Surviving

The Remicade, so far, has worked.  He's now set up to be on treatment for the next year, and will be without his immune system response until they ween him off.  Between the prednisone and Remicade, he's now gained a lot of weight back that he lost (and then some).

I'm experiencing the war of the brain hemispheres as part of me thinks this treatment is really scientifically interesting and miraculous, and the other half is scared to death that any small knick or cut could become infected and kill him.  My relationships with family and friends are in flux right now, as some people seem to think this terrifying incident should have scared me into having a baby and "getting my priorities in order."

No baby--not for many years, anyways (I apologize to anyone who thinks my priorities are wrong on this one, but hey, it's my life).  I am getting my priorities in order.  Through all of this, I found myself coming back to my research passions; I want a PhD so I can do research for a living.  I want to make systems better for other people who want to do research, and I want to make computers easier for humans to understand and use, because they are an amazing resource when properly utilized.  I want to do research in semantic web and user-centered design.  And I want to spend more time with my husband--we're going to go on more vacations now.  I'm going out of town on business with him in a few weeks, and we'll spend the weekend together; we have plans to go camping at the sand dunes, and we want to plan a trip to Japan soon (this is huge, because I have mourned my loss of international travel since marrying a man scared to go to Canada).  We're talking about going to the Grand Canyon, which is a place neither of us has ever been.

I had a midterm in NLP today.  I think I did okay, but I'm not 100% sure.  The professor asked me about my husband after class, which was nice; all of my professor have been very understanding this semester.  I feel like I'm pulling myself out of quicksand with everything I've fallen behind on, but I'm finally making deadlines again.  What a semester for this to happen in, when I decide that I'm going to try for a PhD and trying to make good impressions and network with other researchers.

I'm told my group took a dive with our group project in 805; I've had a rainbow of reactions to this, ranging from apathy to outrage.  I got a little rattled when one of my group members took issue with the grade; I have a friendship spanning the whole programming with this group member because we've survived some bad group projects together.  So when I found out (from my friend) that the grade on the assignment was low, I took her side.  Then I read the comments we had received, and asked around with a few classmates, and reflected for a couple of days on the fact that I barely remember the assignment and presentation because I was living in hospitals and doctors offices for most of February.  I otherwise trust my professor, so I was willing to admit that the professor's judgment was probably clearer than mine, and that the project could have been better.  I'm not proud of the grade, but I do believe it's fair; I was unable to put in 100% this semester and it showed, and I feel guilty for it.

I will do better.  I want to learn, and I feel somewhat despondent that I failed in my responsibilities as a student this semester.  I am determined to follow up on this assignment after the semester ends, because I do want to learn.

The whole situation has been a little weird for me because I feel intensely loyal to my friend and group mate, but I've hit an awkward part of my education where I feel like I identify more with my professors than with my fellow students.  I've taken classes for my Linguistics program where the class is taught by a friend or fellow student, and I guess I've come to put a lot of trust into my professors and the academic system as a fair and unbiased entity--you leave your personal relationships at the door when you enter a student/teacher frame in a classroom.  Criticism is meant to be constructive, not personal.  I kind of feel for professors I take classes from where it's their first time teaching at a new school, a new curriculum, or any first, because students sometimes don't seem to grasp that teachers are mortals, too.  They have families and lives, and they want to be good at what they do just like anyone else.

I'm hoping I make it out of this semester with my GPA intact.  I'm decently certain this won't be an issue with my MLS classes, but NLP is a class that would have been challenging on a good semester.  I haven't had any of my grades back yet, so I'm not sure how I'm doing.  I am making an appointment to meet with the professor, and hoping I haven't done too badly in his class so far--I would like to work with him in the future, because he's kind of a big name in the field.  There's a lot I could learn from him if he's willing to mentor me through my PhD.