citrinesunset | Entries tagged with school

Because all of these things feel too short for an entire post on their own:

- I got far less done over Thanksgiving break than I was hoping to. I had all these grand goals to finish papers, but I didn't get anything finished. But I think the break helped, and I'm more motivated now. Hopefully. And I still have time, but I need to work on stuff now if I don't want to be rushing at the last minute.

- One of my classes has a choice: I can write a paper or take the final exam. I would kinda like to not have to take the exam, but I have so many papers to write already, and I think I'm more confident about the exam. I have to catch up on the reading a bit, but I'm a little more sure of my ability to do that than I am of my ability to bang out an A paper for that class when I've got three other papers to finish in the next few weeks.

- I had to work Black Friday this year. I was dreading it because I hate crowds. But it ended up being more boring than stressful, to be honest. There were a lot of people, but not the crazy crowd I was expecting.

- My youngest cat has learned to get up on the bathroom counter and pull Kleenex out of the box. That's what she does when she's bored, now. I always wish my older cat was better at entertaining himself, but the younger one is proof that cats who can entertain themselves get in more trouble.

- I cut out today's Mark Trail comic strip because it's about bowerbirds. I feel like a dork, but any comic strip that has bowerbirds in it needs to be on my bulletin board. And in case anyone was wondering what my favorite bird is, there's your answer. Speaking of bowerbirds,

china_shop wrote a White Collar Bowerbird AU, which should win this month's award for most fun combination of two of my favorite things.

I really wanted to go swimming in the morning, but I'm sick. Not majorly, but I've had a sore throat and headache since mid-afternoon, and have been pretty tired. I think I've been a little under the weather since Friday, but the lack of sleep last night got to me. I'm glad I didn't try to go to the gym today, after all.

When I got home today, I lay down at about 7:00 and ended up sleeping until 2:30, so I feel like the whole night passed me by. And I'm still not feeling great, so no swimming for me, I don't think. And I want to rest up, because I have small plans on Wednesday and then big plans on Saturday.

I do need to work on a paper, though. Fun.

A little bit ago, I decided to organize my icons folder, and I discovered that it's gotten really slow. I can't click and drag my icons around without the computer freezing up for a second with each one, so putting my icons into some new folders I've made is going to take a very long time. My whole pictures folder seems a little sluggish like that. Don't know what the problem is, exactly, if I just have too many pictures/icons saved on the hard drive or what. I could probably transfer some things to external storage.

I've finally decided to give away some books in order to make more room in my bookshelves. I thought I was totally fine with this decision, and ready to give up some of these books. But putting my Harry Potter books in a bag today filled me with nostalgia. I found myself thinking, what if I want to skim through them again someday?

But if I haven't had any interest in revisiting them in the last four or five years, it's probably a good time to give them up.

I'm also seriously debating whether or not to try selling my circuits textbook from last year. On the one hand, I hated that class and have dropped out of the major. On the other hand, the book actually has some interesting stuff in it, like how LCD screens and touch screens work. I'm conflicted. If I thought I could get a lot for it, I'd be quicker to sell. But I don't think I'd make so much that giving it up is an easy choice.

I tried to sell my linear algebra textbook, but I only could have gotten $10 for it if I sold it through the shop I went to today. I may have disliked linear algebra, but the information in that book is still worth more to me than $10.

I did buy my last two textbooks today (assuming my linguistics class doesn't have a book assigned to it in the next week). My Shakespeare book is huge, and I'm not looking forward to lugging it around. But at least it seems good. The print is readable, which is a huge plus. I bought a collected works of Shakespeare on sale years ago, but the print is so tiny that I keep giving up whenever I try reading anything in it. So it's worth having this new copy, I suppose.

I finally got the copy of The Canterbury Tales that I ordered for next semester. I'm waiting on one more book to be delivered, and next week I'm going downtown to buy a couple others.

It looks like my linguistics class might not have a textbook assigned. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I'm not going to complain about spending less money, and maybe having to carry one less book. But on the other hand, a linguistics book is the sort of thing I might actually want to hold onto long term.

I'm excited about next semester. I'm kind of ambivalent about the schedule, because I've gotten so spoiled over the summer, being able to stay up late and sleep in most days. Also, I'm going more days than last semester. But the days themselves are shorter, and I'm going to have a lot more flexibility regarding when I can get the bus home. That means I have more flexibility about going to the library or the gym.

I'm also really excited about next semester. I'm looking forward to my classes, and while I'm glad I have a couple more weeks before they start, I'm actually anxious to begin. I haven't looked forward to school this much in years. Even knowing I'm going to graduate next year is a little bittersweet, whereas last year at this time, I just wanted out as soon as possible.

I'm going to really try to get more writing done before school starts, though. I don't know if I'll be able to finish a bingo for kink_bingo or hc_bingo in that time (probably not), but I'd at least like to finish my first kink_bingo fic.

I've been sick with this ridiculous cough/sore throat/laryngitis/congestion horror since Sunday, and it feels like it's taking forever to get over it. I'll feel like I might be getting better, but then it's a very two steps forward, one step back sort of getting better.

Things I have tried to mitigate my symptoms so I can function:

* Advil Cold and Sinus (possibly effective. It helps with headaches. Might have helped the sore throat when it was really bad).

* Vicks VapoRub (no real effect, except for irritating my skin and being very hard to wash off).

* Swallowing some honey (did it help? No idea. Tasted good, though).

* Hot tea with honey in it (this may have been helpful).

* Cough drops (Meh? I think I might be coughing too much to be able to suck on anything).

I really don't know what to expect come Saturday, which is when I'm next supposed to work. I'm actually expecting that the cough and whatnot will be manageable by then. But I'm concerned about the laryngitis. Holy shit, I feel like I can barely talk. I haven't had laryngitis since I was eight. I think I hate not being able to talk worst of all -- it makes me feel helpless and very annoyed. And I know this cough hasn't helped anything.

All this has put a damper on my last week of classes, too. I'd hoped to be able to actually make the most of the time, since some of my classes have had great discussions. Very little participation from me this week, though. I couldn't even thank my professors even, which I really like to do.

Almost every semester, it turns out that the class I was looking forward to the least ends up being my favorite, and the one I was most looking forward to is the one I'm most "meh" about. I suppose I can think of some logical reasons for this, like maybe I have unrealistic expectations for the classes I really look forward to, and very low expectations for the ones I didn't really want to take. It's kinda strange regardless, though.

I'm sick. Not horrible-horrible or anything. Just a nasty cold. I started feeling like I was on the verge of it on Monday last week, and I think fatigue just wore me down. That, or I've caught something else. In any case, I started feeling really bad on Saturday night.

It could be worse, in that I least I can breathe for the most part. But I just feel really sick, which is making it hard to do much. This is terrible timing. I've got two assignments, two quizzes, and an exam this week, and then finals next week. I also really wanted to go do something this week and I'm not sure I'll have the energy to go roaming around the city for it.

Also, I can't find oolong tea anywhere. Not in grocery stores, at least. I've got some on hand, but I'm a little scared to drink it and run out. I think I'll have to try the local tea shop. I'd like to have some loose-leaf, anyway.

Some good news: I changed my major! I'm so relieved. I wish I could have made that choice a little sooner, but, well, I've made it now and I'll actually graduate sooner than projected and with (hopefully) less debt. So it's not like I've put myself as a huge disadvantage school-wise. I feel so much more excited for the future, now. I had some ambivalence about giving up engineering, but I didn't want to work in that field, anyway. Now I feel like I have the time and energy to focus on making myself marketable for the types of jobs I do want.

The bad thing is, I'm having a hard time motivating myself for the rest of this semester. Some of my classes have zero bearing on my degree, now, so it's hard to give a crap. I need to, though, so I can keep my GPA up as much as possible. I wish I'd made this decision before the withdrawal deadline, though. I definitely would have dropped circuit analysis if I had.

At least I'm a lot more optimistic about the future. And I'm feeling much less depressed.

This cold needs to fucking go away, though. Seriously. If I didn't have to actually do stuff in a couple of my classes tomorrow, I'd stay home.

I've actually, officially started school now. It's going all right so far, though I don't think I have a realistic idea of the amount of work involved yet, as we have no homework assigned yet except for some reading. The reading's going well enough.

I was scared because one of my professors has a lot of negative ratings on ratemyprofessors.com. I don't actually trust that site much, but still. After seeing him in action a little bit, I get the impression he just has very high standards of his students, which is all right because it seems borne of a genuine interest in the subject and a desire to see his students do well and learn, which is a good thing. I find that "tough" professors are rewarding as long as they're good teachers and willing to help. So I'm carefully optimistic.

I'm worried about hurricane Irene, mainly the possibility of losing power. That would really suck.

What also sucks is that I'm still having computer issues. Now, Microsoft Office has like, disappeared. I can't open Word and as far as I can tell, Powerpoint and Excel aren't even on the computer. I did some Google searches, and I found a post on Microsoft's support forum from a gal having the exact same problem, and it appeared to be possibly connected to, yes, Windows Update. The same Windows Update that's been giving me grief since June. At this point, it doesn't seem to just be .Net Framework 4. But I'll be damned if I can trace the root of the problem. I looked under system restore to see if I could roll back to an older restore point, but the earliest point is from a week ago. I would need to go back to early June. My mom has suggested I use the recovery disk and revert to factory settings. This is...unappealing and feels like it might be overkill. At the same time, it feels like attacking the individual issues isn't doing much. I'd thought I'd fixed the .Net Framework 4 thing, but there are still two updates that won't install, and now there's this thing with Word disappearing.

I still need to put in some major work on my Inception Big Bang fic. I'm not too worried about it because I'm in brainstorming mode and have the idea all worked out and started. I don't really want to focus complete energy on it until I finish the WIP I'm completing now. I'm hoping being in school, while drastically cutting my free time, will also put me in a productive frame of mind that will ultimately help my writing. It's worked in the past.

I got some of my textbooks, though two still haven't come in yet. Now I have to decide if I want to wait until next week (which is when classes start) to get them from the school bookstore, or if I should order them elsewhere to be safe. I'm leaning toward the former. Of the books I got, I got all but one of them used, a decision I feel pretty good about. Of course, the most expensive book was only available new. Who wants to bet it's a brand new, probably unnecessary, edition?

The bookstore was a surprisingly easy experience. I usually buy my books the week before classes start, and at my old school, this sometimes meant really, really long lines depending on what time I went. But there was barely even a line today. I don't know if I missed the rush, if it hasn't gotten busy yet, or if I just lucked out. By next semester, I should have a better idea of how things tend to go.

As for the books themselves, they seem pretty cool. I'm hoping I don't have to lug them all around every day, though. They're heavy.

And now I'm tired, because I was up late last night and had to get up a decent time today so I could do this.

I shouldn't complain, but it's been kind of a weird day. My computer seems to be doing all right at the moment, but LJ looks all weird in Chrome.

I went to the bookstore to see if I could order one of my textbooks through them, but if I do that, I can only buy it online. So I'm debating if I should buy it through their website using PayPal or if I should spend the extra money involved in purchasing it from my school's bookstore. Maybe I can get it used. I like new books, but this is a really expensive textbook. Bah.

The computer mess spurred me to back up some stories and fics that hadn't been backed up. I decided to use my new flash drive, because my old writing one is really old and is only 128 MB. The new one is 2 GB. How technology changes...

Earlier, I couldn't figure out why I wasn't super hungry for dinner, and realized it was because I ate a fairly substantial lunch today, as opposed to a snack like I usually have. Now I feel like I've eaten too much.

I still don't know what I'm going to do about the Windows Update thing.

I think I'm going to take it easy tonight. Try to get some writing done (I'm still trying to finish my WIP before school starts. I think I can if I apply myself). And maybe watch a movie. I'm trying to decide between The Departed and Mystic River. One, I've seen and like okay, even though I find it depressing and disturbing. The other, I've never seen before, but I suspect it'll be depressing and disturbing. So I guess it depends on how surprised I want to be by it.

Speaking of movies, I really want to see Never Let Me Go, but I've had a hell of a time finding it. The only place I've seen it sold is Barnes and Noble, and I'd really rather rent it, anyway. It's not available on iTunes. I'm thinking of breaking down and checking Blockbuster.

Also speaking of movies, I've set up my movie review blog, but have run across the same issue I've always had: all my reviews are movies from 2009 and 2010. And there are only two of them. I should really review something recent, but the next movie I definitely plan to see in theaters is The Dark Knight Rises, and that doesn't come out until...next summer, I think?

Just finished my last exam. I've finally got a break. It's weird to be home and not feel like I should really be studying. Of course, now I have to worry about getting stuff done for work and for next semester, but I had to worry about some of that before finals, too. So it's still and improvement overall.

I'm not overly stressed because I didn't have any exams I felt I did terrible on. But with these classes, it's really hard to tell, so who knows? It was actually a good thing that two of my exams were cumulative, though, because one, the earlier stuff we'd done that made its way onto the exams was pretty painless and two, in both of those classes I'd had some difficulty with the final topics we'd covered, so it was to my benefit that I got to earn points on stuff I knew better.

Today, the only thing I want to do is sleep (because I only got five hours of sleep last night) and write (so I can finally finish my Jack/Ianto D/s fic that I've had in progress for months). Maybe I can get some work done on my novel this summer. I've been feeling inspired lately.

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It's the end of the world as we know it

Entries tagged with school

Odds and ends

Best laid plans

Why is saying goodbye to books so hard?

Yay!

I hate being sick

I've come to expect this.

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Weird day

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