work hard, play hard

Orientation for the entire duke grad school was yesterday, and I'm trying so hard to be positive and I swear but I still somehow feel that I conned my way into duke, it still doesn't feel quite right, and I really miss not knowing all of the shortcuts through buildings and secret parking spots. Oh and if I see a Plumlee brother I'm tripping him.

Orientation was hard because it was the same thing about the honor code and collaboration for the hundredth time, and how duke is so different from other universities, because it's 'so prestigious' but 'not as cutthroat as harvard!' barf. 

The other thing they kept saying over and over and over again was, "work hard, play hard". Like, have fun but you can't get less than a B otherwise you're on academic probation.

"Work hard, play hard."

I've been thinking about this a lot. Last night I said out loud, "There really isn't really a 'play hard' for me, is there?" Thinking, for me, it's work hard, work hard.

I have homework already, complementation and tetrad analysis which makes me just want to die. (Seriously. I have to reteach myself, redraw everything out, re-remember that there's the replication before reduction in meiosis, refigure out who the parentals are in the parental/nonparental ditypes...) So, I did dinner with my parents last night, so while Lena was in the bath, I stayed downstairs at the kitchen table banging my head against double heterozygous crosses, hand-writing out complementation groups from those little charts with all the plus minuses. But then I realized, I'm happy doing this. Because, this is my job.

I get to learn genetics! I get to learn tetrad analysis from some of the smartest people in the world. I get to study whatever I want to study. Learn what I want to learn, be a student, and that's. my. job.

So really it's, play hard, work hard.

That was the thought as I went to bed last night.

Lena takes a really long time to poop in the mornings. (Sorry I try to not say super embarrassing stuff about L on the internet, but this is relevant.) And while she poops, she sings. This morning she was doing the Queen of the Night aria from "The Magic Flute".

(I mean, Lena might as well be singing in German too, but you get the gist.)

I had to stop her. I mean, this kid is completely tone deaf. And I love her to death but I kind of find this song annoying when it's in tune. So I found the next best thing, and I have no idea why I never thought of it earlier. Disney songs. On Pandora. Oh, yeah.

L and I sang our way through the morning.

It also just occurred to me why I have to reteach myself tetrad analysis. My brain is saving a lot of space for such high quality songs as, "Part of that world" (The Little Mermaid) and "I'll make a man out of you" (Mulan).

I drove back home, windows down, still singing, to work more on my homework, to start organizing a lit review and finding some more readings, and then it hit me:

Play hard, play hard. 

Bring it on, world. Let's play.