rrrrar.

Elise said (by email, when she got home from the lab at 3am--which is normal, according to Phill) she'd call me today, but I have no idea when.. rar. I really would like to hear from her again. And see her, since I'm going to be out of town as soon as my 2 exams tomorrow are finished, through Sunday evening, with another exam Monday afternoon.
And I still have those two reports to finish, a meeting right after dinner tonight, and then a study session after that..

What the people say..

Occasionally my house has what we call a "knocker session", wherein for each guy in the house, everyone else has a chance to say what they will--good bad neutral--about the person, and the person can't respond. It's a way to get out the good or bad feelings that otherwise would go unsaid.

A lot of what people had to say I already knew, or appreciated--one guy says he always comes away from talking with me with a smile, a couple more like how my door is always open (literally and figuratively).. And one liked how one day he came for help outside his academic field, and I kinda dropped whatever I was doing, pulled out a few books, and helped him out :)

But what hit home was what people had to say about what they saw in my priorities. I'm not around enough, one said--even when I'm physically present, I might be holed up at my computer, or somehow out of it. Another said he perceived a decrease in the priority I put on academics since he's known me--I'm not sure how accurate that is in general terms, since my grades have been pretty good semester to semester (worst gpa was a 2.86, best a 3.53)--but I fear he's right. (He also said he saw a period where I cared less about my appearance, and seemed generally apathetic--and he thought that might be indicative of some sort of loss of confidence; he did say, though, that he thought that might've been around when I broke up with Kristy--which would put that over 14mo ago, so I don't know..) And another said he didn't think I was living up to my potential. Academically, I know I can do the work, but I put it off--and put it off, and put it off, and now I have two reports to finish, one of which is over a month overdue, another a week overdue; I don't care about the content past sufficient to get a good grade.. I have one class that in which I'm quite interested, but not understanding terribly well--and I know it, and I'd like to learn it better, but I haven't gone out of my way to do so. I'll spend hours reading LiveJournals, reading mail, reading mailing lists, and IMing people, knowing I have work to do and yet not accomplishing any of it. The other day it was humourous, but now.. I'm thinking it might really be a problem. And one I should be able to fix without too much difficulty, but yet it hasn't happened. And I really hope that my grades this semester didn't suffer too much because of my lack of diligence.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not depressed, but I'm concerned on my own behalf--and it took the words of a few other people to realize how far I might have slid. Hmm....