9 posts tagged “classes”

So today was a pretty laid back day. I'm kinda glad that class started back. It's my last year, and it feels bittersweet. I'm ready to graduate, I'm contemplating about going to grad school though to study rhetoric, but I'm still not really sure about that though. I think I might take the GRE just in case I decide to go in the near future. I wanted to take it anyways just to take it. I know this is weird, but I like taking standardized tests. A lot of them are stupid and don't determine much of what the folks that create it claim, but I feel like it's a competition. It's between you, national statistics and the test makers. I love the challenge. For example I took several AP tests just for the hell of it. I wasn't in a lot of the classes that I took the tests for. I took the SAT twice and I didn't even need to, but I did improve quite a bit the second time around. I almost took the ACT for the hell of it, but just decided to stick with the SAT. Call me crazy, but I like taking them.

Oh, and get this. The class that I was most looking foward to, Advance Interpersonal Communications, was the class that I ended up missing today. I read my schdule wrong and ended up missing it entirely. My prof was cool with it, though.

Well, I'm going to unwind now and read a bit.

Well, today was registration day for me. I couldn't register for my classes until 4:30 p.m. which is one of the crappiest times to get for registering. There were so many people on the website that it took forever for me to sign up for the classes, but luckily I got pretty much all of the classes I wanted. So this is what my schedule is going to look like:

January Term:
Interpersonal Communication

Spring Term:
Intro to Photoshop
Mass Media Law
History and Theory of Rhetoric
Intro to Communication Research

In short, I'm going to have a lot of reading and writing to do :( However, I do have some really cool professors this time around. I look forward to working with photoshop, as it will be my only art class this time around. I hope that next fall I will be able to take web design.

Well, I'm going to go to bed. I'll have to wake up uber early tomorrow to finish up an article that I'm doing for Opinions. (I was supposed to send it tonight, but that's not going to happen as I have writer's block.)

Yay! Woot! After about four months of searching I have a job as a computer lab assistant for an appartment complex. However, I'm more so a tutor and a daycare leader. I get paid work study and I don't get to work that many hours, but it's something. I start next week.

Yesterday I took an exam for Theories in Human Commnication class. I fear I failed...epically (I wonder if that's spelled right). The only good thing I see in this experience is that I know what to study for next time around.

Now I have to go to Acts of the Apostles class. We have a quiz today and my prof is insistant on creating really hard quizzes because for some reason he thinks if the whole class scores well then that's a bad thing. WTF? He should be happy that we're all reading the material!

Well, it has been a while since I've made a post. I've been pretty much busy with school work. I can't wait until I get a day off. However, I like my classes.

Yesterday, I meet up with someone. For over a year we did not talk to each other. I had written a news article that reported some events that caused a bit of a stir on campus. I don't know if I blogged on it before, but I don't really feel like going into detail. Anyways the morning it was released, this guy that I interviewed for the article came up to me, gave me a hug, and said it was a good article. Then later that night, there's a mass e-mail saying that the article misrepresented them, and that I took their words out of context. After that, I didn't have anything to do with any of the people I interviewed. A few days ago, I bumped into the guy and he asked if we could have a chat sometime. I agreed. It was pretty awkward because I knew to talk about, but we didn't discuss it right away. He asked me how I was and asked me a few questions about myself and then he talked about himself a bit. Then he said that he apologizes for the way things went, and he explained himself. I told him that I never had any intentions on making him or anyone else feel bad. I wanted to tell the story in an objective manner. So we're cool now. I could help but have a bit of a feeling that he's attracted to me, but I don't feel anything for him. He's a cool guy, but I just don't feel anything for him other than friendship.

Well, I'm going to get to work on my Design I paper.

Today I've been busy sort of being busy. I revamped my resume, wrote a cover letter, and filled out an application for a job at the electric and utilities cooperation as a student clerk. They offer jobs for university students during the summer, and if you are good they can offer a part time spot during the school year. I'm applying for student clerk, so I'd get a little cubicle and do data entry, file things, you know clerical work. I know it can get mundane, but I miss getting a steady paycheck. I have to print of my transcript (at school because the printer my mom had decided to die) and mail it off soon. I'm hoping that I'll at least get an interview.

I registered for classes last week. I'm going to take Design I so I can take a web design class. No matter what I'm taking web design. I wanted to since the first semester of college, but I couldn't fit in the prerequisites (Drawing I or Design I), so I had to wait. If all else fails, the least I could do is get a job in web design after college.

Today my mom took me shopping on a whim. That doesn't happen; Mom never takes me shopping just out of the blue. I got a hoodie (half-sleeved), a couple of empire waist blouses, and a tank. I still need pants though...and shoes, but not just any shoes. Lately I've been only getting some plain boring shoes. I need some color! Some pink, red, blue...flip-flops, sneakers, heels, flats (but definitely NO CROCS!!!!) ...I need to go shoe shopping!

For the past ten minutes I've been trying to make up a parody for this song expressing how I'm beginning to detest going to class, but I have failed miserably so I will not share what I came up with. This post will be boring as hell to read, but if you're curious about what I have to do for classes this week, please feel free to read on.

My classes are driving me insane!!!!!! I think I'm just tired, but I feel as if I'm overwhelmed with stuff to do for classes. For reporting for mass media, we have to do a personality story. The story memos that I turned in today were not for a personality story because I didn't know that's what my professor wanted. So I have to pretty much send him another story memo! I'm really happy that we only have four stories to do for this class because I have a much longer time to get a story done than if I was doing this for my school's newspaper. So cranking out another story memo doesn't throw a wrench in my plans of getting the story done early. Tomorrow evening I'm going to have a chat with a guy who is in a club called Good Deeds for Trees. I'm hoping I can get something on him, because I really don't feel like doing anything else. I think it would be good because he's actually making an effort to improve the environment. The dude seems really passionate about what he does so maybe he'll be really interesting to interview.

I also have a query letter to write and I need to write out a résumé for the same class. The query letter is a letter that you send to a publication telling the focus of your story, why it would be good for the publication to print it, why you are qualified for writing the story, and pleading with them that they except your work. I have no idea what I want to write about, but I do have an idea of who I want to write it for: Bitch Magazine. It's a feminist magazine that I heard about a long time ago on some morning talk show...it was probably over the summer, not that it really matters when I heard about them. I checked out some of their stuff, and it's pretty good. I now just need to figure out what would be a good topic for me to write about for them. And this is due Friday, so I have a few days to mull over this. The topic can change over time in the query letter since the actual story is due at the end of term, so I'm not too worried about this. However it would be nice to have a good idea so over term I could write it out before it's due.

But of course I have other coursework to do for the other classes I'm taking. For my core 250 class I have to write a reading response for Antigone. I read most of it, but I don't have time to read it all so I'll use those handy dandy Sparknotes to find out what happens in the end. Then we have to try to relate it to what we're learning in class about Plato and Aristotle. Luckily this is a one page, single-spaced response so I can bull shit my way though it. It doesn't have to be right, it just has to be turned in. We also have to write up a personal reflection, in which we are supposed to take a topic that is in the news and apply Plato's and Aristotle's ideas of metaphysics to it. I was hoping they would have posted up the prompt over the weekend so I could have written it out then, but the instructors decided to...well I shouldn't say ass around...well, I can because they could have wrote the prompt out last Friday and posted it up on blackboard. Again, it's a one pager so I think it won't be that hard to do. I'll probably wake up early tomorrow to get those done and out of the way because I just won't have time to do them any other day of the week.

For international relations, we received the questions we'll be quizzed on this Friday. I'm really glad that he (the professor) sends us these questions because that way we don't have to look around for the stuff in the book. It's a timed quiz too so it's good to have the information printed out. I hope he uses these questions in our exam too. I don't know if he does...I should check that out in the syllabus.

Lastly, for radio broadcasting I still have to figure out what I'm going to do. Thank goodness that I got to do the radio show last Saturday because I know know that the wireless internet we have on campus sucks ass! I wanted to play some songs from my imeem playlist. Although I was getting a really good signal, it took about 10 minutes for a song to load, and then sometimes it wouldn't load fully so we had to scramble to find another song to put in the CD deck so we wouldn't have a ton of dead air. On Wednesday, my group and I have to go on air for two hours, and I have a thirty minute segment at which I was supposed to present international hip-hop groups, but imeem isn't going to work. I might try using limewire...I don't know. I'll figure out something. But I'm thinking that instead of hip-hop, I'll do international pop and that way I don't have to worry so much about if there's cursing in it. I have to come up with something soon, though, because I need to write a script.

I just looked through all of this, and I realized that I spent almost an hour writing about coursework. I really can't believe I spent all of this time writing about coursework. I really need to do something other than sitting up in my house and doing fucking coursework.

So far I've completed two days of Spring term, and I've just completed my first paper. I decided not to put it off until Sunday so that I have sometime to read the assigned chapters of the other books I need to. One of my goals for this year is to stay on top of things this time around. I need to stop procrastinating so much. I read somewhere that if you do something 13 times, then you'll keep that habit. Well, if that's correct, if I do class assignments ahead of time 13 times, then maybe I'll get in the habit of getting things out of the way.

Lately I've been looking for a publication to submit an article to. In my class, reporting for mass media, we have to send in an article that we are going to do throughout term to a publication. I decided that I'll try my luck with College Bound Teen. They like work that is written from a college student's perspective, so I figured this would be good for me. Maybe I'll get the article published. I just don't have an idea at the moment. I'll be needing one soon so I can write up my query letter which is due in a week or so. Although I'm not on the newspaper staff this semester, I'm still writing articles. Go figure. I think in the fall I'll return to the staff, but maybe I'll write for scene instead of the news section.

My job sucks. I can only work Tuesdays and Thursdays because they close at 4:30 p.m. and my classes run until 3:05 p.m. and by the time I get to work, I would only be able to work for 30 minutes. It sucks. I love how flexible it is, but I do not like the fact that I can only work for two days out of the week. They also have periods where there's nothing to do for a few weeks, so I can't come in to work. It pays well, but I don't get to work often.

In other news. It seems that I can't get myself to call my friend Sabrina. My mom and I went to Zips one night to get something to eat and when I went to order my food, I saw this teenage girl working on the fryer. She was pregnant and suddenly I though about Sabrina working at taco bell pregnant with a big belly fixing tacos. It was depressing. Then to hear that she's engaged with someone who she barely even knows. It just bums me out because I know she is capable of making better decisions that what she has been doing. Even if I talk to her, I don't know what to say. I can't act like I'm happy for her, but somehow I seem to make myself say I don't like what you are doing. Maybe I am just afraid that if I were to tell her that I don't approve of her getting married now that she will drift farther away from me. However not talking to her is doing just that as well. I don't know what to do.

Well, so far we had Roscoe for about four days. I'm starting to think that the bassett hound breed is not the kind of dog I want. Don't get me wrong--I really like Roscoe, but I need one that's a bit more obedient. I think it's cool that Roscoe is really chill, but he's just too damn stubborn. Everything has to be his way or no way. I know that bassett hounds are not ones who will come to you when you call his or her name, but hell, it's too damn cold to go outside and try to bring him in. I think when I get a dog, it'll be a Golden Retriever or something...then again, I like small dogs...maybe a cardigan welsh corgi. And also, my mom has a short temper, and finds Roscoe annoying. I don't want to have deal with keeping Roscoe away from her when she's agitated (which for the majority of the time, it's over nothing). I think it would be better if he had a different home.

As for homework. It's winding down to finals week, and I am feeling tired. My American National Politics prof gave the questions for the finals. They are four essays and two of them will be on the exam. My goal today is to: 1.) work on my presentation for Intro to public speaking and get that out of the way.  It's a persuasive speech and my topic is the "herofication" of historic figures and events and how it is lessing the quality of education. I think it's going to be really good, and it's also one of the things I want to do a mini documentary on someday. The second thing I want to do is work on question #1 for the exam. I mean, I at least want to get all of my facts together, but if I do have energy I want to write out an essay with the facts in it, and maybe print it out on our 4" x 6" notecard. Oh, and the third thing I want to do is read more of Basic Black by Cathie Black, the president of Hurst Publications. It's a really good book on how to keep your goal in perspective and balancing out your career life with having a family life. So far it's been really interesting and doesn't have that feel of a self-help book...maybe because she isn't a therapist. I'm a planner, and since my future in journalism is a but uncertain I'm looking for some guidance. Since I don't have a mentor at school to go to, I need to get some advice elsewhere. I think this book, is a slice of what I need.

I have some really good news. I finally got to register into a film class for Jan-Term. Yay! The program that my uni uses for registering is really crappy, so I had to wait a few weeks before I could frickin change my classes. I dropped my second semester of Spanish (I need some time to really learn those concepts before I attempt to do the second semester because my prof is just not getting to me. I'm thinking about dropping it as a minor. I'm also thinking about picking up Poli Sci as another major, but I don't know how dedicated I'm going to be with writing the papers. It's interesting, but I don't know for sure if I should double major in Journalism and Political Science...maybe I should stick with one.

It looks like I have today off again...which I think is good. I can take a bit of time to watch Tucker: The Man and his Dream today in the Library and take a few notes...Oh, crap that reminds me that I have to re-write my movie write-up for All The President's Men and Good Night and Good Luck. I'll spread that out for the rest of the week.

When I went to the library to check out Basic Black I found out they had the Ken Burns documentary called Jazz. I wanted to see it for a long time, because I missed it when it first aired. Now I've checked out the fourth video cassette which covers the 20's and the depression. So on this one they talk about Frankie Manning and the whole Lindy Hop/Swing era. I'm excited to see it since I am a fan of Lindy Hop and Swing. Also, the reference librarian suggested that I check out the first video cassette of Martin Scorsese's documentary on Blues. I didn't know he did something like this, so I'm going to try to watch it tonight, if I have time.

Well I better go and get ready for class.

I've been meaning to write an entry for a while. However, I became a YouTube/Crunchroll junkie so I've been consumed by vlogs and J-dramas and k-dramas for the past few weeks. Now, I'm back into the daily grind of school and writing for the school news paper.

So far, things have been pretty good. I like three of my four classes. American National Politics seems to be really cool. I'm a history buff so to be able to talk about what happened in American history as it relates to politics is fun for me. I don't know how I'm going to feel after the quiz next week...I might hate it after that if I get a bad score. According to my professor, most people do horribly on the quiz so she doesn't expect too much from us. See, she doesn't understand how I work. I think it's the competitive side of me when it comes to this. I have to do well on everything in order to be happy. I don't care if it's extra credit or just a practice test where you only get a few points for doing it. I'm obsessed with getting a good score on everything. It used to be worse though. Back in middle school, I would have a fit every time I got a B or less. Now I'm much more at ease with it. I know that a B is good. I'll accept a B, but I would much rather get an A. I don't have a cow when I get B's anymore; however, I still feel bad if I don't score well on things. So with this quiz, which is a 30 question multiple choice quiz, I want to get at least 25 questions right. I've been looking at the chapters and doing chapter outlines (which I thought I was done doing after taking AP US History). I'm going to be prepared! We'll see how that goes.

Intermediate Spanish is cool. We are forced to talk in Spanish a lot more, which I think its a blessing and a curse. Really, I just need to realize that everybody in that class is in the same boat as me and we all lack confidence when it comes to speaking it. One thing that really annoys me is my professor's neck/chest hair. He can wear a button-up and you can still see his chest hair on his neck. I don't know, but that just annoys me. I don't know about you, but chest hair should only be on chest and not neck.

Intro to public speaking is pretty good, too. We have a small class so it's easier to do presentations because it's easier to reach the audience. It's also an advantage to know the demographics of the class before you come up with your presentation so you know how to get their attention and keep their attention. I'm pretty sure I'm going to learn a lot from this class.

Now, the class that puts my teeth on edge my math class. We had to pick out math class based on our SAT scores. This posed a problem for me. I wanted to take Algebra and Trigonometry because I really wanted to work on my skills and ACTUALLY LEARN SOMETHING, but my SAT scores wasn't high enough. Why, you ask? It's because I fell asleep in the middle of taking the math portion of the test. Yep. I fell asleep. So I got a score of 570 or something like that. So I'm in this class that's like remedial math for people who didn't understand the crap they taught in the 9th and 10th grade. Right now, we are undergoing the "hardest" part of the class, which is the Fibonacci's sequence.   Now, I understand that some people don't understand this stuff, which is alright.  The world doesn't revolve around me, so I know she does need to teach it, but WHEN YOU ARE "LECTURING" THE EXACT SAME THING THAT'S ON THE PAGES OF THE DAMN TEXT BOOK, IT DOESN'T REALLY HELP ANYONE LEARN ANYTHING MORE!!!!  Her whole lecture was the very same from the book. And she is going painstakingly slow for me. So I decided to talk to her to see if I could get independent study. She says that she doesn't have enough time to meet outside of class. We don't need to meet outside of class. She could just give me all the assignments that we are doing this semester and I could just do them. While she's teaching the class, I could do the quizzes. We don't need to meet outside of class. So she decided to give me the chapters to look at so that I can see if some of this stuff is new. None of it is new to me. So my  mom says that I should be happy that I can get an easy A. Again, there's something that people don't understand about me. I can't just accept an easy A. It doesn't really feel like I earned it. I need to have learned something and have been challenged in order to feel like I earned that grade. It's the whole principle of going to school.

So yeah, that's how I feel about my classes. As for news paper, I have two stories to do. One is for the online edition and I just have to write a short article (from 200-500 words) on how we ranked on the US News list for best colleges for 2008. The other is about the influx of the freshman class and looking at recruiting and admissions and such. Also I'll have to look at how are we going accommodate the increase of students since the uni, I go to is a small one. I think it should be a relatively easy article to start off with. I'm going to have to spend sometime in formulating questions tonight though.

The new system for the newspaper is beat reporting. At first when I learned of this, I wasn't really open to it. I liked being able to do stories from different aspects of student life and administration stuff. With beat reporting you are pretty much stuck with one area to cover. On the other hand, it makes life quite easier because you become familiar with certain things dealing with your beat so writing becomes easier. Also you get to know your sources and as your sources become more familiar with you, it becomes easy to get info from them because you have that rapport already established. After thinking about it for a while, I'm warming up to it.

Well, I think I'm going to stop writing now. I had quite a bit to get off of my chest I see. I really want to talk about my adventures in trying to get a part time job, but my fingers are tired of typing.