Finals -fin!

Yay!  Finals are over as of last week (Tuesday morning, for me), and I've got my grades.  Drumroll, please...

pretty park from last week

...AND the results are:
Calculus: B
Film Studies: A
Senior project: A

YAY!  My GPA is now....3.27 :D  That's a major improvement compared to my freshman year (when I was lucky to get it up to almost 3.0)

same park, this week

I don't want to jinx it, but my grades have been improving as I go through college and mature as a person -meaning my GPA has also been improving.  I think if I were able to go through school long enough, I could eventually get a 4.0 for a term, straight A's.  But, that's a moot point because if I was in school long enough, I wouldn't have to take classes for my major, and could choose easy classes.

pr

case in point: I BSd this an hour before it was due

Like communications -cough i mean, comm is a great major-

this was my final "reaction" to a film screened in class

Anyway, finals time.

If you haven't been to college, you probably pictures finals time as a time when just about everyone buckles down, holes up, and hits the books.  You know, pasty college kids staying up all night writing papers, cramming for stuff they forgot, study groups in quiet rooms, not a lot of partying, and coffee all around (maybe even some adderall).  

found by the math dept. in NewBooger Hall

Maybe it's because my college isn't "traditional" (it's a working man's college), but my college is nothing like that.  "Dead week" -the week before finals isn't really dead; there's lots of on campus activities, presentations, and business-as-usual.

business as usual: my cat sitting on the internet

Personally, for finals, I go through dead week super excited to be almost done with the term.  By the time the weekend before finals starts, I realize I should probably look over my notes and study.  I make plans to study for all these hours, schedule study sessions, get out my books and notes, and then they just sit there, forgotten, as I watch TV, internet, and (my favorite) sleep.

This leads to a slight panic about what to do for the final I have coming up tomorrow/in an hour.  For example, this year, I had 2 finals on Monday and one early on Tuesday.

a drawing of me by one of my students

  I DID do a good job of writing my final reflection for my senior project 5 days before it was due, but the 5 minute oral presentation that was supposed to accompany it?  Didn't start practicing, or even think about what to say, until about 20 minutes before I had to do it.  I COMPLETELY winged it as I did my bit presenting our group project.

My film studies final?  Brought my textbook and flipped through it over a bowl of soup about half an hour before the class.  By the time the final started, I was ready to be gone.  We watched 2 short films twice, but I only watched them each once.  I was done with my entire final for that class in about 15 minutes.  I got 23/25 on it.

Seriously, this guy is trying to make me look like a good student or something.  I'll tell you this much: I didn't write WENDY + LUCY drunk

My calculus final was tricky.  It was early, so last minute cramming wouldn't be useful.  Instead, I started my notes the night before, got tired or possibly bored, so I went to bed.  I planned to wake up early at 5 to finish my notes.  I had to leave by 7, so that left 2 hours to study and get ready.  5 am come, my alarm went off, I got pissed and let it ring until 6.  I hastily scrawled out the rest of my first page of notes, and for the second page, just tore out a random sheet from my class notebook.

That was actually pretty diligent of me!  I'm making myself sound bad, but it's true.  Most people I know are so tired of their classes that by finals, they don't care.  They half-ass their way to success, failure, or mediocrity.  As my roommate says, "It's so nice to see a whole term of work summed up into a tiny little letter."

my cats in the window on the beautiful part of a day

My advice to any new-to-college or not-yet-in-college homeskillets when it comes to finals is: actually study, and you'll rock it.  But, don't stress out either.  It's not worth getting an ulcer over, and if you give yourself an anxiety attack, you'll probably do worse than if you had skipped studying altogether.

My favorite part of finals week?

spending hours in front of a REAL fire in a bar with good friends?

IT'S OVER TIL NEXT TERM!!!! :D  NOW I GET TO BE POOR BUT HAVE FREE TIME!

In my boredom on Monday, I baked (and baked and baked) and I hate baking now

Chocolate chip

Peanut butter kiss

brownies

gummy tea cookies

First Day Down!

So, I had my first day of classes today. Ask me how that went, go on. BLAH! Between "waking up" at 7:22 am (and finding my cat had tipped my crappy IKEA dresser over and spilled clothes everywhere), almost forgetting to brush my teeth, and putting my socks on upside down, I also managed to bring a dirty sock with me to the bus stop. I shoved that in my backpack.

I ALSO found out last night, much to my dismay, that a week and a half ago, I left a bag of edamame in my backpack. Yummy. They rotted and made the whole bag smell like death. So I did the reasonable thing and emptied it, and sprayed it full of body spray. I'll wash it tomorrow or something.

Anyway, so, I got to school about 10 minutes later than anticipated, but it was fine because I was still early. I got to my first class, Calculus, and the teacher is a kind of skinny, long-haired lunatic. Seriously, he's skinny, and dresses like an 80's meth dealer (or something, I'm not sure). But, he's energetic, and he seems to be pretty nice. He explains things. I wish I was awake enough to GET it.

Met up with my Calculus homie, and we hung out for a while -she bought me ice tea. We ran into my other friend, and went to the bookstore. What a mistake, going to the bookstore on the first day!!! ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS go the week or two before classes start!!! It's SO crowded the first day. But we endured it, and then just hung out in the Park Blocks. Met up with my other friend. They went to classes. I grabbed a salad for lunch (salad bar FTW).

My second class was my senior project, where in my case I'll be mentoring K-12 kids at a non-profit outdoor science inquiry program based near Mt. Hood. I'm excited; since I already basically teach, I am at ease with kids. Of course I'm always nervous the first day when I don't know what to expect, but I am really looking forward to this class. My biggest concern is transportation, since I'll be carpooling with the program manager and will have to wake up at like 4:30 or 5 am once a week. Knowing ME early in the morning...ehhhhhh.

Anyway, and then I killed some time in the coffee/bagel/bubble tea shop. I have an addiction to "seed" bagels -sesame and poppy, ohh yeah. I also drank some decaf tea. Next time, let's make it CAF! I read the free paper and found out M.I.A. (one of my current favorite artists) is playing here 10/18, but I probably won't go...(sad day) I also eavesdropped on the people around me.

Some dude and chick were talking about anime, and I was all "pssh, OTAKUS, losers" even though I really like manga -I just don't like much TV! But they were adults, and whatever. I also eavesdropped on these kids, and I laughed at them inside. The boy was your stereotypical gay boy, and he was all dressed up like a skater. The girls were so cute with their fancy makeup, fashionably uncomfortable clothes, styled hair, jewelery, etc. It was very elaborate, and I knew right away they were freshmen (you can always tell, especially the first day). Very few college people put much effort into their appearance, at least at my school, because we are all too damn busy to worry about what we look like. Anyway, the funniest thing, though, was that the boy had taken Japanese. OH HOW I LAUGHED. I took Japanese all 4 years of high school, and the first 2 terms of college. Let me say this: the Japanese program here, JSL, fucking BLOWS. If I tried, I could come up with, at maximum, 3 positive things to say about it. And that's if I REALLY tried. I feel like I should've warned the kid about that. Or at least given him the student counseling card. He'll need it if he's gonna stick with that.

After CC, I went to the Student Building, and hung out, and later met up with my friend. It was ridiculously hot and humid today, so we hung out in her dorm, just laying there, melting. I feel so gross, I can't even describe it. YUCK. It was nice to just cool off by laying still with my stupidly heavy backpack tossed aside and my shoes off.

Then it was time for the stupidest class ever -Intro to Film. I'm sorry, but I have an ingrained prejudice against indie-hipster white people. And this room was FULL of NOTHING but whities! Ok, I lie, there were 2 African dudes and 1 Chinese girl. But out of like 45 people, come on! And, most of them were quiet. But some of them weren't! THEY ANNOYED ME! All using their big, fancy, stuck-up words to make their stupid, mundane ideas seem smart.

Basically, I despise pretense, and these fuckers were pretentious hipsters all into their high-class film knowledge, I'm over it. Stop showing off how much you know about film, nobody cares but you tools. Films are fun to watch and can show important things about a society, tell messages, be beautiful, etc. BUT COME ON. They are NOT essential to mankind.

You know what's essential to mankind? Food, water, air, space, nature, and freedom. We can live without films. I guess what I'm trying to describe is how FRIVOLOUS movies are. I know I'm going to dread this class. Particularly since it's almost FOUR hours long, and gets out at 9:10. Meaning I'll have been on-campus more than 12 hours.

My attention span is just not going to be able to handle this shit. But, that's that for the "first day" report. Now I'm dead freaking tired, and gonna go PTFO!

Welcome to College Part 1: Destitution

I remember a few years ago (seems so recent and yet so long ago) when I first started college. I was so excited! I was going to be fashionable, make lots of friends, do fun things, get great grades, lose weight, party, work, and blah blah blah. And, to be fair, freshman year I did do most of that -I lived in the dorms, which makes it easy to make friends. I still dressed like a goth girl, and wore make up daily. I went out at all hours of the night, doing stupid things like walk by myself past midnight in a notoriously bad part of town. I didn't lose weight, and since I didn't study, I didn't get good grades. I did alright. And I definitely partied, if by "party" you mean got drunk on Pabst all night with some guys I wasn't exactly friends with but were fun to drink with. Oh boy, my grades suffered that term!

College is nothing like you see in movies. Not that I've seen a lot of movies about college; not really my taste. But still, we have this ideal that the girls are hot and dress up, the guys are cool, everybody's in a frat or sorority, everybody has wiiiiild parties, big football games, school spirit, rah rah rah, you know the cliches. I'm telling you, none of that is true. This is the first in a We'll-See-When-I-Get-Bored-Of-It series explaining what college is really like for me, an Average Student :)


So, what's it like being a college student? For one, everybody's pretty damn poor. Everyone I know has money problems -student loans, FAFSA (the biggest bullshit you'd ever believe), rent, books, you name it. I don't know ANYONE who can afford to regularly party, do drugs, drink, wear fancy clothes, drive nice cars, go places, buy the most recent electronics, or eat regularly/healthily.

Seriously. College is all about staving off complete destitution long enough to graduate. On a typical Saturday night, if I ask myself, "What do I want to do today?" the answer is something along the lines of "I have 37 cents. Let's stay home and sleep." Right now, after rent and before payday, I have a total of $8.50 to live off of. If I'm going to eat, it's whatever's in my freezer or cabinets

I'm vegetarian, so I don't have to worry about buying that expensive "meat" other people crave. I just buy frozen vegetables on sale, and rice in bulk, so when supplies get low, I can make a tasty stir fry and rice dish. Or I can make just rice and veggies. Or rice and cheese. Cheese is a common college staple, along with tortillas, eggs, milk, cereal, chips, popsicles, potatoes, pasta, butter, cookies, and a huge bag of baking chips. In our house, we thrive primarily on bagels and cream cheese. Two weeks' worth of groceries costs me usually about $30, if I go somewhere cheap like Winco.

Obviously a diet based largely on boxed foods, frozen foods, preserved foods, grease, salt, sugar, and fat is NOT healthy. Hence, the Freshmen 15, the Sophomore 25, the Junior 35, and the Senior 45. At least if you go to Grad School, you'll be too stressed out to eat. Anyway, all this poverty puts the stereotypical college food Pizza out of our range. Sometimes salad is affordable, and when it is, I get that.

Thanks to this poverty, college students LOVE free stuff. Just today, I picked up a half-broken, wobbly old stereo cabinet that my neighbor was giving away. I was stoked! I can use it to store some of my crap. My roommate's mom got us a killer free coffeetable a few weeks ago. Basically, if it's in even remotely usable condition, and you can get it home, if it's free, a college student will jump on that like flies on shit and drag it home. You can figure out what to do with it once you've got it home.

Similarly, I love deals. I will nitpick for the best deals in Winco. I won't buy things I don't really want, or usually need, but I can spend fifteen minutes deciding on which box of pasta gives the most bang for buck. Coupons? Awesome! What I won't do to save 15 cents a pound. Your standards, when you're a poor college student, also take a dive. It usually goes name brand > store brand > generic brand > sub-generic brand. Winco sells stuff that is literally called "Cat Clay." "Cat Food." "Dog Food." It's a plain white or yellow bag with black lettering. For me, I can handle the sub-generic brand stuff usually, although I won't buy stuff that tastes nasty. And I won't buy my pets anything less than store brand.

Being poor as I am, I did get rid of cable, and I'm on the cheapest internet (still expensive). I take advantage of every deal I can. Thrift stores and Old Navy are great for cheap deals. I won't spend more than $10 for a shirt, and no more than $20 for pants. Actually, thrift stores rock in general. So much shit for so cheap! Unfortunately, there are better thrift stores back in my hometown than my new town. Subsequently, I have a hard time throwing anything away. "Oh, clothes that don't fit me? Hrm...I could lose weight! They only have one hole in them." You get it. I make an excuse to keep everything.

The worst part of being a poor college student, though, is the working. You have to work to pay for your life, but working interferes with school. Yes, students who work are better at time management, but my job is infuriatingly inflexible. I can't afford to quit, especially with the promise of full-time employment right after graduation, but I will never graduate if I can't take core classes because they interfere with my work schedule. It's such an annoying conundrum.

But, the upside to this destitution is the creativity that you have to draw from the depths of your soul. You'll find yourself making strange meals that are surprisingly delicious. You'll find some use for the torn up old robe you kept for some reason (it's our bathroom curtains). An old fishbowl is now a pot for a plant. Nothing to do? Let's clean. Let's sleep. Or, let's study. Hate your job? Think of it as the place with free AC or heat. Plus, if you're really looking for something to do, you can go to free school events.

Yes, the college life is a constant battle of being completely broke, getting paid, paying rent, and being broke again. And if you're like me, the poverty will carry on after graduation thanks to a huge debt left by student loans that are only growing interest. Such is life, and college is great training for how to be poor. It's even actually pretty fun sometimes!