Blogs : Eric Simmons

Do they want me to graduate?

Yeah, I'm behind once again on updating my journal, and I would like to take the opportunity to blame it squarely on my advisor. I went to my advisor on Monday and received a bit of good news, and a trashcan full of bad. The good news is, that instead of the nine hours I thought I have, I have just 3 hours left and my senior thesis. The bad news, is that my advisor mentioned nothing of the deadline of the senior thesis proposal, which was due LAST WEEK. So now, I spend about 4 hours a day digging through articles about Beowulf, not for the actual paper, but for the proposal. There is a chance the proposal could be denied, which would mean that I would have to take a full load next semester to run track and then do my thesis in the summer, delaying my graduation. My advice to those who have to do a senior thesis, please make the effort to find out as much about it as you can way before you undertake the journey, you'll do all the much better for it.

I've been so wrapped up in that senior thesis nonsense that I forgot I ran track and missed the entire last week of practice. Nah, I'm kidding, but I being mentally drained was not good for practice. On Monday, we had 3 400s in 59, but only with 3 mins rest. We went 58, 57, 55, and then had to get scraped off ofthe track. On Wednesday, we had a 4x4 time trial. It was the old relay team minus one of us versus all the new kids. Lawrence split 51 to lead off, which is a 2 second improvement over his time during the time trial last year. Our second leg split infinity, so I'm not going to go into specifics about that. When Ahmad got the stick, we were 45 meters behind the second team, and he ran 49.5 to run everyone else down. With the race pretty much decided when the baton was handed to me, I cruised a 49.6 for the victory. Deserving of a shoutout is our freshman Chris, who split 50. at lead off for the second team. After the 4x4, we got 20 mins to recover and had to run a 200. I went 22.2 and came in "first". I say "first" cause it's not really a race as no one wants to blow a hamstring in November. I didn't really attack the curve to hard because that very curve has been the site of some moments that led to poor finishes for my season. There is this little red box in the curve and it seems like everytime I get to it I pull up. I think over the weekend I'm gonna break into the track and set it on fire, then maybe I'll be able to finish a season. Today, we did 3x150 with 3 mins rest again. I went 17.03, 17.18, and 16.8. The whole time, that red box was talking to me, haha.

Yeah, it was a pretty uneventful week, and it's going to be a pretty uneventful weekend. I have a stack of books related to Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon myths and traditions that needs to be taken care of. I bet none of you out there have a weekend as promising as mine.