Classes Done for First Semester

Today was my last day of class for my first semester of University. I still have an assignment and a final exam, but my last formal class is finished.

Remember how the midterm for Sociology got leaked and I wound up with a 40% presentation and a 60% final? Well, I did my presentation and got 90%. This means that my average for that class is presently 90%.

I did not expect to do that well for the presentation. There were six people in our group. We had three team meetings, two of which were inside a week from when we would be presenting, one of which was the day of the presentation. We had one guy not show up until the final meeting, and he had not even met three of our team members previously. He even showed up to that team meeting late, at around 3:20, when we'd be presenting at 4:15. Another one of our team members discovered he had to go to court on the day of the presentation, so somebody else had to present his material for him. Despite efforts to maintain communication, every member of my group stopped attending class for two sessions before our presentation date and stopped responding to messages. I thought I might be presenting alone.

Two people got into a really polite and lengthy argument over which order the slides should be in right before the presentation. Somehow my section got put as the closing segment, so I didn't get to do my "run through" until about twenty minutes from when we'd be presenting. My understanding of a run through is that you do it so that if something doesn't work, you can change it before you have to present it. But with that amount of time, there's no time to change anything, so if something doesn't work, you just kind of acknowledge it and then you have to present it with the newfound knowledge that it doesn't work.

But then they cranked it into hyper-gear and we smashed the presentation. A 25-45 minute timeslot. We lasted 35 minutes with a 15 minute section for questions. The professor was so intrigued, she kept us for 25 minutes, which bled out the next presenter for 10 minutes.

Our subject was gun laws. I presented a list of history's mass shooting incidences with the highest level of mortality, then went over the three incidences with highest number of casualties, then presented a case study regarding media and how frequently certain terms are attributed to specific demographics, and then I went over gun use in popular culture.

We went over seven different countries and their policies and level of effectiveness regarding gun laws: Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, United States, Canada, and Mexico. Then we looked at the NRA, then a history of advancements in gun technology, then my section, which was history of mass shooting incidences and media perception.

The whole thing was a bit of a criticism on how the United States has been handling incidences regarding firearm violence. My apologies to my readers from the United States.

I got a group project and a written assignment for East Asian studies back as well. 89% and 93% respectively.

Just did the final for that class and I've no confidence in how I did. I guess I got arrogant after how well I did on the written assignments. I thought if I'm doing so consistently well, I must have a grasp on the subject, and I shouldn't have to worry.

I didn't expect such a focus on Southeast Asian nations. We'd only had one class on it, and only got to focus on four of the ten countries that comprise that region. That area is not even in the textbook. The first half of the semester was based on China, then the second semester had two classes on Japan, then two on Korea, then one for all of Southeast Asia. But it felt like each individual Southeast Asian nation was given the same amount of gravity as Japan and Korea, whether or not it was covered in lecture or in the text. Brutal.

But the final was only the same weight as the midterm, I did great on both the written assignments, I still have a written assignment to do, I should get perfect for my attendance grade, and I should get a bit of extra credit. Even if I bombed the final, I can't have failed.

I got my still life back from my art class with 78%. I also handed in the final project, which was a greyscale image reproduced from a photograph given by the instructor. Turns out, each image given to the students was part of a larger picture, so when we turned in our canvas paintings, we got to put them together as pieces of a larger image.

We were allowed to use one primary colour to influence our greyscale image. I chose yellow, for that sepia tone. I really gained an appreciation for yellow because of this class. It's statistically the least popular colour, but it's half of what makes green, which is frequently seen as being as important as any of the primaries, and it's also the most prominent source of warmth in most images. The first two colours I ran out of in this class were yellow and white, there were just such demand for them.

I had to quit Stats class this semester because it kicked my butt. Might have been partly due to the fact that at the beginning of the semester I was still trying to maintain three jobs, one of which was full time, while also studying full time. Math has never been my specialty, and with everything else, I got overwhelmed. I dropped the course before I could receive an academic penalty.

I also quit my English class. When I started the semester, I didn't know what LEARN was (It's our online system). My course address was declared "TBD" which was curious. So I waited for my class To Be Declared while unbeknownst to me it was actually an online course based on an online system no one had told me about. When I finally logged on, there had been a wealth of assignments already put into place, the first of which was mandatory and made out for the first day. It was "Introduce Yourself" and asked you to state your name, program, and reason for attending class. An easy grade,
if somebody had told me where I needed to be to receive it.

Between Stats and English, it was a hard start to the University system, but it's smoothed out since.

I've had difficulty choosing courses for next semester as well. Turns out, I was supposed to do that in September, except they only notified me through the student email, and no one told me I had a student email (I think the lack of information I've received comes from the fact I had so many transfer credits?) so I'm doing everything crazy late. I've managed to sign up for  Social Psychology, some Russian culture course, and an Art and Society course. The former for my program-specific requirements and the latter two for my breadth requirements.

I'm on a waitlist for a bunch of English courses too. Turns out, I'm required to take an English course to prove my proficiency. When somebody saw that I had not completed that credential first semester, they threatened to kick me out of the University, contacting me three days in advance of this expulsion. So I looked into it, and there are five courses that meet the requisites  of this criteria. Three of them I can't take, because they are only for people who have English as an additional language. Then there was the online course that didn't work out last semester and which is now filled up. Then there's another course, but when I signed up they said I already have it as a transfer credit so I can't repeat the course. So now the University is saying it's not a big deal, and just to get myself registered within a year and a half.

Feh. I wanted to fit this in before November was over, but now we're more than a half hour past that. Here's hoping I can make December a more blog-filled month.

Edit: The blog is counting this as a November post. I'll take it!

Halloween 2017

Little late to be posting about Halloween, but I'll post about Halloween. Last year I tried to give out candy at my unit, but of course, even though my neighborhood is largely family-based and there are lots of children, not very many people want to trick-or-treat in my area. Can't blame them. When I was a kid, I knew all the best areas to Trick-or-Treat, and those were usually the more wealthy areas. So not around here. The only benefit to Trick-or-Treating in this area is the proximity of the units. Since we're attached, stacked townhouses, you can hit four places while barely having to move. But even the fact that this neighbourhood has so many families sort of backfires, as that means a lot of people will be away from home Trick-or-Treating..

Last year I caught some kids while they were leaving the complex, and some when they were returning. I even rang on my neighbour to give her kids candy. Like reverse Trick-or-Treating.

I went crazy last year, with no perspective on how much candy I should get. I bought $40 worth of candy, enough to fill three bowls, and didn't manage to empty one. Spent the rest of the year trying to push old Halloween candy on people. This time I tried to restrain myself, but I still wound up buying $25 worth of candy. Managed to fit it all into just one bowl, although barely.

I had a bit more perspective on which candies are more popular this year based on which were the hardest to push last year. Didn't even bother with any gummies this year. I just got fruit chews, chocolates, caramel squares, and tootsie rolls.

There was some tentative idea that I would have a stand at the front of my complex and hand out candies on behalf of the neighbourhood (I think the neighbourhood just outside gets better traffic for Trick-or-Treaters) but that fell to the wayside, as I realized that I had a class on Halloween night, from 6:30-9:30, basically the prime Trick-or-Treating hours, and I even had a paper due that day. No one took it on themselves to replace me as the neighbourhoods rep, but I left my roommate with my candy bowl. He managed to hand some out.

But I still have half a bowl of candy, so if anyone wants any old Halloween candy, feel free to drop on by. We've got fruit chews, chocolates, caramel squares, and tootsie rolls.

Curtains and Garden

I took a picture of my closet that is now made from a curtain, if you couldn't imagine it from last post's description

See? So much more visually appealing than some hard white panel. The shameful secret of closet doors is that their only function is to obscure vision as to what is inside the closet. A curtain can easily fill this role with better aesthetic appeal.

I've also stitched up my backpack recently. I think I've mentioned, but every time I sew, I feel like I have to relearn. My backpack split across the seem from where the zipper connects with the rest of the pack, meaning that I could still zip,  but it wouldn't obscure anything from within the pack. Like a closet without a curtain.

In the past, I've sewn up backpack tears with fishing line. If a fish can fight for its life against it, it can hold some textbooks, am I right? But when I tried to thread fishing line through the eye of a needle this time around, the fishing line was just too thick.

So I used dental floss. Not proven against fish fighting for their lives, but definitely durable enough to be ground against teeth.

And while I'm sifting through photos, here's a pic of this year's garden setup. Cherry tomato plants looking kind of wilted, but you can see how they've grown, Cabbage plants looking robust, but they still haven't produced, so I don't have much hope for them. Next year I'll just be a tomato farmer