Updates, The UN, And Nukes

Political cartoon from here

I have some very, very good news. It’s a tiny thing, but it’s hugely important to me, primarily because this bit of news means I will actually get to sleep tonight. Not a lot, but at least a little bit. Discovering the good news came only after I had heard what initially seemed to be very bad news, which meant not only that I would not sleep at all, but that I would not even finish all my work even sans sleep. However, while the bad news is in effect, the good news counteracts it just enough that Morpheus will be allowed to play with my dreams after all. The bad news was that I suddenly have a three-hour lecture this evening in addition to the ten hour conference I had already known about monopolizing my Wednesday. The worse news is that I have had almost zero time this weekend, yesterday, and today to work on the two assignments due tomorrow. One of those assignments is finishing reading a memoir and writing an evaluation of it from a historical/military perspective (for more on that, see Nina’s latest entry). The other assignment is to finish researching, writing, and perfecting a final copy of my term paper for a course in mass media & politics. I’m sitting at seven pages of complete crap right now, and the final product needs to be 15-20 pages of excellence. Thus, I’ve got a long way to go.

However, the situation became much less dire as of five minutes ago and receiving an email from my mass media instructor. My good news: the due date for our term paper has been extended until in-class Friday morning! Which means that I can sleep tonight! Of course, I won’t be able to go out tomorrow night or Thursday, but at least I won’t keel over from exhaustion in any of my morning classes the rest of this week.

The other mildly cool news I have is that I toured the United Nations today. My nuclear engineering course took a day-trip to New York City to meet with representatives from the UN Security Council, one of the many energy associations whose acronym I can’t quite recall, the General Assembly, and then a few experts on Iran and North Korea. I will admit that my tiredness from a very late night and very, very early morning got the better of me, and so I zoned out a few times despite the interesting discussions. Since my academic fields are a blend of International Relations, Eastern Europe, and Nuclear Engineering/Weapons, visiting the UN to talk about nukes was pretty much what tweaks my interest. However, half-dozing on the bumpy bus ride and three gargantuan cups of coffee (don’t judge) unfortunately did not make up for two hours of sleep two nights in a row. Soon to be three. But hey, two hours is way better than nothing.

I’m pretty sure my blood caffeine content would be well over the legal limit, if there were such a thing, for more or less this entire week.

Here are a few pictures I snapped of the inside of the UN building today: