My Lucky Boxers

OK, so here's the deal: Almost a week ago I wrote up a nice big blog post but then lost it all. Now I've got some free time again and have decided that instead of throwing one big post at you about the end of the school year and Christmas and all that jazz, I'm just going to put up a few smaller ones and they may come relatively frequently, so if that happens try to keep up. I think one of my big problems lately is I have so much to say I feel like I have to squeeze it all into one post, but really what I should be doing is writing little blurbs as I find time. That way you guys don't have to wait a month between posts and it doesn't become a day-long project for me.

My previous lost post started something like this:

"Hello, all! I hope all of you up north are enjoying the weather. Down here it's a brisk 17 degrees. Oh wait, that's in Celsius, let's see, that would make it about 55 F on this lovely Christmas Eve night. Not too shabby."

And it went on to say something along the lines of:

Well I of course by now have finished up all my school and don't have to go to another real class until Spring quarter starts up back at K, which is March 30. My exams and final projects all went fairly well, but they almost didn't. Here's the story:

As some of you may know, this semester I took a Herpetology class, that's the study of reptiles and amphibians, not a common STD. Well I must say that this class was quite the challenge, even by K standards, and it didn't help that we were used to all our other classes being easy as pie.

For the better part of a month, I'd been working on an experiment for the class testing the effects of fertilizers on tadpole growth and development. On Wednesday, the 17th, not only did we have due the final draft of the paper for our projects, but also a poster for it AND we had the final exam of the class to worry about.

We had turned in the rough drafts the week before, and the prof said he'd return comments within a few days, so I decided to wait until then to correct my paper. As it turns out, he didn't send any word back on our papers until the 15th, 2 days before our final drafts. His e-mail (written to all of us in the class) simply stated that the rough drafts look good and that we should remember to look over the guidelines in the (12-page) syllabus to make sure our final format is correct. Personally I was looking for something a little more substantial, so I sent him back and e-mail asking for clarification on my specific paper. I knew, though, that I'd have to start off just revising it on my own until he sent word.

Fast-forward to Wednesday morning. The test wasn't until 4:30 that afternoon, so I had a good chunk of time to put the finishing touches on my final draft of the paper and come up with a poster. The test was open-note, open-book, open-computer, just not open-classmate, so I didn't have too much to worry about studying for that. But even without worrying about the test, I still had a pretty full plate. During this particular morning, I made some not-so-wise decisions. The biggest mistake was when I told my host father that I'd help him with a little job he had. He said it would take less than an hour, and that it would help him so much if I came along because his normal guy wasn't around to help. Before heading out with my father, I changed out of my pajama pants into my clothes for the day, including my lucky boxers. I figured I could use all the luck I could get.

Well this less-than-one-hour job turned into a 2 and a half hour job, after travel distance, traffic, and other errands were taken into account. I was really worried when I got back. I shoveled down my lunch and went to work, but at this point it was useless. I had gotten my paper done, but the poster still needed a ton of work. The one hope I had was knowing that my prof often allows work to be turned in via e-mail until midnight. Maybe it would work for the poster as well. By the time it was time to leave the house, I was scrambling around like crazy. I ended up leaving the house a few minutes late, and wasn't happy to see those few minutes of lateness grow into more and more minutes of lateness as my buses seemed to refuse to come as frequently as usual, and traffic was crazy. The whole way there, I was throwing temper tantrums in my head because I was so frustrated at how late I was and how I didn't finish all the work. By the time I got to the classroom I was almost a half an hour late to the exam. I wondered if my lucky boxers had run out of luck.

When I entered the classroom, however, I first heard people chatting and laughing. I saw that no one had a test out in front of them. What was going on? I sat down grumpily in my chair and asked my buddies what the story was. They said that our teacher was having problems in the copy room printing the tests. To my luck: half an hour's worth of troubles in the copy room. When he finally came to administer the test, he said that people who did a project were allowed to omit certain parts of the test. Sweet!

I took that test and felt good about it. Afterwards I turned in my paper with pride, and calmly stated that I had no poster when he asked for one. He very reasonably replied that it was OK, and that he expected a digital version by midnight and a printed version by the next morning. Can do. Everything was looking up. I had been feeling really crummy all morning and early afternoon, just trying to make it through the day with this dark thunder storm over my head. But by now, the storm had mostly passed and I could see that things would turn out alright. As I was about to leave, the prof said, "Oh, Joey, I'm going to have to talk with you."
Uh oh, I thought, what trouble am I in now? "Why is that?" I asked.
"Because," he responded, "we're going to publish your paper."
I was stunned. My jaw probably would have dropped to the ground, but my smile was holding it up. I asked him about it and he said that as far as he knew (and he knows a lot), my paper is one of the first, if not THE first, paper on this subject written in tropical South America and that although it's relatively simple, it would be a great starting point for future studies on fertilizer contamination. It will just take a few more revisions and then it will be ready to send out.

Cool! I was walking on sunshine for the rest of the evening, and I probably would have gone out to celebrate with my friends that night, but I had a poster to do. I did that poster, and printed it out the next day (about 3'x4') and handed it in.

I guess my lucky boxers still have plenty of luck in them. It just took them a while to turn the day around from the direction my day was headed before I put them on.