Trapped.

On Monday I saw my counselor again for the first time in weeks. The primary reason of my visit was to understand why even though I'm not burnt-out anymore, I'm relatively stress free, and I've had a lot of time to myself, I'm not any better than I was at the beginning of the semester (in fact, I think I'm actually worse now). I've been sleeping excessively and I have no idea why. I always feel tired. I feel no or little enjoyment in all the things I do (even the things that I used to like to do). My concentration, motivation, and intellectual reasoning ability are all at record low levels. And the weirdest thing of all is I'm unable to feel emotion (or very little on a good day). She believed that I'm suffering from Dysthymia, which is a form of clinical depression. So if this is true, the good news is that there's a reason I've been this way and its not just because I'm lazy. The bad news is that it doesn't make things any better. She seemed to think that I'll get over it eventually, but when I read from the Wikipedia article (and other reliable sources) that it lasts about 2 years, I just started to freak. I can't afford to be like this for any longer than I already have been! But I have no idea what to do about it. :(

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I finally talked to my boss last week about how I'm thinking of getting a degree in neuroscience. He was surprisingly okay with it (which almost shocked me). In fact, he was so okay with it, that he encouraged me to work at Freescale while I worked towards the degree! O_o At first I was like "Uhh, but its neuroscience..." and then he talked about how they need neural networks for their power modeling or something to that effect, so it would actually work out well. On Tuesday this week I told him I would like more time to make my decision (I have to notify Freescale of my full-time offer decision by Dec. 9th) and he said he'd see what he could do. Not before he made me feel like a bastard though. He told me how they have had to turn away a couple of good, experienced people to get me this offer, and that my boss petitioned to the company/his boss saying "we need this guy". What he suggested (and what sounds like what I'm going to have to do) is to take the full-time offer, but not start until December, and then for Spring semester I could go to part-time (~15 hrs/wk) and see how that works.

I'm still uncertain about it though, because I already know that going to work and going to school simultaneously is tough, but I bet it would be even tougher if there's little or no overlap in what I do at school/work. He called me again tonight and said he could get it extended to January or February at the latest (which still might be before I find out if I got accepted into the program or not). So I have some more time to weigh my options, but I'm not really liking them at this point. Another thing is my boss highly recommended I take the superscalar architecture class being offered in the Spring (which my advisor teaches), and my advisor had told me I should take it too a couple weeks ago. But I already took half of advanced computer architecture this semester (before I dropped it) and I generally understand all the material, so why would I take a class where I already know a lot in the area and won't really learn anything? And besides, taking these two neuroscience classes is going to help me a lot in making my final decision, and taking only one won't help as much. So unless someone threatens/blackmails me to take the course, I don't believe I will.

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Final funny (IMO) story from today. They closed down the university today at 2PM because of a freezing rain warning from the National Weather Service. Now I'm not complaining, because I got to cut my office hours short and had a class canceled, but this is weak. I went to Purdue for four years, and every winter there was snow, ice, blizzards, killer snowmen, and they *never* canceled a day of class! Seriously. :p