I was recently awarded a travel grant to (finally) pay for a trip I made for research purposes. The unfortunate part, however, is that travel grant is less of a lump sum dropped automatically into my bank account, and more of a fighting tooth and nail to even see a cent of it.

After granting me the award a month later than Research Services said they would, they linked me to an online pdf. This told me how to accept the award in Student Centre. After traversing Student Centre, it finally linked me to another pdf explaining the process of how to fill out a reimbursement form. After searching the university's website for a good half an hour for this reimbursement form, I find out that the said form does not even work. After trying four different browsers on both mac and pc platforms, I finally gave up.

It is such a pity that so much of education and the public sector is devoted to meaningless paper pushing which, most of the time, doesn't even accomplish the goal set out.

Just for my own personal sanity, I've decided to start getting up around 7:30-8:00. I've always been an early riser, and I feel much better when I get up on time rather than sleeping in too late.

The problem is that my supervisor is busy until July 25th, meaning I have no meeting with him about the reading course until after that. What's further, I've kind of hit a point where playing WoW by myself isn't therapeutic in dealing with the amount of time I spend thinking, but it's actually boring because of how little time I spend thinking.

I have wayyy too much free time, these days.

I gave up fried food and alcohol temporarily and lost five pounds in five days.

What the hell?

Okay, so I definitely gained about ten pounds this year from being in graduate school. Being constantly overtired and stressed out took a toll on how much I hit the gym, and the stress eating increased dramatically. If I had a bad friend this year (you know, the kind that's actually bad for you) it would be a bag of cheezies. The runner up was likely cheap beer.

So I'm lookin' a little bit bigger. My gut has gotten a bit third season Kirk, and regrettably, I don't have the corset he likely had.

Anyway, with all my funding and my lack of job, I have time to hit the gym on a regular basis and get back in gear. I'm living off of a steady diet of protein, vegetables, high fibre complex carbohydrates and water. I will be making an exception for my birthday (for which I have reserved my good friend Mr. Cheezies and a six pack of Steamwhistle), but other than that, I'm making the effort to lose this.

Anyway, that's all the new happening in my life. I'm trying to think of something fun and nerdy I could do to keep myself busy. Computer experts: Could I potentially install Ubuntu using Boot Camp on my Macbook?

Being a grad student and all, I've had to worry about how I'll fund stuff. That worry for next year has since passed. I won a substantial, some would say large award from the Department of National Defence to continue my research next year!

Not only that, but I've also won some internal awards, and I've been hired on as a full TA for next year. I mean, holy crap right?

Washington's been good. I've only really been here two days.

I know this sounds lame, but I feel really alone. I've been living with K, or with my friend's sort of awkward roommates for some time.

It's been a while since it's been just myself for so long.

I can't remember when I last posted, so I'll go into the last couple of weeks.

Got to Ottawa and stayed with a friend. He left a week after I got there, and K came to stay with me for the next week. It's been a fairly good time, I appreciate the place to stay and I especially appreciated K's company. The place is downtownish, which is to say, an hour walk from why I came here.

Which brings me to why I came here: LAC. The research element of this trip has been near disastrous, with 85% of the files I came here to see being restricted, and 5% being closed. This means that I will be taking another trip which, while financially impossible, will thankfully be funded by the university. Somehow. By means yet to be made clear. Hooray!

The non-research element of this trip has been a blast. I've toured museums, been to Question Period, seen Star Trek and consumed a lot of iced coffee. This past weekend I was in Waterloo, which was also an amazing time. Seeing people really made me happy.

Currently, I am sipping on yet another iced coffee on the patio of a coffee shop as I await my friend's roommate's return, such that I can get into the apartment and hang out there. In the future, I will be spending another two days in Ottawa, then I will be moving to Washington to do more research, where I hope the results will be more successful.

I won't lie, I'm burned out. Everything feels a bit like a fast-moving blur. While I'm looking forward to DC, I'm also looking forward to being home and taking a bit of a break from it all. I think I might take a few weeks off before finding a job, in hopes to feel a bit better.

Hi All,

I have amazing news.

Turns out I have an A- in Soviet so far!

I want to thank everyone I know for putting up with my moodiness over the past four months. I could not have done it without everyone I know. If I rock this paper and pull off the A-, that puts my total for this term at 3.8, and my cumulative class GPA at 3.85.

What does that mean? Potentially, funding. Hooray!

I am officially done classes! That is the good news.

The bad news? I now have a 6,000 word essay to pump out in a week. Once that's done by Monday, I have to read about 600 pages for a meeting with my supervisor the following day. After that, I have two days to go through four banker's boxes of documents to find the one or two sheets of paper pertinent to my thesis. That brings me to Friday, when I fly out to Ottawa, and start my primary research for my thesis.

More good news, however: Once I'm done that research, I can take a break from school and just focus on holding a job to pay for next year. Man, who thought I would ever look forward to holding a full-time job?

This term was tough, I won't lie. I worked myself to the bone last term, and as such, I've been completely disinterested in school for the past four months. Early on the term, I thought about quitting grad school. I'm almost through classes, though, and once I start my thesis I think I'll feel much better about school et al.

Hope everyone is doing well. Also: Playoffs start Wednesday! ROCK!

I was wrong. Getting into graduate school is a test of intelligence, but making it through is a test of perseverance. I know that sounds kind of jerk-ish, but it's so true.

Told my supervisor yesterday I was burned out and that I was now debating whether or not to do a PhD. He's kind of disappointed, but he was very understanding.

As for what I'll do after this degree, I'm not sure. All I can think about right now is making it through the next twelve days. Once I do that, then I'll have a couple of days before Ottawa to think about where I'm going.

Do I really want another six years of this?