"I'm going to get off IM and study some chemistry and then go to sleep," I said. I repeated this statement to many people, in fact, and yet it didn't seem to sink in on this end, because here I am updating the blog, which has nothing to do with chemistry other than that I seem to like to complain about the class a lot here. Drat. Okay, so a very brief update, perhaps, and then some chem studying. Because really, I need to be studying for chem.. have needed to be studying for chem for days now, in fact. We may be long past the point where studying for chem will save anything, but I suppose I must try.

So I suppose you wonder what I've been doing instead of studying for chemistry over the past few days, and regretfully I must say that there's been very little of note. After a bunch of phone calls and emails home, I've arranged to have everything I need for the summer brought down along with the car next weekend--which is to say, my passport, social security card, a laundry basket, and thirty-five books. (Yes, we know where my priorities lie.) Been searching around for that elusive second job, too... unfortunately the concept of *work study* keeps messing up every cool job posting I find. So no luck there yet. Aside from that, I've made a concerted attempt at combating entropy in the dorm room after I cleaned it a few days ago, and have even organized it a bit, I believe... today I found academic team tournament results and statistics from Swordbowl and NAQT regionals and nationals and put them all together in a folder with the results from Moon Pie, and felt quite proud of having them all here in one place, until I realized that was all just a diversion to avoid more chem studying. You see the pattern. Hmm, what else? I spent a good half hour tonight discussing Heidegger with Jake after he sent me an excerpt from his reading for Existentialism and Phenomenology, a part of which I shall reproduce here for your enjoyment....

"True, Dasien is ontically not only what is near or even nearest -- we ourselves are it in each case. Nevertheless, or precisely for this reason, it is ontologically what is farthest away. True, it belongs to its most proper Being to have an understanding of this Being and to sustain a certain interpretation of it. But this does not at all mean that the most readily available pre-ontological interpretation of its own Being could be adopted as an adequate guideline, as though this understanding of Being perfocre stemmed form a thematic ontological reflection on the most proper consitution of its Being. Rather, in accordance with the manner of being of that being to which it is essentially, continually, and most closely related -- the "world". In Dasein itself and therewith in its own understanding of Being, as we shall show, the way the world is understood is ontologically reflected back upon the interpretation of Dasien. The ontic-ontological priority of Dasein is therefore the reason why the specific constitution of the Being of Dasein -- understood in the sense of the "categorical" structure that belongs to it -- remains hidden from it. Dasein is ontically "closest" to itself, while ontologically farthest away; but pre-ontologically it is surely not foreign to itself."

Fun, huh? Well, perhaps not, but again... more fun than chemistry studying. And therein lies the problem.