Journaling: Advisory follow-up, decisions, etc.

Current Music: Silence
Current Mood: Lethargic

It's now a very lazy Saturday (slowly building up energy to fix that), but Thursday, as I mentioned, saw me trying to sort out some future options and just get a feel for where I stand. I met with Dr. Cole for about an hour, some of which was just going over things for vibrations class, but the rest was the advisory part.

I basically just started with telling him I'd never had an advisory meeting and wanted to talk to someone who might know where I'm coming from about where I go from here. I also briefly explained that I didn't enjoy my co-op position at all because it was tedious and dull. As it turns out, Dr. Cole did the same thing before he went to graduate school, and suggested that I look into grad schools. In addition, it was suggested that I get involved in undergraduate research, pick up a math or physics minor in my extra year, and just start getting things together for application later.

Since I've mostly always enjoyed my coursework, I don't mind the idea of pursuing more school, though I'm still a bit uncertain of what it is I'll do, or whether I'm cut out for this sort of thing. I'm officially decided on at least attempting to get into grad school. I'm thinking a math minor might be pretty feasible in the next year, but that much of it is still in the works. I would still have openings for some fun classes, and have one this summer, too, if I choose to do a fun class, rather than a more degree-related one. Either way, I need to take the GRE soon. The last subject exams before November close their registrations next week, so I need to sign up for one of them. I plan to take the physics exam, since the math is apparently ridiculously difficult, even for math majors. It's gonna take some serious studying, but I think I should be able to kick some ass on it if I work hard. I'm a bit scared, but a bit excited, too. I just don't know how I'm going to do everything - I need to build a breakfast-cooking machine for my mechatronics class over the next few months, while also tackling the most challenging regular coursework I've had to date.

In other news, I feel like I have semi-official hobbies now, which is odd for me. I've been playing a lot of Magic: the Gathering lately (yes, uber geeky, I know, but it's also quite fun), along with soccer and bowling. I'd like to fit in a bit more reading, since I haven't really done any non-textbook reading in the last few months, and not a lot of that, either. I'm still inefficient in a lot of ways; there's lots of wasted time, but I think I'm making some progress. I want to get back into reading the news in my free time, so I don't feel so out of touch with what's going on in the world, but it really is difficult sometimes to poke my head out of the academic bubble. Either way, life is pretty good. I have tons of things to do, lots of responsibilities, but have had a bit of a motivational slowdown in the last week. I think I just was worn out from the previous week, so we'll see if I get going again this week.

Update (2/23/09): I started doing the GRE registration this weekend and discovered my GPA is not only lower than I thought, but that I managed to destroy it in just one bad semester. 3.25 isn't likely to get me into any grad schools, so I really need to crank it up a couple notches in the next two semesters.