Dreaded Life Decisions

So, I TA'd my first labs today. It went well, better then I expected actually. I went early to get my bearings and figure out a course of action for the first lab (She TA's the lab before mine) . Her lab went relatively smoothly with a few minor glitches. Yay for learning from other people (sorry Nicole). But yeah, I had about 8 extra students in each of my lab sections, so they had to share computers. But, besides that I think I got a pretty good response and I wasn't too shy about talking to the class or anything.

I had another meeting with my thesis supervisor. Everything was going well, but then he noticed some wording in my ethics application which I guess insulted him a little bit. Oops. The question was "who will be running the research". I answered this question with what I thought was appropriate "Aimee C will be running the research with some assistance from W Hockley". He took offense to the "some" part. I will be changing this answer to "Aimee C under the supervision of W Hockley" which hopefully, he will find less insulting. He gave me "Sign Here" flags, which was his way of saying "If you don't want my help, fine! I will do as little as possible to help you"
So, I learnt from my mistake. Give people the credit they deserve and then some...

Anyways, I had my first official thesis class today. I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked in, but now I know it will be that dreaded class that you attend which is a constant reminder that you suck, and have no idea what you are doing with your future. The prof started out by introducing herself and allowing us to introduce ourselves and our thesis supervisors, and what research interest we had. This was fine. In the timeline of thesis I am ahead of the game. In fact, I have completed what is supposed to be done by about late October. This was good.

She went on to talk about the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), and applying to Grad school. This was the crappy part. Basically, the deadline to apply for funding for grad school is less than 2 weeks away. I need at least 3 letters of recommendation from profs that know me well. This might not be a problem. I sent a few emails and awaiting response. BUT the deadline for admission applications is December. This might not seem so bad except that by that time I would have had to have written and got results back from the GRE's.

For those of you that don't know (which I didn't) what the GRE is, it is basically the equivalent of writing the LSAT's if I wanted to be a lawyer or the MCAT's if I wanted to be a doctor. So, it takes a lot of studying and money to write them, and if you suck then you don't get considered. So, apparently I still have time if I Get On IT. I despise this kind of commitment because it means picking a program, and a supervisor, and a thesis topic, and a career.

Survivor is on tongiht. I will watch it by myself, because everyone else thinks it's dumb. I might follow up Survivor with a bit of self-imposed torture and pick a post-grad school. This is too much for week 1.