anxious thoughts 3

Tuesday:
Ran into the professor in the hallway outside the classroom, without realising it was him (he was a guest lecturer I hadn't met before) until after I'd just mumbled hi in response to his greeting and continued walking. He's going to think I'm so rude.

Chatted with a student who was in the same knitting workshop I went to a while ago. I ran out of things to say after we got caught up on our progress (my lack thereof) so there was an awkward silence for a bit. I can never think of anything to say. I should be able to come up with something, but I can't. I felt bad that she was stuck sitting on the end of a row so she didn't have anyone else to talk to but me.

After class, I was kind of walking with two other students out of the building. They are good friends and I don't see them often. I wasn't sure if I was actually walking with them, or just following them. They stopped to do something and I wasn't sure if I should stop, too, but they were just talking to each other so I said bye and kept going. I don't think they noticed. Why would they care if I was walking with them or not? I'm not actually friends with them, just a hanger-on. They probably wanted me to stop following them.

I saw a housemate at home. He's kind of awkwardly quiet, too (although he has the excuse of English not being his native language), which always makes me feel more awkward. I can't think of anything to say, especially not enough to make up for someone else being quiet, too. I should be friendly and try to make him feel more comfortable, but I can't and he's going to think I'm just rude and unfriendly.

Wednesday:

Meeting with my advisor about my sucky data. It did look slightly better than I'd thought, but why do I talk so frickin' slow with my advisor? I sound like I'm half asleep, or like the token special ed character in For Better or For Worse. He really must think I'm stupid, since it clearly takes me forever to understand his questions/suggestions.

A housemate was in the kitchen when I went to get something to eat. I said hi, but should I try to say more? I can't think of anything to talk about. I'm so rude and boring and anti-social.

Another housemate came in later and they started talking. They're normal and friendly and I'm just barely tolerated on the edge of the group. I wish I could join in more, but I would just be interrupting. Should I even be listening to their conversation?

Thursday:
Talked to SuperGradStudent about What is the What, which he gave me. I couldn't think of anything interesting to say, even though it's a good book, and I think I gave the impression that I like it less than I do and think the events it describes were less horrifying than they are. I suck. He's going to think I'm an uncaring idiot.

SGS complained that our advisor was asking him to do more than he had time for and he's really busy. I should be much busier and have more to do, if I were at all involved in my project instead of just doing the minimum to get by.

Talking to my advisor about the grant progress report that's due tomorrow, which I'd completely forgotten I was meant to make graphs for. I suck; he's going to think I'm useless. I don't even know what I was supposed to do for it and my results suck. I should have made much more progress than this by now.

Making the graphs to send to my advisor. While he was still here, I'd done one quickly to see what it looked like and got a correlation coefficient of .98, but I accidentally selected the wrong column and it's really only .75. I'm such an idiot; I should've realised it wouldn't be that good, since the un-normalised data looked so bad. I don't want to tell my advisor that I was wrong, because the results really need to be better to justify the project. The whole project isn't going to work and I'll just be wasting a lot of time and resources. If I'd done more work instead of reading blogs, I could've figured out how to fix things better, too.

Someone was walking down the corridor in front of me. I slowed down to avoid catching up with him, because then I might have to talk and I don't have anything to say.

I should be working. I still have to do 45 more minutes before I can read blogs, but I don't want to. Maybe I'll get something to eat, even though I'm not hungry...

At the photography class, the teacher read an essay by one of the students and asked for reactions. One person said she was "indifferent" and another said basically "it was good, but I don't know why" so I felt bad for the person who wrote it and said something. The teacher then asked me to talk louder. I hate repeating myself, because what I was saying wasn't anything interesting and they'll all probably just think I'm dumb, and now I'm stumbling over words and probably blushing so they'll think I'm weird in general. I should've just kept quiet.

The student who wrote the essay usually gives me a lift back near home afterwards, but she didn't say anything today and I wasn't sure if I should assume she would do that again and I can't ask for anything because I don't want to inconvenience her. I ended up just being slow about packing up so I could happen to walk out at the same time, but then I felt anxious because maybe she thinks I'm just hinting for a ride, which would be worse than just asking about it. I think I may have forgotten to say thank you for the ride, because I was worrying about saying goodbye since it was the last class and I probably won't see her again. I'm so rude.