First day of the rest of my life

So today i woke up early, around 8, went to talk about the multicultural affairs guy about potentially helping him create a "cohesive latino community." The cuban and i outlines a game plan and he loves us and we might work with him. Very exciting. dissertation on mexican american identity here i come! Then it was about 9:30 and i headed to my office in the basement of the school of ed, and proceeded to read straight for like 4 or 5 hours. i went to a meeting in there somewhere and then i also went to the gym! eeemagine me running for 10 minutes straight! this is alot for me. i walked on high incline the rest of the time and ran a little bit in there but the point is that i did 10 minutes without stopping. i think partially the reason i was able to do this was that i was runinng in front of the mirror, which was a first time for me. all this timei was thinking i looked like a goof while running, but turns out i looked like all the other treadmill runners and thus my confidence was built and thus i went that extra few minutes and just fucking ran.

The odd thing about toda ywas that i read and did shcool work like it was my job because in essence it is basically my job. it was very strange to be reading, and talking about and critically thinking about things tha ti actulaly care about and being paid for them. i've spent the past year kind of forgetting what my purpose and passion was and so when i got here and people were asking me about my research project i couldn't relaly verbalize it but i'm slowly getting it back. minority identtity development, specifically academic and ethnic identity. more specifically how awareness of negative stereotypes like affirmative action and "the achievement gap" affect self esteem of minority students and consequently cause mediating effects on their academic identity and performance in school. don't i sound like i know waht i'm talking about.

on a lighter note, then josh and i went to the 8ball saloon and drank and listened to tom waits and waxed lyrical on things like when his sister first got her period (i know why?) and when we lost our virginities and just general things that one talks about in a seedy bar where drinks cost $3 and tom waits is playing in the background. Ann arbor continues to border on depressing but bearable. it's wierd, i cannot put into words. If i had no friends and no boyfriend waiting for me in SF and no alcohol i would hate it. but as long as i have at least 1 of those things i think i'm good.