By this point, most of you probably know that I've gone ahead and become a grad student. I was originally planning on taking a semester off and recuperating from my college "experience", but I eventually realized that I was either too restless or too stupid to go without school for a semester. I'd almost liken it to crack in a lot of ways: It's going to cost massive amounts of money in the long run, encourage me to have a breakdown at some point or the other, and for better or for worse, is going to teach me a few new things here and there. Unlike crack however, school is unfortunately not one of those substances that can be easily um...smoked? Injected? Snorted? I don't know. Given that I've never done crack before (and probably never will), this is a terrible analogy for me to be using. Hm. Okay. Let's try that again: 'Blash is back in school. Yay school.

The bad thing about being back in school however, is that I need to start writing papers again. Now don't get me wrong: I don't mind writing papers. I view them as a sort of necessary evil, kind of like flu shots, global warming, or toaster ovens: Psychology is a field that's full of boring papers filled with fascinating tidbits. Being forced to write as many papers as I do will eventually numb me to them and help me churn out magnificently boring papers of my own someday, but GAH! DO. NOT. WANT!

It's not that I'm lazy. Okay. That's a lie. I'm lazy. But really, there's more to my story than that! See, while I've always loved writing, I don't think I've enjoyed writing papers in quite the same way. I mean, there are times when I can sit down and REALLY get into a paper and churn out something magnificent, but, honestly, there's really very little reason to try. Everyone has their gifts. Writing papers is one of mine. Because of this, papers I spend weeks on usually get the same A that I'd normally get from papers I churn out the morning-of as I'm delirious and half asleep. I'd hoped that grad school would've snapped me out of this funk and forced me to focus, but I'm having no such luck here. The papers are more frequent than they were when compared most of my classes at college, but my half-assed papers are still good enough to carry me through.

It's weird, you know? Back in 8th grade, teachers talked up high-school to be this intense and academically extreme environment where only the fittest survived. When I got to high school, I quickly found that this wasn't the case. In my last few years of high school, I went through something similar, but with college. History repeated itself, and I didn't find college anywhere near as crazy as teachers made it out to be. As my last few years of college approached, grad school became the new meanie on the block. The grad-school classes I took were actually pretty intense, but upon getting here, I've found that my classes at the moment are totally following the, "Aww. Look at the stupid little Freshman! Let's coddle him YAY!" formula that I loathed so much in high school and college. GAAAAAAAH. Well, hopefully that'll change as the semester goes on. Challenges are after all, wonderful things, as long as things don't suddenly go crazy all at once. Twenty bucks says that I just jinxed myself.

On a more interesting note, I have a job again! I've been working for JPMorgan Chase (you know, the big, evil, corporate bank) since October 8. This is a wonderful job for me because the pay is decent and the hours are good. It works well with school and future internships, and to top it all off, will save me hundreds of dollars a month on health insurance, so I can actually be slightly-less broke from time to time.

From what I've seen of it so far, it's a pretty good job. My co-workers are nice enough, and a lot of the customers are nice too. Things are a little tricky since I don't speak much Spanish (~60% of the bank's clientele speak Spanish exclusively), but if anything, it's a wonderful opportunity for me to brush up on the little bit of Spanish I picked up in high school. Well, that, and I'm totally yay for learning things! EXCITEMENT!

...That's not the main story here, though. The object of my affections at work for the last few weeks has been the coy and ever so tempting "button". See, this is no ordinary button (well, series of buttons...they're all over the place). This is the button that, when pressed, would have the entire bank swarming with police, EMTs, ninjas, superheroes, and all manner of intergalactic do-gooders. Once summoned these heroes would either fight off or hunt down bank robbers while making sure that nobody gets shot, stabbed, burned, frozen, or transformed into a newt in the meantime. It's exciting. Ah. And it's so tempting to push. Gods, I want to play with it. SO. BADLY.

...*ahem*...

*blush*

Er...actually, *ehehehe*, I, uh, already pushed it once. On my first day of work no less. It kinda-sorta went something like this:

'Blash: *leans on desk as he's talking to co-workers*
'Blash: (Hm...? What is this that my fingers are playing with?)
'Blash: *fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, talk, fiddle, fiddle, fiddle*

*CLICK*

'Blash: o.O;
'Blash: Um, guys? Does this button do what I think it does?

Coworker #1: Yeah, it...DON'T PUSH IT!
'Blash: ...
Coworker #1: ...
'Blash: I, um, kinda, sorta, uh, already did.
Coworker #1: ...
Coworker #2: ...
Coworker #3: ...
Blash: ...

[At this point, the entire teller line goes crazy, phones start ringing off the hook, and everyone is calling 33904032 different numbers to alert the bank's various protective entities that we're not being robbed, and everything is okay. It took about ten minutes to stop the small army that was undoubtedly making preparations to storm the bank, but everything ended up working out. Once things were all sorted out, we all had a good laugh about it, and just about everyone else confessed that they'd pushed "the button" once or twice too.

...Now that I've pushed it though, I'm not as satisfied as I thought I'd be. Part of me still aches to push the button whenever I see it. GAH. Why must the urges be so strong...?

*sigh*

Alas, ours is a love that will never be. We both want different things out of life, and really, I think a lot of things are horribly complicated by the fact that one of us is a stationary imaginary object. Life goes on, I suppose. It always does.