Something I can do

During my senior year in college, I dated John Schmidt. An aunt of mine recently handed me a picture of John and me from some Thanksgiving at another aunt's house. Cracked me up. I'll need to scan it in and post it. I have my big 80's hairstyle.

Sometime during that said senior year, I began studying for the GRE. I knew my math skills were fine so I didn't study that section. And I didn't even realize there was an analytic section of the GRE, so didn't bother studying for that part either. No, I spent most of my studying time memorizing vocabulary words.

After a while, I asked John to help me with my studying. Basically, from the study book, I asked him to quiz me on the words. He started at the top and asked me for definitions of words on the list.

Twenty minutes into this quizzing, I became incredibly frustrated. I had already spent weeks studying these words, and I was getting maybe 10% of them right. What the hell had I been doing? I was going to completely fail this GRE in a few weeks, because I didn't know anything! Whaa!

After seeing my frustration, John explained to me he had been picking out the hard words and ignoring all the easy ones he figured I knew. So, rather than knowing 10% of the words, I actually knew more like 70% of the words. I'm pretty sure I punched him at that point and told him to give me something I could do.

Yesterday was very much like that at the trainers. I was working on upperbody exercises, and she kept putting the weights so heavy I could do maybe 2 or three reps. I'd make it through these initial reps, then be able to do nothing. I'd struggle and strain and exert, and not budge the weights one bit. After the third set of one of these, I dropped the bar, adjusted the weights down and just barely finished the set with the lighter weights.

I kept thinking to myself, "Geez, woman, give me something I can do."

If only barely.