First Impressions Spring 2009 (Part A)

It was 70° F when I woke up at 7AM today! The day got progressively colder from there. By noon it had dropped to 62° F. It's JANUARY! Those flowers shouldn't be in bloom in January!

When I got to school around 830AM it began to pour down a cold hard rain which lasted just long enough for me to get completely soaked while walking to class. It was surprisingly windy outside, as well, and I wasn't wearing a coat. Why would I? It was 70 freaking degrees outside!

At any rate, my first class of the day was British Literature I. My professor seemed very familiar for some unknown reason, and she seemed to think that I looked familiar to her, as well. That was kind of strange. I've never had her for a class, that I can recall, and I haven't seen her around dancing, so I can't figure out where I would have met her before. The course looks as though it is going to be difficult for me. There will be ALOT of reading. The course is going to cover British Literature from the Middle Ages up to about the early 1800s. We are starting out with Beowulf. God, I hate Beowulf. We're also going to cover some of Chaucer, for whom I also have no particular love. Why did I sign up for this class again? Oh, that's right, it was required that I take a literature course and American Literature was booked up solid. Actually, I don't mind modern British Literature, stuff like Orwell and Huxley, but anything around Shakespeare and earlier can pretty much kiss my ass, as far as I'm concerned. Why couldn't those people learn how to write ENGLISH? They were, you say? No, actually, they were writing in Anglo-Saxon, a broad term for a variety of dialects from around the British Isles during the time of the Middle Ages. Granted, it would later evolve into English, but I wouldn't exactly call what they were writing English anymore than I would call a biscuit with sausage gravy a sausage biscuit!

After class, I spent my two hour break in the library trying to read the first twenty pages of the near 100 pages that we are expected to read by Friday! I say trying since I kept getting distracted in the library by some guy playing hip hop music through his headphones which I could still hear from about eight feet away. I debated several times the possibility of going over and asking him to turn his music down, but I figure that if he had to play the music that loud through freaking headphones he was probably too hearing impaired to fully understand my request, and I never bothered to learn sign language back when I dated that deaf chick in high school because she could read lips reasonably well.

So, Noon rolled around and I headed to my Human Development class. This is probably going to be the easiest psychology class I've EVER taken, and I've never made below a B in any psych class to date. OH MY GOD, I love this professor already. He's a 30-something, thin, handsome, married, Asian-American who wants to be called "Dr. Mike"! He basically admitted that there is NO reason whatsoever to own the textbook for his class even though he is required by the school to make us have a textbook for the class. He said that the tests (there will be four and the final exam) will cover only what is discussed in class, so as long as we show up and participate in discussion we should do well in the class. We only have one paper to write, and there will be quizzes about once a week. The guy doesn't care if we leave our cell phones on, as long as they don't go off in class, and he even encouraged people to eat and drink in class if they wanted to, since he would rather we eat and pay attention than be hungry and tired and sleep in class (his reasoning, not mine).

After class, the sun began to cut through the clouds and fill the Earth with its spirit enriching light, as though the happiness and joy that was Dr. Mike's introduction was enough to call forth from the heavens and make the clouds part like the Red Sea.

Wow... I think I could totally go gay for Dr. Mike!

Have fun, and keep living life... and don't be ashamed to find someone of your own gender attractive!

Back to the Grind

Let's not talk about last semester.

School starts back tomorrow. I'm cautiously looking forward to getting back to classes. I know I have a tough slate of classes ahead of me this time with LOTS of reading involved. Here's what the schedule looks like:

Monday, Wednesday Friday:

British Literature I -- 9AM-950AM

Human Development -- 12Noon-1250PM

Tuesday:

Philosophical Issues -- 930AM-1045AM

Environmental Geology Lab -- 11AM-1250PM

Environmental Geology -- 1PM-150PM

Thursday:

Philosophical Issues -- 930AM-1045AM

Environmental Geology -- 1PM-150PM

I'm hoping that having a two hour break between classes this time will encourage me to actually do some homework, or at least stay on top of the reading. My biggest problem with school has ALWAYS been that I choose not to do homework. Most of the time, I've been able to get by just fine without it, however those times when I have committed an EPIC FAIL has been almost exclusively the result of not keeping up with the homework.

To that end, I actually got my school books before Christmas and spent some of my break trying to get ahead in the reading. Obviously, I have no idea what essays/stories will be required in my British Literature course, since the books (there are three of them!) have a huge assortment of readings and we can't possibly cover all of them. I was able to get through the first couple of chapters in my Philosophy textbook, though, and I skimmed through the first several chapters of Environmental Geology. Again, I'm not too worried about the Human Development class (yet!) since it's a psychology class and I can usually do pretty well in those without really trying (Did I mention I got a B in my Abnormal Psychology class last semester?)

I'm going to leave it there for now. I'll get back tomorrow with some first impressions of my new professors and the class overviews.

Have fun, and keep living life... or some approximation thereof!

Back in the Saddle Again

The semester is almost over. Final exams begin Thursday, with my last happening Monday the 15th. Actually, the Monday exam is just final presesntations for my HUM 220 class. I'm going to swing dance with a girl named Amanda who is in the class with me. I've known Amanda for a few years through swing dancing, although she dances West Coast while I prefer East Coast. I've long been attracted to Amanda, but there's a half dozen reasons that I'd never ask her out, not including the fact that she's never expressed any sexual interest in me whatsoever.

Truth be told, I'm not very good when it comes to asking women out on dates. Actually, I'm not great at reading social signals, in general, which leads to me being rather ineffective when talking to women. As a result, I don't date much. It's not unusual for me to go five years between girlfriends. I just don't think to ask women out very often since the reward vs. attempt ratio is so low. But, lately, I've been really looking for someone to ask out on a date (looking, not asking, being the operative word).

When I met Ex, I didn't ask her out the first time we met; we met at a laundromat. I might never have seen her again. If it hadn't been for some luck, and me going back to the laundromat at the exact same time on the exact same day of the week for the next MONTH, I would have never been able to ask her out. We dated for almost a year. Ex claimed that she liked the fact that I waited until our second encounter to ask her out, but I still think it was a stupid thing to do.

And yet I continue to do it! I hate asking women out on a first meeting. It just seems too aggressive. And I'd like to know a girl a little bit before I ask them to spend time with me. Apparently, the accepted custom nowadays is that you ask a girl out for coffee or, at the most, lunch. But I'd like to sweep a girl off her feet, not interview her to help me run a non-profit organization!

Perhaps I'm setting my personal standards too high. After all, with my financial situation I can't afford to sweep anyone off their feet. Although, if the economy continues to decline, sweeping a girl off her feet will only require buying her dinner items which AREN'T on the Dollar Menu!

My friend, Osterberg, is of the mind that a first date should always be a sedate affair because you don't want to set the bar too high in the beginning of a relationship. Perhaps he's right, although I always put more pressure on myself to maintain the bar than any girl I've ever dated has. And the relationships, like my relationship with Ex, likely suffered as a result of establishing some high expectation that I could never fulfill to my own satisfaction.

I think I'm starting to see why I needed to get the lightsaber!

Have fun, and keep living life... or some approximation thereof.

Reality Sets In

Painting entitled "Screaming" by Louisa Giffard

It always does... Reality manages to creep itself back into everything I ever attempt to do. There's no way around it. Life just simply NEVER goes according to plan. It's such a pain in the ass!

My Financial Experiment tanked. A couple weeks ago I was all set to double my initial investment, and then some. If things had gone according to plan, I would already have over $3000, possibly closing in on $4000. Well, as I already said, nothing ever goes according to the plan. Instead, my investment dropped back down to $1000. That's not a big deal, you say. At least you didn't lose your initial investment. True, except I was counting on having at least $3000 by now so that I could take out my initial $1000 and have some money to live on (and still leave money in my experiment to grow and take out as needed) while I wait for my next batch of financial aid money to roll in sometime in February. Now, I'm forced to take out the whole $1000 so that I have money to live on, which will not, by itself, stretch until February.

That's not the only bad news. I am not going to pass College Algebra. It isn't possible. Perhaps if I had bothered to really do the homework diligently, and ask for assistance from my friends in class, I could have done it. But, that ship has passed. And an F on a transcript really fucks up your GPA. Little known fact: Do you know that's why they call it an F? It helps to reinforce the idea of just how truly FUCKED you are! Now, my recourse is to either take the class over again (in which case I would need an A in order to balance out the F so I could get a C) or take another math course (possibly Statistics) in which I would still need to make an A. Also, I have a few Ds on my transcript which will not transfer over to State (you need to have a C or better in a class for it to transfer), so you might already see where this is going.

Yep... It looks like I'm going to have to spend an extra semester at community college before I can apply and get accepted to NC State. Granted, it isn't the end of the world, by any means. After all, I waited 13 years to get my ass back to school. What's an extra semester in the scheme of things? Still, it does annoy me a bit. I'd like for things to stick to the plan once in awhile. It would make life so much easier.

At least with regard to the grades, I can't blame anyone but myself. I knew going into the class that math isn't an easy subject for me. It isn't like English or Psychology which I have a natural talent for; I have to actually do some work to get by in a math class. I chose not to do it. Sure, my old Nemesis, the calculator, didn't make things easier, but if I had done the homework everyday I would have eventually gotten the hang of it. It just isn't going to work to try and pawn this failure off on someone or something else.

You know, in the past, it's always been so much easier for me to blame my problems on things other than my own choices. I would say and think things like "it's because I was abused", or "nobody ever helps me", or "people just don't understand". Even if I did accept blame, it was a value judgement on me, like "I failed because I'm a bad person", or "I'm just no good at this". None of these ideas ever really helped me identify the real problem and come up with a solution. These rationales just made me feel worse about myself. Either I was a bad person, a born failure, or I was helpless and hopeless.

I'm not sure what's changed, but I don't see myself or my problems like that anymore. Maybe I don't want to see them that way anymore. Now, I can see that failing at something doesn't have to be about me as a person. Instead, falling short of expectations can be the result of poor choices. I can learn to make better choices. I can clearly identify what events led me to this point and I can say "this worked" or "this didn't work" and I can adjust my behavior to compensate.

I think I understand now why I haven't been feeling bad about this realization, and why I haven't been beating myself up over the bad grade. It feels empowering to look at the world in an objective way and, rather than personalizing the mistakes, being able to see a better course of action in front of me. I guess this is the way that people with a healthy level of self-esteem must react to setbacks.

Have fun, and keep living life... Or some approximation thereof!

The Giving of Thanks

In the off chance that you missed the interminable cavalcade of parades, Peanuts specials, Christmas music formatted radio stations, garland streamed shopping malls adorned with "95% Off" sales signs, and the smell of pine, cinnamon, poultry, and electricity induced house fires, we've officially entered the annual holiday season. As is requisite for the last several years, I indulged in Thanksgiving dinner with my uncle and his girlfriend. It should be noted that my uncle is the only Republican in my family (not including my aunt's husband, though he is only related by marriage, not blood, so he doesn't really count). Thankfully, he doesn't vote (neither does my aunt's husband, interestingly). It should also be noted that, like me, he has an annoying tendency to believe he is right about certain things and that thinking in a way other than he does is, by sheer force of logic, wrong!

It should come as no surprise, then, that I usually find myself keeping my mouth shut around dinner every year. My uncle tries to be peaceful, and so do I; his girlfriend acts as a pleasant referee, typically taking my side, if not always on the issues, at least in the understanding that my uncle's way isn't typically the only way.

This year I had to sit through a lecture about how Chris, my friend from algebra class, and I didn't do a thorough enough job when we replaced the spark plugs on my car (I didn't even mention to him about the oil in the cylinders, or the cross threaded plug). My uncle can't even commend me for taking initiative on my car, something he has chronically lectured me about for the last dozen years whenever I am forced to run to him for help when my car dies on the side of the road. But that wasn't the worst part. No, I had to sit through a lecture about how Obama is the Antichrist, and how my uncle can't believe that so many people were brainwashed into voting for a black, one term senator with "no experience"! He asked if I had voted for Obama, to which I replied, "Of course! I even contributed $250 to his campaign, and got a campaign t-shirt!" I went on to inform him that Lincoln was a one term Illinois senator before becoming President, and look how he turned out! I'll save you from my uncle's decidedly non-PC response, but when I've said that I'm not the most racially sensitive person in the world, it would be fair to say that my uncle makes me seem like one time NAACP President Kweisi Mfume (I've ALWAYS loved that guy's name, for some reason).

One thing we don't do for Thanksgiving is announce what we're thankful for this year. Chances are good we'd be thankful for things which were diametrically opposed, anyway. But, as I've listened to NPR and watched news clips online, I've been barraged by messages of thanks for everything from having a job, to having a family, to having legs! That last one came from a little girl who was skating at Rockefeller Center in New York.

My grandmother is always encouraging me to be more thankful for things. She says that it helps you to see what you have instead of fretting over the things that you don't. So, aside from having an opportunity to go to college, having a roof over my head, food in my stomach (most of the time), a car that gets me where I need to go (most of the time), and medications which keep me from attempting suicide every other Thursday, what do I have to be thankful for? I don't know... But I guess having legs seems like a good place to start!

Have fun, and keep living life... or some approximation thereof.