Mineralogy has got me down. For the past three years I thought that there was no way I could bring myself to take Mineralogy. I knew it was mostly chemistry (I hate chemistry!, and some math, and everything I'd studied about mineralogy was boring and confusing to me. But for some reason I signed up for it at the last minute the beginning of the quarter. I told myself I would just go to the first class to see how it is, and then I decided to stay. Surprisingly, I've really enjoyed the first five weeks of the course. Some of Anderson's lectures and confusing and a bit unorganized, but all in all, I've actually enjoyed studying the material. And I've especially liked the labs. Guilherme is a strong TA and explains the concepts pretty well. Plus, I've always thought microscope work was pretty fun.
But my attitude has shifted. The midterm is on Wednesday and I feel completely unprepared. My brain will just not memorize the 40 or so chemical formulas for the minearls I'm supposed to know, and I'm not even sure what to study for the lectures. On top of that, we have the lab midterm which is "take-home", which really means that we have to come in and do an independent lab. It's actually pretty straight-forward, basically just optically characterizing minerals and then identifying what they are. But it's much harder than it seems. Even though we know what we're supposed to do, and how to do it, it's still difficult to me! I keep confusing myself on how the process goes, and then when I double check the work that I have done I find that I have it backwords or totally wrong. I really really need to finish it by Saturday morning when Nicole flies in, but I don't know when I'm going to be able to find the time to do it before then. Yikes.

On a different note, send a future email to yourself in 28 years.