Nerd Alert

Friday night, September 30th.  At 7:00 pm I decided it was too pathetic to order food to my room (my new building has room service) so I ventured down to the restaurant on the main floor.  In true grad school fashion I was accompanied by five colors of highlighters, one black pen, one blue pen, and hundreds of pages soon to be littered with my improved "critical thinking" skills.  I had the choice of, well, every table in the room except for one that was already occupied by a Thai version of Steve Erkell who was clipping his fingernails, with fingernail clippers, letting dirty nail shrapnel land on the clean white floor all around him.  I gagged a little bit, considered telling the owner that this is not  acceptable in a restaurant, but instead tried to find a table far away from that dreaded "clip" noise.   I ordered the one thing I know I love on the menu, feeling like I didn't have the patience to deal with a surprise meal showing up in front of me.   I finished my food quicker than usual because to be honest, I was so grossed out I was near dry heaving by the time my food got there.  By 7:35 I was back in my room with an exhaustive amount of studying looming over my head and a big skype meeting with my independent study adviser at 9:30 pm.  I knew I was going to be busy this year, but I didn't anticipate spending my Friday nights having skype conversations about breast feeding practices in rural Thailand with an adviser calling me from a WHO field assignment in India.   Feeling antsy and overwhelmed, I stood up quickly from my desk chair and determined that if I am doomed to be red wine-less for the duration of this graduate program I at least deserve an ice cream cone.   On my way to 7-11 I ran into a classmate crossing the parking lot with her husband.  Both of them were accessorized with incredible smiles and I could feel myself wanting to run.   I chatted with them for a quick second, squeezed out a painful smile, and felt the pangs of loneliness creep up on me so intensely that I felt I could lose consciousness.  I took a deep breath, found my way through the literal and figurative dark cloud that seemed to be swallowing me whole,  entered 7-11 and got an ice cream cone, an ice tea, and an ice coffee and walked back to my apartment feeling just a tiny bit better.