32 posts tagged “school”
After being terrified the past couple days about GOOD LORD I HAVE SO MUCH WORK TO DO THIS WEEK, I talked to my philosophy professor (who I have for 3 of my 5 classes) and worked things out so that everything is peachy and totally NOT overwhelming. One problem was that there's an essay due Thursday that I didn't know about due to missing class last week. Oopsie tootsie!
So I'm like, 75% on top of things, when I'm normally about 40% (me? slack off? nevar!) I'm really looking forward to NOT having this feeling of constantly being behind in my work (or does that ever go away?)
Things are suddenly moving very very fast. This is both ridiculously awesome (hello, graduation!) but mostly it's COMPLETELY TERRIFYING because that means that everything is suddenly going to HIT in the next couple weeks and I'll have like 9 projects due and 4 papers and 6 books and I will be going BATSHIT INSANE.
Actually I pretty much know when everything is due. This is mainly for my own weird quirky desire to write shit down...
2 "normal" essays (easy)
5 "research papers" all due within like a week of each other at The End (ouch)
2 (possibly 3) books to finish (meh)
2 presentations (one super easy, one super hard)
1 attempt at sanity
FUN STUFF. 32 days! Better get crackin' on this shit! (and drink less caffeine.)
Woo! After pretty much constantly being a day or so behind on work for school, I'm finally caught up on everything. Hopefully it'll last...I think it will though. I was getting really stressed and burned out on school earlier this month, but over the past couple days I've gotten oddly motivated. Only 6 weeks of class, then a week of finals and it's Christmas break! Yay.
Soooo Tuesday is election day, eh? I already voted (for Obama, of course) but I'm like, really nervous/excited/anxious/etc. I'm scared that things are going to go horribly wrong. But however it goes, Bush is almost out of office. Think about that for a minute! Bush is almost out of office. Gash commented in IRC the other day how Bush's administration is the only one he's ever really 'known' since he was too young during the Clinton years to pay attention to politics and such. Same with me, pretty much. All I really paid attention to during Clinton's time was him fooling around with Monica Lewinski. So to have another president other than Bush is going to be interesting (in a good way.) I just hope Florida doesn't fuck things up.
It's funny though, this morning I was thinking back to 8th grade during the 2000 elections between Gore and Bush, and how my social studies (remember how "history" was changed to "social studies"? And "English" became "language arts"? crazy middle school) teacher would always talk about how "we're not going to see an election like this for a long time." Flash forward 8 years and there's an even CRAZIER election. I can has good politics pls?
Anyway today looks like it will be decent. Not a WHOLE lot of stuff to do, so I'm gonna try and enjoy it. Tomorrow is Halloween, and I'm not doing a damn thing. And I'm happy about that. I'm not a huge fan of Halloween, and while it's not my least favorite holiday (that honor goes to New Years) it always turns out to be way more complicated and ridiculous and dramatic than it should be. I think I'll just watch some Buffy or something, since I don't really have any scary movies (I hate scary movies! I'm a pansy).
Anyway! I have class shortly, so I will leave you with a pretty song that I've been listening to. It starts off a bit slow, but give it a little time and it picks up. Enjoy!
Today I got two essays back, both with As. Both were essays that I put off til the very last minute and did not have high hopes for, which always seems to happen. I always assume the worst, and usually end up getting good grades.
I think I'm a pretty good writer, and I always keep the essay prompt or subject at the very front of my mind when writing, so I always write about what I need to write about without going off onto random tangents about some other topic. Which is great except for when the minimum page length is higher than about 5 pages. I'm a pretty tight writer when it comes to essays; I tend to state my point, elaborate a bit, then wrap it up. I don't like going into paragraphs of bullshit that can just as easily be said in a couple sentences. Hence why I hate minimum page requirements. If I answer the question, if I use X number of outside sources, integrate quotes cleanly, etc, then what does it matter if I'm at 4 pages or 5? Or 3 pages rather than 4? Please judge my paper on the content alone, not its length. If the topic is discussed and analyzed thoroughly and thoughtfully, the length shouldn't matter. Quality, not quantity!
But...I'm worried that I will fall into a cocky sense of false security, thinking "oh, I don't have to do that now, I can do it the night before it's due and still get a good grade! That's what always happens anyway!" I know that sooner or later (sooner rather than later given that this is my last year as a student) that's going to catch up to me and I'm going to crash and burn. Uh oh!
Anyway, I just wrote this so I could put off writing a ginormous paper that's due...yep...tomorrow. I have two pages done already! Just got another 6-8 to go....
I have my schedule for next semester worked out and it is quite literally nothing short of a miracle. It's my last semester, so I'm taking all the high-end classes for my major and minor, which are both two very tiny little departments here at Western. There is only one of each class offered which usually means if there's a scheduling conflict, I'm up shit creek without a paddle.
But! Next semester works perfectly. I'm actually really excited (I'm also really excited for this semester to be over. This semester gets no dice).
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I'll have my two Spanish classes, SPAN 494 (Senior Capstone Experience thingy) and SPAN 460 (Hispanic Lit: Caribbean Dictators). Should be interesting! They're also back-to-back so that'll be kinda nice.
Tuesday and Thursdays I'll be taking all my philosophy classes. PHIL 345 (Philosophy of Religion), followed immediately by PHIL 397 (Women and Gender in Philosophy), then with a couple hours off before COTH 470 (Philosophy and Theory of Communication). All three of these classes are with the same professor, so that will be interesting lol. Fortunately I like him and I think he likes me, so that's good.
Anyway I seem to be rambling a lot about school. Probably because my life is pathetic and I have nothing else to ramble about! Ah well.
Ohhhh my lord. Serious problems with working out credits for graduating still. Serious, people, wtf. On Monday I found out that I don't need English 250 for my Spanish major, so I dropped it. Now I find out I DO need it. So I had to re-add it, re-buy the books that I sold back (which were no longer available used so I ended up spending more money on), blah blah blah. Fortunately the professor for the class thought the whole situation was funny and ridiculous (which it is) and was more than happy to be a bit accomodating. I will have missed only two classes so it's not a huge deal.
My advisor and I walked up to the registar's office to work shit out though, so now I think everything is finally figured out. My advisor was making a stink about some stuff that I'd been nicely arguing with her about for the past two weeks. Long story short: I was right. GAH!
So, basically, next semester I'm going to die.
SPAN 494 - Senior Capstone Experience
SPAN 460 - Hispanic Literature: Caribbean Dictators
COTH 470 - Philosophy and Theory of Communication
PHIL 345 - Philosophy of Religion
That SHOULD be what I need. I'm not 100% sure if I need the Hispanic lit class, but I'm going to assume that I do need it. (Actually I'm pretty sure I don't need it. But, again, going to assume I do so that it won't be a shock if it comes to it.) Next week sometime I should get something that lists exactly what I need to do. If there are any more issues with this crap I'm seriously going to explode.
After talking with my advisor for what seemed like FOREVER (but was really only a half hour), I FINALLY figured out what the hell is going on with my credits. Well, sort of. I still don't completely understand the various issues surrounding my transfers from Barcelona, and was somewhat peeved by my advisor telling me that she "didn't like my attitude" (pardon me for trusting information the registrar's office gave me two years ago regarding my transfers and thinking that they should be faithful to the information they gave me). But, whatever - I'm happy with the way things turned out. Basically now I get to drop my English class (w00t!) and will be taking a 1-credit Independent Studies class instead. So I get to create my own Spanish class with my advisor :D Or something like that. I'm meeting with her again on Wednesday to work out the gory details of that.
This whole thing has been way more crazy and convoluted and confusing than it should be. It's barely after 10am on Monday and I already feel like I need a stiff drink.
A couple months ago I started watching Angel, and I was pretty much watching an episode here, an episode there. Now, however, I've started watching several episodes back to back and am quickly falling into that crazy world of TV obsession. I was thinking about something the other day, involving people I know, but instead of being the people I know inside my head, they were characters from Angel. Wtf! Various characters were also in my dream last night. And I'm not even done with the first season, so it's only going to get worse D:
Which is bad news bears because I have a buttload of reading and stuff to do for class next week, cuz I was kinda lax about things this week and now I'm really behind. So I have to play some major catch-up by Monday, which ain't gonna be fun. Oh well, at least I won't be bored!
Seems like most of my friends at other schools have finals this week, which I'm kind of jealous of. I want this week to be overrrr!! D: This is my last week of classes, and then finals. I think I only have one actual exam, in music, but it's Friday morning right before I leave for Denver. So I'm gonna be antsy like woah :o
Anyway, speaking of "woah," this was hanging out in my favorites on YouTube and it's pretty awesome. Enjoy.
Ugh, after a not-so-happy couple of dreams that have left me in a weird mood, I woke up....at 9. Guess what time my first class starts? 9. We're allowed 3 absences in that class, and I'm pretty positive this is number 4. Or 5? Shit. I'm half-tempted to email my professor and be like "OMG MY ALARM IT DUN WENT OFF LATE DON'T KICK ME OUT D: PLS" Though part of me just wants to happily assume that if I did get kicked out of the class, I'd at least get a warning when I'd reached my 3? >.> Though my prof is a pretty cool guy, he'd probably be willing to work around it, especially since it's like the last couple weeks of the semester. "Thanks for all your hard work these past four months, but you missed one day too many so you're out, you fail, bye bye." D: That would indeed be absolutely horrible.
Anyway...sorry for the rambly mini freak out, this just bothers me for some reason. It probably doesn't help that I was already planning on missing one of my other classes today. FUCK. I've been so good about school this entire year, now I'm starting to get lazy and skippy. Boo.
After a few days of "holy shit I have a lot of work to do over the next three weeks," I suddenly got a much-needed burst of inspiration this afternoon. For one, I'm actually excited to do my philosophy research paper. I'm also oddly excited to like....go to the library! Which I never do! I've been to the library like twice since freshman year. >.> But I'm sort of stoked to go there and set up shop and have piles of books around me and be clicking away on my computer and all that studiousness.
Unfortunately this inspiration only applies to two of my classes (philosophy and political science.) Spanish is not so fun anymore, mainly because in one class we're writing stories, which I hate doing even in English, and in the other class we're just constantly interpreting and translating, something I'm bad at and have no interest in. My music class is pretty much the same as always, though I have to go to some concerts and write up obscenely detailed "concert reports" about them which is a pain in my ass.
If I'm this excited for the semester to be over now, I can't imagine how crazy I'm going to be going a year from now when I'll be on the verge of graduation. Madness!!
