24 October 2006

Sickness and Regret

Those are two worst things a man can experience, with regret being several orders of magnitude worse. So what's happening today? Both. I'm sick. I woke up this morning with the most horrible of sore throats, almost like the maelstrom in my head creeped down some. I woke up and just sat there, cycling through periods of alertness and stupor.

When this cycle finally broke, it was 9:15 and I was 15 minutes late to TKD. I showed up in TKD extremely under dressed and requested to sit out, only to 'summarize' my observations of the class. It was calming, but my throat still hurt.

After that, I had a physics tutoring session, which took me about 15 minutes, since he only had 8 questions and pretty much knew the subject material. I played piano for a bit, with some commie Chinese girl breathing over my shoulder and repeatedly asking me to play Pathetique. "Lunch" consisted of a pretentious yogurt drink and medium-size bottle of orange juice*.

I pretty much half-dozed through an MRI lecture, something I made up for during Drop-In Tutoring, since no one showed up (test just passed recently or something?). 3PM.

After scanning some images and getting more and more depressed that I hadn't done any significant work this weekend, nor did I get much done Monday (beginnings of the sickness), I went to tutor for another 3 hours again.

My precal tutee was, in one word, awesome. It's so pleasing to teach someone who wants to learn, learns, and applies it well. Not only did she apply it well, she also was happy that she understood, which often translates into wanting to know more (where I tangent off into theory and sometimes physics - with everyone....). I'm only saying this because my next tutee was, let's say... far from perfect.

Arriving 20 minutes late (I could have left at 15...), she showed little interest in learning, with her rhetoric peppered with pagan language. I'd ask a question and she'd respond with "How the hell should I know?". Also, I tend to get very irritated when people try to eat during my session. Once, a tutee asked me if it was ok to take a bite or two and yes, that's perfectly fine. As a person that seldom eats (i.e. always hungry), I can absolutely understand. This girl chomped on her Skittles and talked at the same time. The second thing that absolutely irritated me was her (very) obvious lack of respect for the subject. She treated it like I would treat a business course. It's organic chemistry, the bane of most premeds, the least you could do is bow down before its awesomeness if you can't conquer it. Don't hate on it like some idiot.

I was angry and felt like crying, namely because it was the first time I've come across a tutee that 1) didn't care about the subject, 2) made my tutoring session extremely difficult and 3) disrespected me. The last point is not as important, but at least don't denounce my carefully crafted examples as 'shit'.

I went to ECE labs after this and felt the rain of regret get heavier and heavier, until Kevin came over and we had dinner at Subway. So this post begs the question- Why have I (relatively) detailed my day? After dinner, we quickly put together a restoration plan with the following priorities:

1) Resume normal or near-normal levels of productivity, and
2) Force into remission this illness by holistic measures until proper drugs can be administered.

What do these tactics consist of**?

1) Water balance - abnormally high intake of water for flushing effect.
2) Chloraseptic - every 2-3 hours, below normal dose, keep throat numb until the pain subsides.
3) Adequate food intake - this will be hard.
4) C - Orange juice until the ailment disappears.

It's 2:05am, I have 5/6th of my Classical homework done, radbio lectures caught up and ready to sleep (and meet a professor tomorrow --> beginning of some other conscious tactics, well planned out by Academics).

*: Subconscious beginning of restoration tactics.
**: Effective after dinner.

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