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

Sociology Midterm Troubles

Remember how I said that my Sociology exam was my favourite? Well, today I went to class and my professor had a special announcement. She said that in her 18 years of teaching, she's never had to make an announcement like this. Apparently, the exam content and answers were leaked and shared over social media.

She said that the people making decisions about this were two levels above her, but that this boiled down to the fact that all exams submitted were considered void. Our grade was going to be split over a midterm, a presentation, and a final exam, with the presentation being optional. This means that, without the midterm being considered, we have the option of having a 20% presentation with an 80% final, a 40% presentation with a 60% final, or a 100% final.

I mean, it's technically less work to put it all in one test, but that's a lot of eggs in one basket.

Our professor let us open into a question-answer period, but she warned us "I can't answer anything about anything". This led to some very repetitive questions and answers.

"I don't know if I'm allowed to ask this."

"You can ask."

"How did this person learn the answers?"

"That's confidential."

"Can we at least learn how we did on the test even if it doesn't count?"

"It's all been voided."

"Why is all this information confidential?"

"That's confidential."

And just those questions being rephrased over and over.

Apparently some students take their studies more seriously than I do. One student asked to leave class based on how sudden the news was. The professor seemed on the verge of tears.

I recently broke my bedroom closet. I broke my previous bedroom closet as well, but that was in the small room, so I just put up a tension rod and hung a curtain to replace it. But that was when I was in the small room. I'm in the big room now, and big room means bg closet.

I tripped and crashed into the small closet door, to be fair, which disfigured it and disallowed me to reattach it. I didn't do anything to the large bedroom closet though. It just came apart as I was opening it, as strange as that sounds. I was talking to a neighbor who has lived in the area longer than I, and she says that both her closet doors have come undone some time ago.

Remember how I said, when I was looking for curtains, that the only place that sells proper curtains are those family-owned bargain stores? The big commercial locations like Wal-Mart sell only garbage transparent curtains for some reason. Same deal for curtain rods. The big business places only sell tension rods at sizes too small to fit my closet. But the first random bargain store I went to sold a generic metal pole that fit my purposes quite nicely. I really don't know why the largest corporations have failed to produce large sheets of fabric or long metal poles.

Anyway, my current closet looks slammin'. I don't know why more people don't have curtain closets, unless their closets are so overstuffed that things are leaning against the doorframes, in which case, my default closets would fail anyway. My current curtain closet panel has a far more creative design than the generic whit sliding closet panels we started with.

Midterms

Well, midterms are done. First one I had was for East Asian Studies, which I found intimidating because the professor told us that the class average was only a little above 70%. Since the bulk of my classmates are from East Asia and are therefor kind of versed with the course material, it kind of made me feel like, "Wait, if these guys are only a little bit above a passing grade, what chance do I have?"

My study habits haven't been the best. I mentioned in my previous post that I've been struggling with fatigue. But the old adrenaline kicked in at just the right moment and I read an entire textbook, cover-to-cover, in two days. We're only halfway through the semester, but the book covered course content all the way to where were in class.

The professor told us that we aren't a history class and wouldn't be tested like one, but the textbook is titled "A History of East Asia". Feel like I learned the entire history of China in two days. Do you know how old China is? It's really, really old.

Should have listened to the professor though. I think I did well on most of the historical questions, but there were more questions on current-day China and geography than I expect. What makes it worse is that I feel like those were kind of the gimme questions. I mean, you should have a grasp of the second largest and fastest growing economy in the world.

Multiple choice test, fifty questions in an hour. Professor said there was no way we could use the entire hour, "If you stay for the full hour it is because you enjoy the atmosphere of the exam".

Of course I'm thinking that gives me about a minute per question, which doesn't feel like much. But he was right. Finished the test in like twenty minutes. Reviewed my answers and handed it in at thirty minutes.

Didn't leave that exam with too much confidence, though.

Went to review for the Sociology exam and I was laughing. I've taken enough Sociology courses that there was basically no new content, I barely knew what to study. Two hours for seventy questions, took like, 45 minutes. Came out of it with a lot of confidence.

Had an art project due that week too. We were doing "disrupted landscapes", which are like regular landscapes, but then you do something to offset the feeling that the rest of the image creates. Examples that we looked at were that melting clock image, that image with the elephants with stilt-legs, some landscapes with words floating through them, some images with monsters in them.  I based mine on a photo of a mountain range that I took while I was in Mali. I really didn't want to disrupt it and was pretty uninspired on how to do it. Apparently that's a common feeling. Eventually I was like "Okay, what draws attention in this image" That rock formation "What do you notice about it?" That crevice looks kind of like a mouth and that grove of trees looks like a tongue.

So I drew some teeth and a tongue and eyes onto it. I'd forgotten I've got a thing for faces put on aspects of nature. Remember Tree Face? This was Rock Face. I so gloomily cartooned the face onto my painstakingly painted landscape, and then spent a solid half hour giggling at it.

Post Grouphome Blues

Ugh... I've been really low energy lately. I feel like I was going so hard for so long, with all my jobs and suchlike, and I always had enough energy to get everything done, but now that life has slowed down, I'm exhausted all the time. I guess at a certain point, when I just kept putting more and more on my plate, the only thing that was keeping me going was the fact that I had that momentum. As soon as I let up a bit, I crashed. I think I may have burned out without realizing it, because I was so distracted. Now I don't know how to burn back in. I feel kind of emotionally stunted, it's hard to get excited about things, or mad or scared or even depressed about things. I just feel tired, even though you'd think a bit of rest would be energizing. I feel like I could sleep for days if I let myself. I haven't had so much free time since Human Services Foundation.

Oh well, I needed some time to recover after Canada World Youth if I recall, and that took place over approximately the same amount of time (six months) as my stint with three jobs, and even a bit with that workload as well as full time University on top of it. This past half year was not less intense than my Malian adventure, haha.

And there was that time in third semester of Social Services where I crashed after running on adrenaline when a bunch of assignments were due at once, which I described as "A painful, delirious haze" and thought I was "permanently broken" after the fact. I came back to form, though.

Still, got midterms coming up, and I'd really like to be in fighting form right now. But I'm too reflective, too relaxed right now.

Oh, I'm not worried about finances anymore. Last time I updated, I was stressed because OSAP gave me my money and it wasn't even half of what they said they'd give me. But they gave the rest of it to me the next day. I don't know why they gave it to me in installments like that, probably just to mess with my head.

I made maybe my stupidest financial decision this past week, though. I bought a washer/dryer. Problem is, I don't know how to install one. I got a good deal on it, which is why I did what I did, but still not exactly an everyday purchase, and I worry about my impulsive decision being based on the "financial comfort zone". People get used to being at a certain level of income, and if they suddenly shift dramatically, even if they don't realize it they will often work toward what they're used to. This means that if someone suddenly loses a lot of money, they will fight harder to bring themselves up to what they used to have, and more strangely, if someone suddenly gains a great deal of money, they will spend in a way so that they return to what they're used to. It's the phenomenon of the homeless person winning the lottery and finding themselves in the same living situation a year later. So I'm worried that I felt the sudden financial spike and made a rash decision.

But yeah, got the washer/dryer, figured I'd just stick it in the wall just like it seems you do with every other major appliance. I look at the plug and see it's a bit different from usual, figure I can buy an adapter or something. Look up how to install a washer/dryer and find out I need a source of hot and cold water. Suddenly feel stupid. I guess I figured that the water just magically produced itself when you plug it in, like the electricity transforms into water somehow. And then yeah, it occurs to me that all that water isn't just going to get reused, the machine probably has to dispose of the dirty water somehow. Really common logic type stuff. Didn't think that one through.

I'm home for Thanksgiving right now. I get today and tomorrow off for Reading Break as well. It's really nice to actually get holidays now. We had the traditional turkey dinner and the like yesterday, which was pretty swell.

28

Well, my birthday passed and I am 28 years old now. I am now in my mid-late twenties (If you'll remember, I section each decade in groups of three, so 21-23 is early twenties, 24-26 is mid, and 27-29 is late. 20 and 30 are rounded numbers and don't get included. Each decade is treated the same. I am 28, so in the middle of what's considered my late twenties, ergo, I am "mid-late twenties")

I got 35 Facebook messages, two texts, two emails, three phone calls. My numbers are down from last year! I've spent too long skulking around under the cover of the night, people have been forgetting me.

 I posted on Facebook "Happy International Day of Peace and do you remember the twenty-first night of September?" because my birthday occurs on the International Day of Peace (great PR for a Social Service Worker) and because the Earth, Wind and Fire song "September" contains the line "do you remember the twenty-first night of September"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Day_of_Peace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs069dndIYk

But my only commentor was someone who doesn't speak English, saying that she liked the music. So she obviously doesn't get it and just thinks I'm a disco fan. I don't think anybody made the birthday connect on either reference

On these posts, I usually list my accomplishments over the previous year. At age 27, I finally managed to gain sustainable full-time employment in my field, and I was accepted into and began University. I can't think of anythinhg else.

I finally got my OSAP today. Originally, I'd mailed my OSAP application to my school's financial aid office, because OSAP said I would need to submit my application there. But then I got a notice that I'd sent it to the wrong place, and that I was supposed to send it to the National Student Loans Service Centre. They linked locations online, but when I went to the locally indicated place to submit my forms, I was told that even though it says it's the place to do it online, they don't provide that service and I would have to go to another location. So I went there and it submitted just fine.

I was told I'd receive my funds on September 1st, but it didn't happen. Checked again and said it would occur September 1-6. Didn't come. Called the National Student Loans Service, at the number they stated I should call if I didn't receive my funds, and it was literally impossible to get a human. Just automated responses to prompted frequently asked questions. But among those responses, they said it would take five business  days past the start of my academic year. Since my academic year started on the 7th, that put things off until potentially  the 14th.

Called the financial aid office at UW even though OSAP's newest estimate wasn't expired, and good thing I did. Financial aid said that I hadn't written a promissory note, which was required to receive funding. Neither OSAP nor UW had indicated this was necessary. The promissory note turned out to be some little option tucked away, that gave some little multiple choice test that read something like:

Are you going to use your funding for school?

By clicking below, I agree to use my funding for school.

So from this point, they requested a couple days to process my promissory not, and then five business days to submit my funding. So in the end, I finally received funding on the 27th. I had to pay for textbooks out of pocket.

Let's talk about the grant. I just had my tuition paid and $2500 for living expenses for the semester.

Really appreciative for the tuition payment and the grant, but player please, let's budget this $2500.

So my rent is approx $950 per month. With roommate, let's lower this to $425. I pay hydro and gas. Let's estimate $60 hydro, $30 gas. $90 divide by two, that's $45.

$55 Internet, $55 phone. That' $110.

Let's make a conservative estimate of $50 per week for food. Let's say there's four weeks per month. That's $200.

So $425 + $45 + $110 + $200 = $780 for the month. And that' excluding other small bills like laundry, textbooks, and recreation. $780 multiplied by four to cover the semester is $3120, exceeding the budget of $2500.

I'm okay because I now have savings, but what I already have surpasses what was given, and I've still got like, three paycheques coming in from Hatts Off which will also surpass what was given. Which indicates that this isn't a sustainable way of living. I don't know how so many students manage it