Posts tagged with "school"

The Problem With Freshman Classes

I feel old.

I’m forced to sit in class for hours, lis­ten­ing to the pal­try con­ver­sa­tions of the peo­ple around me. I under­stand that not every­one talks about some­thing intel­lec­tu­al every sec­ond of the day, but most of these con­ver­sa­tions are beyond stu­pid. What I hate most are the peo­ple who ask the prof ques­tions, and then say, “That does­n’t make any sense”. Yes, it does make sense. You just don’t under­stand, you fuck­ing idiot. Why are so many peo­ple so mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal as to assume that they’re smart and able to com­pre­hend any­thing?

A Change Of Programme

I sent in an appli­ca­tion to the eco­nom­ics pro­gramme at Carleton before I left for Hong Kong last year, and got an offer of admis­sion when I got back. I accept­ed the offer on Monday, reg­is­tered for two cours­es, and start­ed going back to uni­ver­si­ty for a sec­ond degree. One of my cours­es is on TV, so I’m get­ting Trolley to tape it for me as an excuse to head over there and try some of my duty free Villager Premium No. 7s with him. My oth­er course is a con­cen­trat­ed intro­duc­tion to eco­nom­ics, so it’s two three hour class­es each week, mak­ing it the exact equiv­a­lent of two cours­es itself. I’ll try to get an intro­duc­tion to account­ing course next week as a fourth course, when the aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sor is free and not being a bitch.

I’m going to switch my major to busi­ness in the sum­mer and spe­cial­ize in mar­ket­ing. Since I have a degree in com­put­er sci­ence, I’m con­sid­ered a third year stu­dent already, since a lot of my cred­its trans­ferred over. If every­thing works out (pre­req­ui­sites, degree restric­tions, course avail­abil­i­ty) I could have a sec­ond degree at the end of the year.

My first class was yes­ter­day with quite a few first year stu­dents, some of them six years my junior I’m will­ing to bet. Six years. More than half the class was Asian.

Go

It’s dif­fi­cult for me to imag­ine being done school, that I can start liv­ing as a free per­son. I’ve been in school for so long that I begin to expect anoth­er term in the near future. Yet I’m done (as long as I did­n’t fail any­thing) and I have a great deal of options. But what would I real­ly want to do with my life? A uni­ver­si­ty diplo­ma will only help me get a tiny part of what I want to achieve.

Odd that I live so day-to-day, yet have a few goals planned for decades in advance. Even if I haven’t achieved a sin­gle goal by the time I die, I’ll feel decent­ly sat­is­fied. I enjoy being able to appre­ci­ate every­thing I do each day. A great deal of think­ing needs to be done before I keep going. And while the future seems uncer­tain, while the world seems to be turned upside down, I feel com­fort­ed.

It’s under­stand­ing and real­iza­tion that bind my world togeth­er, that bring mean­ing to any­thing I do.

Lamplust, Formatting, Basic

Studying has not been going well. I find it dif­fi­cult to get moti­vat­ed, both exams being a week away. I’d much rather be try­ing to improve my win ratio or work­ing on my book, than learn­ing about orthog­o­nal view math­e­mat­ics or mesother­mal vein deposits. I might just write off the rest of the after­noon as relax­ation.

Using my tax return as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, I bought a set of Candela’s a few days ago. After see­ing a movie in which a restau­rant dis­plays a beau­ti­ful set of mood light­ing, I was inspired to give some more per­son­al­i­ty to my rather drably room. My Christmas lights do add a bit of mood, but they are too bright to feel com­fort­able. I also bought a blue sin­gle, in case one of them burns out, and so that I can have a bit of colour at my dis­pos­al. I don’t like the fact that they run on NiCads though, mak­ing them have the trou­ble­some char­ac­ter­is­tic of mem­o­ry. I’d like to just leave it on until I go to bed, but I’m afraid I’d have to let them “burn out”, although I’m sure that lithi­um ion bat­ter­ies would have dou­bled the price as well as the weight, and halved the lifes­pan of each Candela.

My com­put­er des­per­ate­ly needs a for­mat­ting.

I caught Basic this after­noon with Aaron and Chris. It was­n’t very good; the plot had way too many twists to it. I spent the entire time try­ing to fig­ure out what the hell was going on and admir­ing Connie Nielson’s dis­tin­guished and weath­ered face (oh my).

Getting Dark, AFI, Etc.

It’s get­ting dark here, but the light has­n’t com­plete­ly left the day yet. The sky wax­es grey with the set­ting of the sun, and a gen­tle rain is mak­ing the pave­ment shine with the yel­low glow of the street lamps. The smell con­sumes me, and I’m back walk­ing the streets on an unrec­ol­lect­ed gloomy day.

I final­ly fin­ished off my hon­ours project, so I can rest a bit eas­i­er now. The one report is worth two cours­es itself. It end­ed up being around 22 pages, which isn’t too bad. The only thing that remains is my geo essay, and I only have about a half page left to write. I went to lunch with Aaron and Wheaties to cel­e­brate a com­plet­ed course at the Elephant and Castle. A great wait­ress served us, and offered a vari­a­tion on the Strongbow I was hav­ing, which was the addi­tion of some lime cor­dial, or some black cur­rant juice. We all got to try both with the Strongbow, and it was decid­ed that the lime was the bet­ter of the two. The remain­ing black cur­rant juice went into the beer, and Aaron told me that it was tasty.

200 more wins to an arch­mage icon.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the lat­est AFI album late­ly, and even though I did­n’t much care for it at first, I’m com­plete­ly addict­ed now. There’s some­thing about the har­monies in the vocals that make their sound so unique. I’m not quite used to Davey Havok’s voice though, as he sounds like a child to me. Quite uncon­ven­tion­al Currently, my favorite song is This Celluloid Dream.

A trip to the Dominican Republic may be work­ing out for the first week­end of May. Since it’s the begin­ning of the off-sea­son, the cost of the entire trip, drinks and meals includ­ed along with res­i­dence at a four-star hotel, will be around $900 for a week. Apparently this includes scu­ba div­ing, horse­back rid­ing, jet ski­ing, and a beach-side view. Currently, only Aaron, Cristina and I are com­plete­ly com­mit­ted to going, but we need an even num­ber of peo­ple so we’re try­ing to find one more per­son.

Artfag is cur­rent­ly a red­head. Ummmm…yah.

Jonathan tells me that the full-time job seems promis­ing, but he’s not mak­ing any guar­an­tees. It would main­ly con­sist of going around the city to var­i­ous com­mer­cial cus­tomers and trou­bleshoot­ing com­put­er prob­lems. The pay will start at around $15 which is not too bad, but not great for a grad­u­ate. He says that I’ll also need a car to be able to get to the loca­tions that need ser­vice, some­thing that I’ll con­sid­er more if I’m actu­al­ly able to get the job. He tells me that it’s a good foot-in-the-door for web pro­gram­ming posi­tions in the future. I am very grate­ful, and I’m not get­ting hopes up.