Grad School Lessons, Take 2

As I finish up the winter quarter at Oregon State University, I've been able to pause an look back on the things that I've learned over the last 3 months.

• Sometimes you have to throw out style points and just grind through it.  Because I've already blagged twice about structural dynamics, I won't go into too much detail.  Suffice it to say that it wasn't pretty, but I managed to get through it by little more than pure tenacity.  And I'd even say that I learned a thing or two in the process.
• Only trust people to do your work as far as you can throw them.  This term, I had one class for which the homework was too be done in pairs.  My partner was a not-too-bright structural major (see previous post) who was in his last term and had already mostly moved to Portland.  Needless to say, I didn't trust him too much with the workload.  I let him spin his wheels on certain parts of the assignments, but in the end, I fixed everything that he did wrong and made sure that it was all up to my standards before turning it in.
• You'll probably adjust to your surroundings, eventually.  I already felt pretty comfortable at Oregon State when I walked through the doors, but it still took some adjustment from life at home and at BYU.  After six months, Corvallis pretty much feels like home (minus the spatially convenient Wal-Mart) and I've even gotten used to smell of coffee that penetrates the entire OSU campus.
• Sometimes, self motivation is hard to find.  Before I started grad school, I read most of the archive of Ph.D. comics and chronicled the pronounced theme of procrastination and not working all that urgently on research.  When you've got over a year (or several if you're a Ph.D. candidate,) to complete your research, there's a tendency in most people to put it off and read the College Football Nation blog on ESPN instead.  I'll finish the rest of this point later...
• Calling in sick isn't always an option.  I was sick for like the last quarter of this quarter (a sixteenth, if you will).  It wasn't anything out of the ordinary; just a common cold and/or upper respiratory infection.  However, it was quite miserable.  My throat burned and I was tired all the time as my immune system tried valiantly to stave off the illness. Then it somehow managed to skip right past my sinuses and go straight to my ears, causing swelling and mucus buildup that left me all but deaf for the last 2 weeks.  In a 10-week quarter, it's not possible to just take a week or two off.  I just had to suck it up, take lots of cough syrup, and ask people to speak up so that I could hear them.

Overall, this term wasn't too bad.  My first grade has even been posted; I got an A in my advisor's class.  Spring term holds Earth Structures (Seepage and Consolidation), Earth Retention, and Bridge Design, but I'm not going to think about that too much until after Spring break.