iced latte with skim milk and sugar (150)
sandwich (500)
salad + vinegar (50)
soup (200)
apple (100)
tea (100)

total calories: 1100 (still too high)

ways to cut further:
Don't buy food from the student center! It's too high in calories and too expensive.
Only eat food that I have back in my dorm. Pack apples and tea + sweetener for lunch (150 calories, instead of 100).
Skip breakfast. Eat light dinner.

Tomorrow's eating plan:
2 chopped apples (200)
2 Wasa crackers (70)
Soup (200)
Salad (50)
Tea (0)
Total: 520

I'll do my best.

Breakfast:
large chai latte: 200 cal?
chocolate scone: 500 cal?

Lunch:
soup: 200 cal
tea (+milk): 80 cal

Dinner:
tea: 80 cal

Total: 1160 cal

I finished my last final today. I did quite well on all of them, I'm happy to say, and will be headed home sometime in the afternoon (tomorrow).

red bull shots

I love that feeling after you drink a bunch of caffeine in very little time, and the effects hit you like a wall. I actually like the slight caffeine headache and the visual blur- its like the whole world gets its volume turned down, and my mind gets dragged along these huge arrows that point to what I need to be doing, screaming that it needs to get back to work.

Here, work=physics. I WILL do better on this 8.012 final than I did on the midterm. This means +87%, but if I can get into that hyperfocus state that lets me do amazing stuff like memorize 400 pages of a history textbook in a few hours, I think I'll be set. I wish I could focus like that all the time, but whenever I hyperfocus I feel like I'm on an adrenaline high for at least a week, and I can't eat for at least that long. So I suppose that would be bad.

"Sonnet" by Neil Gaiman

I don't think that I've been in love as such,
Although I liked a few folk pretty well.
Love must be vaster than my smiles or touch,
For brave men died and empires rose and fell
For love: girls followed boys to foreign lands
And men have followed women into Hell.

In plays and poems someone understands
There's something makes us more than blood and bone
And more than biological demands...
For me, love's like the wind, unseen, unknown.
I see the trees are bending where it's been,
I know that it leaves wreckage where it's blown.
I really don't know what "I love you" means.
I think it means "Don't leave me here alone."

food

Clif bar: 250
Rice soup: 260
Jello: 50 cal

total: 560 cal

Hell yes.

out chasing dreams

I was lying in bed last night thinking about the future- not surprising, as I tend to be a worrier. When I graduate from college, what will I be? An engineer, a doctor, a trader, a scientist? I've never lived life outside of a system of set rules and evaluations. School, as troubling as it is, is a sheltered environment. There is a specified track you can take, and success is simply a matter of diligence and a reasonable amount of intelligence. "Winning" at this system is quite easy to define as well- just good grades and behavior.

What will I do when I leave the system and every choice in the world is open to me? Do I settle for a comfortable life in the suburbs, a husband and kids, working to fill my house will trinkets and all the status symbols of the well off? That's what's expected of me, at the very least: stability, wealth, and a family, and I have no idea if I truly want any of it.

I admire the students here who are brave enough to be unconventional and dye their hair crazy colors, dress the way the want and build and study for the sheer joy of it. They're free, and I know that when they graduate the world will be theirs, and they won't have anything to be afraid of. I'm afraid, more than anything, of pointlessness. I don't want to travel the world pointlessly, I don't want a pointless job that just rakes in cash, I don't want to spend my life creating a list of achievements. I have no idea what will make me happy. When I graduate college, I'll still be myself: J.Y., the quiet one, the shy one, desperate for approval of some sort, and I will be unhappy.

I have four years to change myself. I have to let go of the desire to please others, which consumes most of my life at this point. And I need to learn what it feels like to be happy. I don't want to give up.