You make this easier

Awesome day

....for a number of reasons. First of all, I was able to finish my forecasting assignment that I spent nearly 5 hours on yesterday not knowing if I'd be able to finish it on time and I did. Second because Joel is here sticking this crap out with me that I haven't had to do it alone. My friend Sasa has helped me a lot on this assignment so I'm going to do a drawing for him.

I did a lot of drawing today. The drawing of my aunt Traci is going really well and because it looks so good I've been trying to squeeze in drawing time whenever possible. School has been super demanding because we're coming close to the end-- only this week, next week and "finals week" (I have one final in econ). The light at the end of the tunnel for this incredibly challenging quarter (even with 10 credits) is finally near which feels incredible. 

I met my mom in Yakima today and we had lunch. She's convinced I have pink eye and made an appointment for me at the optometrist tomorrow. I didn't think it looked that bad and that it would go away on it's own but I guess not. I'm planning on getting some new glasses tomorrow too..

Here's a picture of Joel sleeping on my couch.

It's almost 2 am. I'm going to be completely useless tomorrow unless I go to bed.

peace. 

I can't compete with Hawaii

I can't say "I HATE Hawaii", because hello, it's f*cking gorgeous there.

Unfortunately it feels like a planet away from the Tri-cities and that's where Joel is moving in the next month.

Joel is amazing. The main reason I haven't been writing as much was the extreme stress and depression I was dealing with at the beginning of this month thinking nothing in my life was ever going to change. I felt like there was nothing to look forward to. I didn't go out and have fun for weeks before Joel and I met. I generally spent most friday and saturday nights drawing, playing guitar and drinking beer. I was so bored. 

Then all of a sudden this f*cking incredible guy comes into my life who really likes me. Like he tells me all the time how beautiful and perfect I look, how impressed he is by my intelligence and talent, he likes my cooking...(lol). We like watching the exact same kinds of TV shows-- fucked up people and adult cartoons like Family Guy and King of the Hill. He's been watching King of the Hill for years and we just sit and quote shows and laugh our asses off. 

We've been working our asses off at forecasting and economics the past couple weeks and it's been extremely stressful but just being together makes it fun. It seems like we have fun doing anything and don't get sick of eachother at all. He's cocky as hell and thinks he's hot and knows and says that I'm hot(unlike Terry who I originally was attracted to for a lot of the same qualities). 

He makes me feel happy, special and worthy. He didn't grow up with a mom and hasn't lived at home since he was 16 so he's always so appreciative when I cook awesome food for him. He takes care of himself and works out. He's also very humble and non-judgmental. Like the other night we went over to Kat's house and he was playing around with her autistic son Jet and swinging him around and I've never seen him so happy. 

He's 27 so I know he's thinking about the next stages in his life. He would be an amazing father and he's going to be so handsome for manymanymany more years.... It's like we both think the other one's perfect and he's seen me looking like shit in the morning. 

I'm just not used to these kind of emotions. Part of me is loving everything about this but a huge part of me is also very sad because I know it's not going to last. You know he's going to move to Hawaii with Matt this summer and I'll probably never see or hear from him again. I mean yeah we might kid eachother by texting every so often or send pictures like me and Jack did when he moved up to Ellensburg but I know how that shit works. 

He's going to be living in fucking paradise surrounded by gorgeous, tan women and I'm going to be stuck in the tri cities again trying to find some stupid job and driving back and forth and back and forth and smoking shitty weed. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of my life there. In a lot of ways I'm sick of my life here but when I met Joel I've finally felt that satisfaction that I've been longing for these past, what, five years of complete bullshit and garbage from the men I thought I "liked"? 

I was definitely happier alone than with complete morons, that is obvious. But unfortunately now I've realized that I feel happier with Joel then alone. And knowing he's going to be gone in less than a month is quite painful in and of itself but I'm just going to enjoy this while it lasts

peace. 

A lot has gone down these past 8 days. I've been so busy I haven't had time to write but I have some interesting news.

First off, let me say that something in R clicked for me. After reviewing the chapter the previous day I was finally able to make progress plotting the datasets on my own. Without Michael spoonfeeding me the answers I was able to catch on to the program pretty quickly, he did me a huge favor cutting me off like that.

Anyway recap to the night of the 8th. I had been texting Ryan A. about how I needed people to work with in forecasting and he said his buddy Matt was in there and sent me his phone number. The next day in Carbaugh's class I introduced myself to Matt C. and his best friend who I'd noticed he's always with, Joel. Joel asked for my number and he said he would text me later when we planned to meet up.

Here's a picture of Matt that was taken this weekend at Starlight. I was there

We all met up around 7' and soon realized Joel and I would be the ones doing the assignment while Matt helped us do research for the 406 papers. Ryan A. was also studying with us and Colby showed up a little later. That night I was on FIRE getting that homework done. I was so relieved that it was finally making sense and I was actually able to help Joel get it too. 

That night we hung out at Matt's house and we smoked and joked around, bounced around questions to get to know them and visa-versa... Matt was an only child and Joel was the youngest of 6. Joel's parents seem a little older because he started living practically independently when he was 16. He dropped out of highschool because he was bored with it and decided to get his GED instead-- apparently *knowing* he wanted to go to college already all along which I think is crazy. I mean to drop out of school and travel around until he was 26 is basically what he did. 

This is Joel in Maui.  He's into surfing and has lived there for weeks at a time before. 

We just clicked really quickly on a lot of our interests. He and I like the same kinds of TV shows exactly-- cartoons and messed up people. We both like going out and dancing. Fitness is a big part of his life like it is mine and he works out almost every day. He plays the drums. 

So yeah this past week we've been spending a lot of time together and it's been fun.. Even if most of it was spent in the library on the mass amount of work and studying required of me when it's this close to the end. The time that we have spent at my house and out this weekend was great too. 

I'm trying to not let myself get too involved emotionally. Joel is graduating in 40 days and moving to Hawaii so it's sort of mutually understood and unspoken that this is temporary. 

peace. 

Tomorrow is the start of a very important week.

Tomorrow is the start of a very important week. 

One where I plan on working very hard and diligently. Do everything I can to get my forecasting assignment done smoothly and still be ready for my econ test on Friday. I'm so lucky, Carbaugh is having us turn in the rough drafts for our paper on Monday so I'll have this week to work on it bit by bit and then really pull it together this weekend. 

I need to stay out of my apartment as much as possible and try to work at the library or in Shaw. I find that when I'm at home feeling frustrated and alone I start getting really panicky. This weekend I did spend about three hours total studying forecasting so I wasn't feeling *too* nervous about taking a whack at the homework that's due Tuesday. It was going fine until for some stupid reason when I'd restarted the program the "fpp" package was giving me an error when I tried to require it and the dataset that I needed seemed to have disappeared. 

So I was really angry about my bad luck tonight. I messaged Wassell about what happened and also mentioned to him how much I'm struggling with the program and when/where the tutor is available. I'm hoping he gets back to me soon. There's a couple guys in my forecasting class that seem really cool that are also in my econ 406 class that I'm hoping to maybe get together with tomorrow. 

Michael is done, I successfully bothered him enough lately to get help with this class during my time of desperation when I was spending all of my time trying to understand FIN370. I annoyed him and I don't blame him. Now here I am, six weeks later. Even after spending hours and hours trying to keep up in finance I couldn't hack it, still failed the test, and have felt like a sitting duck since day 1 in forecasting. 

There's still time to get this though. I've been working so hard to review and understand the old material to get caught up. It's just hard when I don't have a laptop to bring to class to work along with the lecture (making my notes pretty useless on most days). 

This week I'm going to try to have really good habits. I'm going to go to sleep earlier, wake up earlier to have more time to study (...and practice guitar when I'm not studying), eat healthier (no more frozen dinners!!) and take my medication at the same time every day. I don't have time to take naps, it zaps my entire day and makes me feel more stressed out later. I just need to remember to start making lunch as soon as I get back from Carbaugh's and take caffeine right after. 

This weekend was kind of fun because I hung out with my friend John yesterday and I had dinner with him and his friends. They're all really nice, easy to get along with people. I don't feel like I'm being judged or that they will suddenly decide they hate me, ha ha ha. I'm thinking Fall quarter I'm going to live in the dorms near them. John really likes art, pokemon and food so we always have a good time together ha ha ha. 

peace. 

Somewhat of a setback

Evening.

Yesterday was not a fun day. It shook me really hard and I'm still having a difficult time forgiving myself for what happened even if I tried as hard as I could.

I had to withdraw from finance again to avoid a failing grade because I completely bombed my test on Monday. After spending hours drilling the problems online and thinking I had a decent grasp on the material. Come to find out I didn't comprehensively what so ever. The test questions don't go in order from easiest to most difficult, the concepts are mixed up and if you don't know the appropriate steps and formulas to get your answer your pretty much f*cked.

Soo, I'm going to be taking it with Tenerelli in the Fall. He's the one finance professor that apparently goes slow enough or has some other method that helps get people through it. I f*cking hate how hard this class is for me and that even after all the work I did I was somehow still completely oblivious to my own ignorance.

I took it out really hard on myself last night. Not living up to my own standards makes me feel psychotic and almost suicidal because I feel like self improvement is the only thing that I live for at this point. Failure is my biggest nightmare.

Lately I've been watching any documentaries
I can find about Russian ballet. 

But only with tribulations in life do you discover your inner strength. I am not going to flunk out of college and I will not allow this class to keep me from getting my degree. I'm going to now use this quarter as an opportunity to better understand R and my forecasting class and really be able to put some effort into my paper for my capstone course. Taking finance is so draining on my time and psyche because I'm constantly working on homework and constantly feeling nervous about homework being due that I only half understand the procedures for. Then when I actually do the homework my anxiety is super high because if you make one tiny rounding or decimal error in the intermediate steps whole problem is wrong and it's EXTREMELY frustrating.


I think I had mentioned to you guys that I had asked for Kyle's number to help me study for the test on Sunday and he said he'd be totally down on Friday. I did not text him at all during the weekend, I told myself I wouldn't talk to him until I actually *did* need his help so I didn't make it seem like I got his number to get to know him or anything (lol I've learned that guys generally don't like making conversation via text and things can be so easily misread so why even risk it). But I did text him Sunday when I needed help and didn't get a response which kind of sucked my motivation somewhat.

This morning he passed me on the way to Carbaugh's class and asked me how I did. Kind of sucked having to say that I failed. I really wish I could have said "Oh I stressed out for nothing!! I studied my ass off on Sunday and probably did fine!..." like I've said for practically every one of my other tests I've taken in college but instead I had to say, "Pretty terrible. I failed."

It sucked so bad. And having this happen means that I'll be taking one online class for my business minor this Summer to make up for the one I won't be doing in the fall. If I don't get this internship with enterprise I'm going to be moving back to the tri cities again in a month and a half. That for me is hard to believe as well and makes me determined to work as hard as I can until that point.

That's all for now.

peace. 

What a freakin night, the 6 hour assignment of doom.

Forecasting is.... incredibly challenging. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have Michael's help. He saved my ass yet again on the homework.

I'll back up. As you guys know I've been working on this assignment little by little since Monday as well as try to keep up on my finance. I got about 3/4 of the homework done last night and thought I'd have no problem finishing it today. Unfortunately my forecasting homework took me 6 hours, two of which were spent correcting my code for the first problem. Like every other time I try to do anything in R, I hit a wall and wonder what the hell I should do.

This morning I woke up early to meet with Wassell and get some help on the code but he wasn't in his office when I got there.

Colby met me upstairs in the library to work on the assignment around 7:30. He had made plans with Rylan and this other guy who's got a really good grasp of the material to work on the material as well but they were MIA. It was about the point that Colby got caught up to me that I realized we were in the exact same boat and needed help. I started calling people I knew from the class and nobody picked up, except Michael G. (and you can just imagine me thinking, THANK. GOD......) He told us that he and Jessie were actually working on the assignment in Shaw and we could meet them there. Yes! Salvation! 

So here we all are in the Shaw computer lab around 8:20 and it closes at 10'. Michael pretty much instructed us step by step how to do it on an overhead and I followed along. This program is so painfully confusing to me, I'm trying to grasp how all of this syntax works the best that I can but there's so much more to it. I have a decent understanding of statistical models but choosing the right ones and making good inferences on them is an art. One that is not easily attained in 5 weeks or however long I've been in this quarter....

Wow it's getting really late.... The GOOD news is the assignment is now done (Michael and Colby actually came over after we got booted from the lab at 10 and worked for another 2 hours on it). Michael has a ton of people bugging him all the time about helping him with R so he's going to start having weekly R sessions to go through the homework.

Michael's got such an obnoxiously huge ego from all of this. I can see why, he's the center of a lot of positive attention for being so good at this and starting graduate school next year. That's fine, I'm proud of him. I'm just tired of hearing how great he is because I have to hear about it every day. He knows that he's smarter than everyone else, and that he's helping me survive this class, and thus pretty much has a free pass to say whatever he wants and be as condescending as humanly possible.

I've been listening to so much Pantera lately.

At least tomorrow's Friday. Another week I've survived. Next week is the test week for block 2, I've got my finance test on Monday that I'll be studying for a lot this weekend and Carbaugh's test on Wednesday which I will also be studying for ahead of time because I've got the next horrible forecasting assignment due Wednesday as well.

There's also one big assignment on the backburner which is my Econ 406 persuasive paper about why I believe Japan should continue to raise taxes and cut spending.

It will never be harder than this in my life. I just have to keep pushing forward. I have no choice, the time is going to go by anyway and I can't let fear keep me from doing what needs to be accomplished.


peace.