Sunday Night Update
Hola people. I once again haven't posted in a while. For some reason I'm thinking that it's going to be hard to post something more than just a line or two each day, if I wanted to keep the daily updates going. So instead of doing that, I'm going to try and set aside some time, a few times a week to update my blog (and overall site now). As expected, school's getting in the way of my updates. I mean come on school, can't you lay back a bit so I can post more? Sheesh.
Anywho, I spent most of the weekend doing work. But doing work doesn't mean sitting in my room with my face buried in papers. No, work here is like socializing. We had a few guys working on our chemistry assignment in the common room here and that was a hell of a lot of laughs. Oh I can't really say what we were saying, as it would be really quite inappropriate, but let's just say I laughed more than I actually did work I'd say. We went to the library to do work today, in an effort to escape the distractions in our residences, but as I soon found out, the distractions aren't the surroundings, it's the people. But, I say distractions in the best possible way. I mean what could you want more than constant laughing and fun when doing a chemistry assignment? It really made me think back to times at Ryan's place when Sean, Ryan and I would sit and 'do our chem assignments'. Of course, those were just good times, with chemistry on the side really. Oh, how I miss those days.
So I finally finished my chem assignment after probably 6-7 hours of 'working' on it. I then proceeded to read my physics. Apparantly, the professors no longer baby you through your work. Instead of teaching everything in class and telling you every possible type of question, we have to do some learning on our own and apply the skills we've acquired instead of regurgitating. This is more like how I want education to be. In high school, after doing the same types of questions over and over, I just stopped doing them. After all, they were all basically the same questions with slight twists. Now I actually have to use my brain. I sat here for seriously almost an hour working on one question in chemistry. I did not mind the effort it took or the amount of time because I knew I was actually learning to apply what I had learned instead of just doing the same thing over and over. When I finally got it, I felt like I actually achieved something.
Oh to be certain, not everything is peaches and cream. There are difficulties here. Those mostly stem from the fact that even though it's just one week into actual classes, life has been extremely hectic. The professors have piled on huge assignments (like my 7 page chemistry assignment) and quite a bit of reading. In addition, co-op applications open up for, well, applications this coming Thursday and I really have to get my resume polished up. Gone are the days when you applied for that dish-washing job for the summer. Nope, these are jobs that are quite skilled so it's not really enough to put 'I delivered newspapers' on your resume and leave it at that. Unfortunately, I've never really had much experience writing proper resumes. We've learned quite a bit at the co-op seminar already and I can tell my resume is pretty deficient. I've definitely got to get working on that.
In other news, my laptop battery is out of commission. I can't remember if I've already talked about this, but whatever. Anyways, basically it won't charge up past like 45%. That's kind of a deterrent to my use of it anywhere's outside of my dorm room. I haven't actually needed it outside my dorm to be honest, but I'd like the ability to if the need did ever arise in the near future. So I've been in contact with the reseller and the manufacturer and I haven't received any contact back yet. It may be time to actually call them. They can plead ignorance to emails, but if I call them, they can't avoid me. So I'll have to do that soon enough. A slight PITA, but I'll deal with it.
I was actually semi-sick this weekend which was really crappy. Well, like really lightly sick. I just had a sore throat for the past few days, but it's already getting better. It's infinitely better today than it was yesterday. I should be fine by tomorrow.
Oh this evening, we went to an actual restaurant, as opposed to eating at the cafeteria at Village 1. We went to a place called the Mongolian Grill. It was actually a restaurant unlike any restaurant I've ever been to. Basically you go and get what you want, put it into a bowl, along with sauces/oil and then you stand along this round table thing. In the middle is a large cooking surface and the cooks use what I can only describe as huge chopsticks and they cook your food right in front of you. It was very good actually.
Then a surprise came. We were sitting there finishing up and a birthday line comes up from the employees/chefs carrying a cake thing. Anyways we all clapped and stuff assuming it was for someone's birthday. Weird thing was, they stopped at our table. Then proceeded to set it down in front of me and sang happy birthday. I was so shocked and confused. I felt like I was on crack or something. I can only imagine what the look on my face was like. Anyways, the rest of our like 15 person group were all singing and clapping. Of course it was Tosh's idea to do all this... In any case it was funny and surprising as hell, (apparantly it's not actually by birthday =P) but hey, I got free food. ;)
End of the day, I came back to the dorm and worked more on my assignments. I helped a bunch of people with their work as well. I think I've developed some sort of reputation here already. I think I'm gonna let a lot of people down when they realize I'm just another student here trying to keep up.
Anywho, I spent most of the weekend doing work. But doing work doesn't mean sitting in my room with my face buried in papers. No, work here is like socializing. We had a few guys working on our chemistry assignment in the common room here and that was a hell of a lot of laughs. Oh I can't really say what we were saying, as it would be really quite inappropriate, but let's just say I laughed more than I actually did work I'd say. We went to the library to do work today, in an effort to escape the distractions in our residences, but as I soon found out, the distractions aren't the surroundings, it's the people. But, I say distractions in the best possible way. I mean what could you want more than constant laughing and fun when doing a chemistry assignment? It really made me think back to times at Ryan's place when Sean, Ryan and I would sit and 'do our chem assignments'. Of course, those were just good times, with chemistry on the side really. Oh, how I miss those days.
So I finally finished my chem assignment after probably 6-7 hours of 'working' on it. I then proceeded to read my physics. Apparantly, the professors no longer baby you through your work. Instead of teaching everything in class and telling you every possible type of question, we have to do some learning on our own and apply the skills we've acquired instead of regurgitating. This is more like how I want education to be. In high school, after doing the same types of questions over and over, I just stopped doing them. After all, they were all basically the same questions with slight twists. Now I actually have to use my brain. I sat here for seriously almost an hour working on one question in chemistry. I did not mind the effort it took or the amount of time because I knew I was actually learning to apply what I had learned instead of just doing the same thing over and over. When I finally got it, I felt like I actually achieved something.
Oh to be certain, not everything is peaches and cream. There are difficulties here. Those mostly stem from the fact that even though it's just one week into actual classes, life has been extremely hectic. The professors have piled on huge assignments (like my 7 page chemistry assignment) and quite a bit of reading. In addition, co-op applications open up for, well, applications this coming Thursday and I really have to get my resume polished up. Gone are the days when you applied for that dish-washing job for the summer. Nope, these are jobs that are quite skilled so it's not really enough to put 'I delivered newspapers' on your resume and leave it at that. Unfortunately, I've never really had much experience writing proper resumes. We've learned quite a bit at the co-op seminar already and I can tell my resume is pretty deficient. I've definitely got to get working on that.
In other news, my laptop battery is out of commission. I can't remember if I've already talked about this, but whatever. Anyways, basically it won't charge up past like 45%. That's kind of a deterrent to my use of it anywhere's outside of my dorm room. I haven't actually needed it outside my dorm to be honest, but I'd like the ability to if the need did ever arise in the near future. So I've been in contact with the reseller and the manufacturer and I haven't received any contact back yet. It may be time to actually call them. They can plead ignorance to emails, but if I call them, they can't avoid me. So I'll have to do that soon enough. A slight PITA, but I'll deal with it.
I was actually semi-sick this weekend which was really crappy. Well, like really lightly sick. I just had a sore throat for the past few days, but it's already getting better. It's infinitely better today than it was yesterday. I should be fine by tomorrow.
Oh this evening, we went to an actual restaurant, as opposed to eating at the cafeteria at Village 1. We went to a place called the Mongolian Grill. It was actually a restaurant unlike any restaurant I've ever been to. Basically you go and get what you want, put it into a bowl, along with sauces/oil and then you stand along this round table thing. In the middle is a large cooking surface and the cooks use what I can only describe as huge chopsticks and they cook your food right in front of you. It was very good actually.
Then a surprise came. We were sitting there finishing up and a birthday line comes up from the employees/chefs carrying a cake thing. Anyways we all clapped and stuff assuming it was for someone's birthday. Weird thing was, they stopped at our table. Then proceeded to set it down in front of me and sang happy birthday. I was so shocked and confused. I felt like I was on crack or something. I can only imagine what the look on my face was like. Anyways, the rest of our like 15 person group were all singing and clapping. Of course it was Tosh's idea to do all this... In any case it was funny and surprising as hell, (apparantly it's not actually by birthday =P) but hey, I got free food. ;)
End of the day, I came back to the dorm and worked more on my assignments. I helped a bunch of people with their work as well. I think I've developed some sort of reputation here already. I think I'm gonna let a lot of people down when they realize I'm just another student here trying to keep up.
This entry was posted
on Monday, September 19, 2005 at 9/19/2005 01:48:00 a.m..
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