11/18/09

Gotta love it...

I just handed in my genetics lab report, a real-world style primary source document detailing the semester in which we isolated, cloned, anaylzed and sequenced DNA from spinach. This morning I hammered all four heats of a classic sprint time trial with the ski team, and actually stacked myself in with the big guys. Yesterday I turned in my term paper for physiology, a well-researched and thoroughly fascinating treatise about thermoregulation and hypothermia. Tomorrow morning I'll be completing an essay exam for that same class, covering material about the nuts and bolts of respiration, circulation, ion balance, nitrogen management digestion and nutrition. Friday I'll be heading to Hatchers Pass with the team for a weekend training camp up on the good snow, though I do have to swing back into town Friday afternoon for a lab session. Between two-a-day workouts this weekend at Hatchers, I'll be studying for my organic chemistry exam on Monday. Then it'll be thanksgiving, thank goodness.

I'm finding out that the only possible way for me to cope with this schedule is to fully embrace it as the insanity that it sometimes is. I watched a TED talk by a brit named Ben about skiing solo to the geographic North Pole. Dude has some willpower. Because the sea-ice that covers the Arctic Ocean is always drifting, he often floated backwards while he slept, only to ski for many hours the next day to creep a couple miles north of his previous position. On his worst day he skied due north, pulling two gigantic sleds with all of his necessary gear, into a headwind for 7 or so hours, only to end up two and a half miles further south of where he started due to the drifting ice. And he was laughing about it. What a guy...

I'm pretty sure that's probably what it takes to surmount an insurmountable obstacle. Realize just how outrageously impossible it really is, laugh about it, then do it...with a smile.

...gotta love it    :-D

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow, hang in there. Looking forward to do some cooking and baking for you. Love, Mom

Pablo said...

Wow, sounds a lot like my work week last week. Standing out in the pouring down slush in soaked carharts trying not to focus on how cold I was. It was so absurd I just had to laugh about it.