15 weeks and 1 Day

Well, it is official: I have Gained Weight! (As if I were pregnant or something...) The official 15 week weight is 143.8, meaning I consider myself 2 1/2 lbs heavier than when I started. The baby now weighs about 2 1/2 ounces. That means (for those of you out there who AREN'T so much fans of the Beloved Subject) that the amount of weight I have gained is 16 times as much as my baby weighs! But apparently small intrauterine occupants carry a lot of luggage: there's a placenta in there, too, and fluid, and my uterus itself is bigger ("the size of a small melon" says WTEWYE) and I have more blood, among other things. (When I sit still I can hear my heartbeat swishing loudly. I think this is because of the extra blood, but it gets irritating after awhile!)
This is one of my favorite spring outifts, which I wore yesterday just in case it doesn't fit in a few weeks. I had fun shopping for maternity clothes over Spring Break and got some great things on sale: a nice white button-down blouse for $10, a long black skirt for $13 and a beautiful maroon and black silky-type blouse ($13) that I can wear to church (with the skirt). Everything that I've bought matches really well- I've just realized there's a lot of dark colors which isn't ideal for summer, but it will work. The best thing is my friend Sara's maternity wardrobe on loan- lots of short-sleeved shirts in pretty colors, two pairs of shorts that I will be wearing a lot this summer, and some dresses, too. (Unfortunately her other pants were all too small- I definitely need size L down below.) At the moment my maternity clothes wardrobe is laid out on the sofa because it seriously will not fit in my closet... which (arguably) means that my closet should be pared down somewhat, but honestly it HAS been pared down some, and I really do wear most of the stuff in there. Thrift store shopping creates volume, people. But it is kind of sad to have so many clothes that you don't know where to store them.

In other news, School. School! I have tests coming up again. I wanted you all to know the following weird facts about how testing works in the Nebiverse:

1) When I have a test coming up in a few days, I have this odd internal system of talking to myself about the test. I have a mental checklist I follow:

1. Read the sections of the textbook covered; take notes on them by writing out all the definitions and theorems (to be memorized). (Ideally this step happens as the semester moves along, not right before the test.)
   
2. Reread all class notes; any details not understood? Ask in office hours.
3. (Sometimes) cross-reference theorems in class notes with those in the notes from the book. (This only works if the lecture notes are really, really good, which happens if and only if the lectures are really good. My class notes are essentially an exact transcription of what goes on the chalkboard because I can't multitask enough to write down anything the professor says but doesn't write, and I can't process anything while I'm copying what's on the board. It's pretty sad.)
   
4. Go back through all old homework problems and practice problems; figure out any that weren't originally solved.

When I talk to myself about these steps, I call it "mise en place," which is a cooking term that sort of means "have everything prepared ahead of time." (As in, "mise en place for statistics test Tuesday.") (No, I can't actually cook anything, but thanks for asking.)

2) As far as I can remember, I have never actually made it completely through the mise en place checklist for a test at Lehigh. Usually I don't even come close. This causes a lot of Stress before an exam.

3) Do you know that advice you read in study skills checklists about how "good students prepare ahead of time for an exam, so that they can relax the night before a test and then get a good night's sleep?" Yeah, never happened in my life. I don't remember ever stopping studying for a test more than about 10 minutes before it starts. And there have been many, many times that something has appeared on the test that I learned within the half hour before the test (because God is so very good to me.)

4) I don't think the people who write Study Skills Books understand anything about graduate level mathematics. They don't understand how thorough you have to be; how everything has to be Perfect. There is no Skimming. You learn the proof of a theorem, or you don't. This makes everything run very Slowly. This means that for a person to make it all the way through the mise en place checklist, he or she must either be 1) Phenomenally Smart or 2) willing to put a Phenomenally Large number of hours into studying.

5) I'm not Phenomenally Smart.

6) I don't know how to (and don't really think I should) say "no" to everything else in my life in order to have that many hours to study. Writing in this blog is important to me. So is taking my car to get fixed, applying for jobs for this summer, doing our taxes, going to Dr's appointments, doing some very minimal level of housework occasionally, going to church, talking to my husband, talking on the phone sometimes, and sleeping. So is doing my TA duties (which apparently take me longer than other people- I guess I grade really slowly. Again, because of the thoroughness thing...?)

7) This tension between school and the rest of life is what makes me perpetually (just a little bit) Neurotic.

8) On almost every test I've taken at Lehigh I have done better than I thought I would. The extreme version of that was my Theory of Probability Final last fall; I was virtually positive I was going to fail it and I got a 100 (becuase God is So Good. There is no other explanation.)

9) Doing well at Lehigh has given me a very unhealthy attatchement to my GPA. My GPA is perfect. My GPA is also (as far as I can tell) completely meaningless. It is arbitrary and magical and a gift, not an earning. It won't, as far as I know, do anything for me or have any significance in anything I do in life. I fight with myself about it a lot now. I am fighting to be able and willing and happy to let it go, if that happens this semester, or to learn to accept it with grace if in fact it remains.

10) And when I look at this list I think, when we take the sum, find the integral, add it all up, compute the result, I don't have any questions or doubts about it. If this is it: get a chance to study Mathematics with all of the tension and struggle and stress and neuroses and issues and fights, vs. not study it at all I am not at all in dobut about the outcome. Yes, it is Worth It.

Love, Neb

PS We are thinking about naming the baby "Madelaine Elimae" if it is a girl.