Memories I am afraid I'll forget

Day 14, Just a reg. hot day, Wednesday

You know those days when it is just painful to get out of bed? Today was one of those days for me. I would have loved to stay in bed for a lot more hours in the comfort of my AC blowing so much I actually used the sheets to cover me up. Complete nonsense if you think about it. You run the AC so that you can cover up to be warm under the bedsheets.

Anyway, I had an online meeting with one of my brightest students, who just won an amazing research scholarship. So, we discussed her plans and scheduled her research until the beginning of November. I was already in a much better mood and had a much better start to my supposedly boring day. Then I stressed on how much work there is still left for me to do, as I brought some work with me from home. So today will be my second day spent on work for my home uni and for my side-hussles. I do not like it. At all. At least not today. However, I needed to get these done, so that I could finally get down to my second paper (Second item 'b' on my previously shared to-do list.)

I got round to finally reading the review. If you ever got a good review, this is definitely one of those. Even though my paper is rejected for good – which means that I will never publish this piece in the Journal of Marketing for Higher Education – the three reviewers (ok, actually two of them) were so amazing that they gave me exact directions on how to improve my paper. It is going to be a TON of work. What I had thought to be a 1-2 days' worth of work, would much rather be 1-2 weeks. But I really hope that in the end, it is going to be worth it.

You can imagine that I had a bit less motivation after realizing this piece of research would be harder to rewrite. So, a bit discouraged, I went to my ever-comforting emails (LOL, no). There, I find this opportunity to meet fellow global Spartan international students today! See a lightbulb go off right above my head? No? It was there, I promise. I had a plan. I go to the uni to meet these students, blend in, and possibly find new friends and honestly, research participants.

I am a lucky person – have I not mentioned this before? I grabbed my stuff, went to the event at the uni and met amazing international students from Malaysia and India, who were kind enough to exchange contacts with me and were open to my research proposal. Today was a day worth waking up for (as it turns out). Even though I am not getting to know any of my colleagues here (which I am a bit concerned about), at least I am doing well as a disguised international student from Hungary. Feels like mystery shopping international student experience at SJSU. This might be an excellent title for a new research article, so I am writing this down.

With the students, we went to the library and to a DIY area, where you can 3D print, just simply print, use the sewing machine or laser cutter. So tomorrow, I'll be collecting my laser cut SJSU keychain. How cool is that?

I was what felt like hours at the university. Too many hours. I was concerned that today, I am not getting any work done. So, when I arrived home, I had lunch and started working at a better speed. (Oh, and by the way, my first ever US order, the Levi's jeans arrived, they both fit perfectly. Yaaay!) I worked on Erasmus projects, the publication, thesis workers, emails, aaaand great news! I signed up to be a volunteer at SJSU events. My first volunteer event will be coming up in October. I am pretty excited! I hope I'll get a free tee. Other than this and the meeting with new people, I had an extremely boring workday. So sad. I should get out more. But I do. And when I get out, I feel I need to be working. This is probably not healthy at all. I tend to overthink. Not that you haven't noticed. I'll work on this, I promise. 

Oh, and I went on a walk with Susie and John. Our regular (now I can say this) evening walks. This couple is amazing. As we earned a lot of rewards with Ohm hour, they gave me the Starbucks gift card, so now I have 20 dollars to spare. All the hot chocolate I am going to drink! I think I'm going to introduce Ohm hour at home. This sounds like a joke and decades away in Hungary, tho.

New apartment update: Today, we had a bit of a fight. I don't like this term fight or argument as it sounds so childish, but that is what we had, about childish issues, like the color of our now-white wall. On my living room mood board, the 'wall' was green, so I mistakenly thought that this color is okay with my husband, or that he knows that it is supposed to be the wall and not just a random color of vomit. Only when I told him that we'll have to paint the wall green did he realize that THIS green is the one we were supposed to pain the living room to. What a shocker. Right?! I really don't want to write about this more. Let's just say that I am not dealing with any more apartment issues today.

Plans for tomorrow: I really don't know if it is worth writing these down. You might have realized that these plans never go the way I think they would. Anyways, tomorrow, I go to the uni in the morning, collect my keychain, hopefully get a T-shirt for my Spartan Pride Day (every Thursday), have lunch with a Hungarian IT person, have a meeting with Mahesh and Parinaz, get home and just rest at night.

7 September 2022