Today was a strange strange day. I consciously decided to stop eating junk food and bingeing. Instead, I'm eating a bunch of small healthy meals, not really trying to diet so much as to avoid all that sugar and caffeine. I like the food. It is good. I feel so much more freedom now that I let myself eat the things that I want when I want to eat them. I've also been trying to push myself to study. I worked on my computer science project and it seems like my ideas could work. Also I've been working on lining up a job for myself this summer and trying to graduate on time, if not early.
As far as school goes, I am so tired of the whole thing. I had been thinking of going to graduate school earlier, but now I feel like I just want to get school over with as soon as possible. I'm ahead on my credits, so it may be possible to graduate a semester early. And then there is this bioinformatics program. It sounds like a really awesome program, but I don't know if it's exactly what I want so I don't know if it's worth the work I would have to put into it. First of all, I don't know if I really want to work in a lab. I don't mind working in a lab, but it's not really my favorite type of work. Second, I would probably have to move far away from this area to get a job in this field. It would be a really cool job, but I don't know if I could stand being away from my family, my "roots". Third, money, time, and UTEP. Right now, the prospect of three or four more years of school sounds like torture. Plus I or my parents would have to pay for the master's program with our own money. And I'm also kind of disgusted with UTEP right now. UTEP seems to be a bastion of mediocrity. I know that "you get what you put in" when it comes to education, and that I should push myself when it comes to my classes, but it's hard to motivate myself to try very hard when everyone around me isn't putting in the same amount of effort. As for myself, it doesn't require much effort for me to get decent grades in my classes. As long as I'm getting OK grades, I don't see the point of killing myself to study. Right now, I'm thinking that I should just get out of UTEP as fast as I can and see if I can move on to some place better.
"This, too, shall pass." One day, I'll be so incredibly busy that I'll look back on this day and long for the times when I could be so carefree. I'll have people to complicate my life and responsibilities and a high-stress job and bills to pay. So I don't feel too guilty about taking it so easy at this point in my life. I do what I can and what I have to. I have plans and ambitions for my life, and I think a lot about what direction I want my life to take. I'm taking some steps to get there.