The whale died. Why? Why couldn't they just keep it alive? It mattered to me.

There are several things I need to do for college... my parents and I finally talked about the most important today, which is that I need to do a research project at some facility this summer. My parents wanted me to do it at this lake that's near my town, but I would have had to do it with these old people and that made me feel very panicky... so then my dad said I can do it at his work and when I finish it (it'll take 6 weeks, 8-9 hours a day, M-F) we can send the abstract into a medical journal and they might publish it. That'd look pretty good.
Also I need to call the tutor and set up times to review geometry and trig so I can do well on the SAT math II's.
So much to do...
I just feel suffocated. I can't breathe. This is one of my last summer's as a kid and I will spend it doing genetic research. I feel like I've lost my childhood already. I've had to grow up.

edit: I just watched What the Bleep Do We Know and most of it was stuff about quantum mechanics and the Penrose theory that I had already read about alternate realities and such. But the movie reminded me of how crazy quantum physics is... it's a mix of psychology, science, and philosophy. If I had to call it something I'd call it applied philosophy. The Penrose theory pretty much goes along with Nietzsche and existentialism (yes, Shea, physics and philosophy can relate!). It made me lean towards quantum physics again as a career choice instead of astrophysics.

The two things the movie mentioned that I actually hadn't thought about before (which is silly of me... I thought that I'd totally explored the physics of consciousness... then again that's probably not possible):
1. A man on it said that if you cannot control an emotion, it is because you are addicted to it. I found that very interesting. It would mean I am addicted to depression, which I know is true because it's all I know. I'm not sure if I believe that statement is universally true though. I have never learned to control anger, and yet I deplore and don't feel addicted to it.
2. You don't fall in love with a person. You fall in love with the chemicals their presence releases in your brain. That is very antisentimental, but I cannot argue with the biology of it. Your brain only knows the chemicals your hypothalamus releases. I'm going to continue believing though that the release of this cocktail of chemicals being unique to a person indicates a love of that person.

One last thing... the world is of course mostly vacuum. An atom occupies a relatively large volume but is not very dense, especially the electron cloud. Scientists are currently trying to get a temperature at absolute zero on the Kelvin scale (this wasn't in the movie, I've just been thinking about this), but how could that ever work? If particle motion stopped then atoms would collapse in on themselves, and because of the relative volumes of the nucleus and the electron cloud, that would mean all matter would shrink instantly (or almost instantly) to a bajillionth of its original size, which would destroy it. So it doesn't make sense that that is physically achievable. At least if you want to preserve matter it wouldn't be. It brings about an interesting question though... if there was no vacuum, how would we perceive reality? Another thing... there is no accounting for consciousness, not physically anyway, not through science. An atom, neuron, or cell is not capable of conscious thinking (even though studies have shown one neuron's ability to recognize pictures). It is logical to follow that a bajillion of them wouldn't suddenly become capable of this. So is the only way to scientifically account for identity spirituality? Isn't this hole in physics indicated that there is something more than this world?