired you are, the worse you'll fuck up your experiments? Can I defy the law of fucked up experiments?
Stay tuned......