decidedlyodd

Last night, I got really into finishing my homework for Math 221. I got most of it done, although there’s still a little remaining. It’s been a while since I’ve buckled down and gotten some actual work done (probably not since the VR deadline). More importantly though, it’s been a really long time since I had that innate interest and spark in what I was doing–the learning, the figuring out of things, that good feeling of accomplishment when something works. For lack of better words, I was “in the zone”. The problem was challenging yet I felt compelled to keep working on it, while enjoying the whole process. All in all, I need more moments like that so that I can get back on track with a new research topic. I realize now that it’s not so much the actual work that I’ve found frustrating and demotivating. It’s the process of finding a topic and feeling directionless that saps my motivation and enjoyment of doing research. Of course this all just demonstrates the paramount importance of having a good dissertation topic…

After class this morning, I went over to the pool and did a cool 1000m but this time in a 25m lane instead of the usual 50m ones which were both crowded. Although I do swim slower in the 25m lanes (I take more breaks because there’s more opportunity to stop), I made an effort to do flip turns whenever possible. Even better is that those lanes are in the shallow end of the pool (3 feet on one side, 4 on the other), which helped me deal with my problem of not going too deep in the water when doing a turn. I got in a lot of practice and feel much more confident about them in general.

This evening, I went and had dinner with some of the gay men and lesbians I’ve met recently through various campus outlets. We ate at Jim’s Famous BBQ and the food was pretty good. The whole experience just impresses on me how important it is that I meet more GLBT people and more importantly make friends with some of them. Don’t worry though straight friends who read my blog, you’re not going anywhere in my life, at least not those of you who are cool (:

Unfortunately, meeting new people is easier said than done. The main student group on campus (glbtsa) seems from what I’ve experienced to be lead by a cliquey group of undergrads. At the first meeting of the semester there were something like 70 attendees, but that dropped to about 30 by the second meeting. Perhaps people are being scared off. There are some nice people there, but the whole organization seems to be too incestuous and sealed off from the potential larger community. Recently, I found out that glbtsa is only a few years old, which surprised me since UNC is a fairly liberal campus and what not. Well, it turns out there have been several preceding student groups dating back to the early 70s. Apparently, at least some of the forerunners self-destructed over the years from cliqueness and related internal drama.

While I can enjoy the company of undergrads, in general it’s harder for me to identify with many of them which limits friendship and relationship prospects somewhat. There’s a group called CAMP (Carolina Alternative Meetings of Professional and Graduate Students) for grad students, but it’s all but defunct. They do have get togethers at the Wine Bar on Fridays sometimes, which is nice but it can hardly be called a student organization. So I continue to get out there, but the options feel so very limited. Still, I feel like I’d be totally screwed for such social interaction if I was no longer in school and living in the Triangle (as opposed to the Bay Area). I have been successfully keeping a positive attitude about it all, although it is a hard and slow process.