'Tis the Season

... of quizzes in Dr. H's class, apparently. We had one Monday, we had two take home quizzes (both of which are completed and I am reasonably sure they are correct), and we have another one today. By this time, I have exhausted the topics that he might quiz on us and will now turn to studying random snippets from my notes and hope that I remember whatever it is he thinks is important enough to quiz us on. Next Monday, we have yet ANOTHER quiz. Darn these quizzes. LOL. On top of that, the grad students here are not-quite-required-but-still-expected to participate in a fundraiser next week that will require us staying after hours and passing out flyers. I wouldn't mind it too much except a) I hate fundraisers and b) I don't even live in this city, so after hours for me means I'll have another hour to drive home on top of however long I'm required to stay. Do I sound old and grumpy? Because I FEEL old and grumpy. Kinda like this old toy poodle (named Willie) my mom has, he growls whenever he's inconvenienced, and his definition of what "inconveniences" him is pretty broad. The older I get, the more I feel like Willie. LOL. I just keep telling myself it's for a good cause, and hoping that I can at least pretend the be enthusiastic the day of. At least the other grad students are cool and I don't mind hanging out with them. In other news, I still have that thesis proposal to work on. Doc and I have pretty much narrowed down where we are going to take our initial samples (we can always expand the base group if we want) and now I'm waiting on him to hear from one of his "buddies" so we can find out who owns the properties we're looking at. We have to get permission from the landowners first, obviously. On top of that, C (Doc's lab assistant) was asking me when I wanted to do a trial run of sampling--basically, going out and grabbing random dirt, and then running a whole bunch of tests on it. This is to show me what I'll be doing when I get the actual dirt I care about. Anyway, C wants me to tell him: exactly where I'll be sampling and how many samples per cite, exactly what perimeters I'll be looking at for my sample sites; and what over-arching hypothesis I will be testing. In case you're wondering, that looks really easy on paper but not so easy in practice, especially when it's something you've never done before. Regardless, I have an idea on what my hypothesis is going to be and I have some data that will help me hit the ground running with that, but seriously: that's a lot of stuff, and most of it I have no idea about. Guess that's what I'm here for, right? Right.