urbandruid | Entries tagged with the freshmen menace

Ugh... So today's the first day of class. Oh, joy.

It's going to be 94 F, which is a downgrade from the 97 they were predicting last night.

This still sucks.

It sucks even more because I spent the last 2 weeks fighting a kidney infection, the last 10 days or so on major antibiotics, and I still feel like total crap and am hurting in places I shouldn't. I'm going back to the doc on Thursday, unrelated mole removal, and I'm debating if the kidney stuff can wait till then.

Since I spent all weekend popping the painkillers said doc gave me for the infection, and need to take more after I eat breakfast, I'm thinking it probably can't wait. Will call her after I get home from (whee, yay) class.

I don't have class till noon, which'll give me time to fight the bookstore lines and go get my new student ID/library card, if I decide I'm up for that today. And I only have to buy one book, for Oceanography, since we use the same Spanish book for Spanish II as we did for I (Thank you, Professor M!)

I keep trying to console myself about the back to school thing with all the good stuff about school- access to our library, whose nonfic section rocks; no freshmen in my classes; two profs who are really good and whom I like; and, well, I was getting a little bored anyway.

On the flip side we have: State U cut their fall enrollment again, and we know what that means- Freshman Menace, redux; the heat; the fact I feel like crap.

Oh yeah, and I'm exhausted, because I've been staying up later than I should have to watch the Olympic finals in stuff like gymnastics and swimming. (No love to NBC for intentionally putting the best stuff on dead last. And I'm still pissed about equestrian being on freaking Oxygen, too. Assholes...) Network gets nasty letters when I have time to write them.

It's gonna be a long day.

Did I mention I don't really want to do this right now? If it just wasn't so hot... (Okay, I'd still be annoyed and tired, but I wouldn't be as worried about my kidneys.)

Anyway, I apologize for being so out of touch for so long. Kidney infections really suck, and I think I've had this one for close to a month. Yeah, I know, I'm an idiot. I was going to call the doc ages ago, before I thought I passed that stone, but things calmed down, so I figured I was clear of whatever it was. Then it started up again week before last, and I did call her.

And now need to call her again. Bleh.

Kidney infections suck.

I'll tell you this, though- those freshmen had better stay the hell out of my way, or I may not be entirely responsible for beating their ankles with my cane, not to mention all the swearing.

Well, learning new vocab words is all part of the college experience, yeah? ;)

Current Mood: tired

Okay, I know you're all tired of hearing about my virus. I'm tired of hearing about my virus. So until I get it sorted, it'll just have its own section in posts, which you can skip over, like so:

State of the Virus: It's Virtumonde, and I've thrown in the towel and called for backup. The nice people at the spybot.info forums are talking people through removing this and other fun virus-y things, so I added myself to the que there. For some reason they're a bit backed up right now. /State of the Virus

I've been trying to write, anything really, but I'm not getting much done, I've been too stressed out over the computer thing. Mostly I've been reading while I run scans. Or sleeping. I was up half the weekend trying to fix stuff, and it finally caught up with me. Stayed up till 3AM yesterday morning, woke up at 1:45PM today. Strangely I feel better now.

I start back to class in the middle of August, and it's looking like it's going to be another fun fall semester for freshman. By which I mean, the local State U reduced their enrollment again, and we're going to catch their overflow. The only good news there is that I shouldn't have any of them in my classes, I'll just have to run a bunch of 'em over on my way to and from. :)

I got an invite to a 'new and returning student orientation' with my disabled students councelor. Recycled that, but Mom made the comment that I could probably give the orientation if I wanted to. Which led to us starting a list of stuff the freshmen really need to know. I'll have to see if I can reconstruct it, because I have a feeling I'll be adding to it a lot next month.

I'm almost bored enough to want to go back to school, but I know the novelty will wear off sooner rather than later.

Good morning, flist. (I started to say 'Good morning ladies,' as most of my flist is female, but then I thought it might kinda annoy Mike. Hi, Mike!)

Anyway. It's way too freaking early as usual, and I'm (sob) getting ready for my first day of class. It hasn't had the best start.

I sort of meant to clean up some stuff in my room over my vacation, which mostly ended up ammounting to moving a bunch of crap into boxes so I could move the bookcase my phone line is behind, so we could hook up the DSL in my room (had to switch a wire over from the separate phone line we had for me, so the phone jack worked on the main line.) And those boxes have been kinda hanging out, getting slowly emptied as I put stuff away.

I thought I'd pushed them far enough out of the center of the room that I wouldn't trip over one when I got up to shut up my alarm clock this morning, but...Apparently not. I tripped over something when I dashed over to my alarm. Normally I'm more careful, but we must've hit the volume control during the DSL set up, because I woke up with the radio SCREAMING at me, scared myself to death, and wanted the noise to stop NOW.

I fell, of course. Hit my arm on a box- I think that might be okay- but what really may come back to haunt me is the large muscle in my leg just below my butt. I landed right on it, and it's still pretty sore. On the plus(?) side, it's going to be pretty cold today I think, so maybe it won't bruise too badly. I don't have time to sit on an ice pack this morning (am not really too intersted in that anyway) but maybe I'll sit on a cement bench on my break...

I have class every day except Tuesday, and the only thing I have on Thursday is an 8:00 AM Spanish lab. And possibly some independant work to do in the language lab, I seem to recall a lot of that from my French 1 back in the day.

I guess I'm pretty much resigned to going back to school, and kind of excited about my English Lit class. Spanish not so much, though it'll be good to start learning the language for real, not just the bits and pieces you pick up living in CA, plus the swearwords a friend taught me in high school (I still remember how to tell someone to F their mother in Spanish, which I've never actually done...)

As usual, the real reason i don't want to go has more to do with the other people I have to deal with than anything else. The lost freshmen, including all the pissed off ones who 'forgot' to apply to State, and whose parents are making them try and take classes at City College. The crowds of people scrambling to get classes (and good luck with that.) A friend of my family who works for the college told me before Christmas they were having budget issues again, which means they'll be cutting stuff wherever they can, which means fewer sections of stuff.

I really hope enough people signed up for English Lit to keep it afloat. I'm really counting on English Lit to save my sanity at school this semester, since I figure nobody will be there but students who at least have half a brain and like English. It's pretty much an elective for everyone but the English majors, and I like the English majors, most of the ones I've met. I like the elective people even more. I'm really hoping the class makeup will be a lot like that of my Classic Myths class. We had some fun in there.

I know nothing about my teachers yet, and I'm hoping they're alright too.

Mostly I'm looking forward to getting this day done and over with, because the first day is always the worst. I'm taking the cane and will probably be carrying it in my hand when I get out of the car, that's how bad the crowds are. (Plus I've figured out no one asks me for directions, for some reason, if I'm carrying it...)

And I suppose I'd better go finish chucking stuff into my backpack, dig up my bus tokens, and other fun stuff. I'm going to try to update a little more this semester than I did last, but we'll (as always) have to see how it goes.

Current Mood: sore

Still alive, albeit just about flattened by the paper I had to finish up last night.

Things I've learned in English (Critical Reading and Writing) so far:

1. The paper format guidelines are in the syllabus for a reason. We are expected to use them.

2. Seventeen out of thirty students will do the first big paper.

3. Five of them will manage to get their margins and fonts write.

4. When given an extra WEEK to turn in said assignment, 8 people will still not do it.

5. My teacher ought to be a candidate for sainthood.

6. There are a couple of people who can always be counted on to spout off some totally bogus fact, then freak out when half the class doesn't believe them. Including the teacher.

7. 'Discussions' and 'debates' will almost always end with ten different people talking over each other, and maybe some shouting.

8. My side of the room almost never gets to talk unless the teacher shuts up the folks mentioned in #7.

more later...

OMG, ugh.

I was up until almost midnight last night finishing a paper for my English class. I know, I could have done it earlier, but I felt like crap almost all weekend, and it was too hot to think anyway.

Plus, my teacher assigned it last Monday, but didn't really fully explain the assignment till Wednesday. And it was a 3-page research paper. Bleh.

I'm sort of tired of the First Ammendment now, in that way of "I just wrote a paper on this and I don't want to have to look at it again for a while" so I hope we're moving on to other issues in class this week.

Sorry I've been such a ghost, most of the time lately I've been feeling like crap, sleeping, or trying to get my crap together for the paper. Which I really hope more people turn in than did our last homework assignment (right, 'cause if they didn't do the one-page writeup on the newspaper article he gave us, which wasn't even hard and took me like half an hour, they're gonna do a 3-page paper. Riight.) But I'm hoping, because last time 16 out of the 35 someodd people in class turned in the homework, and he doesn't take late work unless you were absent, knew you'd be absent, and talk to him about it beforehand. Which basically means never.

Anyway, I do hope a few more people turn in the paper, because last time we got treated to a ten minute mini-lecture on why this isn't high school and people need to be doing their work. I really do appreciate where the prof is coming from, and I'd be pissed too, but I've always hated getting stuck listening to lectures about things I did if I was supposed to, or didn't do if I wasn't supposed to.

In other news, they're saying today's high will "only" be 97 or so, and the humidity's back to around 12%, which I can deal with. Last week's 106-108s with 30/40% humidity sucked. So did the day when it was hot, muggy, around 50% humidity, with a thunderstorm. That the weather guys swore would stay up in the mountains instead of coming to the valley.

Heh, whoops. Morons.

In still other news, when I should've been working on my paper last night, I was watching this new series called "JAIL", brought to you by the producers of "COPS." It follows criminals for a bit inside the city/county jails after they've been arrested.

Funniest damn thing I've seen in years. Some of it was a bit 'oO' like the van full of hookers the cops picked up in Las Vegas, but then there were these two drunk guys who were best friends.... one was Russian and had maybe three teeth, and they were having a fantastic time...

Great stuff. :)

First day of school. I'm actually sort of awake for a change, instead of walking zombie-like around the house trying to find all my stuff, like I was last semester. I'll probably be exhausted by the time I get home, but that's what naps are for.

Today I have Geology, tomorrow is Geo lab and Abnomal Psych. Or is Geo lab Thursday? Crap, I can't remember- but this is what schedules are for.

I'm sort of looking forward to my classes- Psych more than geology. Not that I don't like geology, just that Abnormal Psych seems cooler to me.

The only really annoying part is that Geo doesn't start till 10AM. I could sleep in and leave for school later, but I'd have to take the bus, and I've learned not to trust that for getting to time-sensetive stuff, well, on time. So I'll go in with Mom, and take the bus home when I'm done on campus. Today it shouldn't be too bad- I have time to hit the bookstore and buy my textbooks before class, and if I'm lucky I'll be early enough at the bookstore that it won't be as horribly crowded as it'll get later in the day.

With even more luck, their credit card system will be up and running this time. Last semester, it was down, andthe line for the ATM was... surprisingly, not short.

Once I'm done with all the usual back to school errunds around campus, I figure I'll use the time in the mornings for homework, class reading, and the misellanious stuff I do at school when I'm not working- ie, reading for fun, writing fanfic, and haunting the stacks looking for something bizarre to check out, like the history of the KGB- which was one of the best finds I've ever made there, by the way. KGB: The Inside Story. Giant hardcover book, which thanks to Amazon's used book sellers, I now own my very own copy of. And will read again someday. No, really.

Ugh, crap, must go track things down now. I think I know where I put most of it.

Item #1 to track down- my cane, so I can smack the shit out of the freshmen...

I'm really, really tired. Part of it is just how long this week has been, but I don't think the Benadryl I took last night helped too much in that department either. Oh well. I had to take it. We have ants- the nasty red fire variety- and they bit me. I'd forgotten how much those things hurt! We have a topical Benadryl pen I've been using on 'em, but I figured taking some internally would make the bites go away faster. And they hurt.

But, yeah, very out of it this morning. And I don't want to go to school. Not because school is really bad- well, my class isn't. I like my teacher, I understand the material we're covering, and better still, my teacher is a nice, sane person who, unlike my last math teacher, whose class I dropped, actually understands that I do have rights as a disabled person. When I brought him the forms from Disabled Students, he was like "Sure, okay, great, no problem!" Which was really really nice to see.

No, the problem with school, as usual this time of year, is the freshmen. They're back, they're still a menace, and they're driving me so nuts I think we need two sets of sidewalks and hallways on campus. One for those of us who know where we're going, and one for the freshmen. I mean, I understand if you're a new student, then you're not going to know where things are right away. But it wouldn't kill you to look at a campus map sometime before the first day of class. And I don't know about anybody else, but I always made sure, especally if the campus or the building my classes were in was unfamiliar, that I went to school usually the weekend before to orient myself. You can't always get in the buildings, of course- though sometimes you can, with teachers and janitors and such in and out getting stuff up- but you can at least figure out, oh, I don't know, that you're standing at the math building, the rooms on the first floor are the 100's, second floor has the 200's, and if your class is in a room with a number lower than one hundred, it's down in the basement.

Or, you know, at the very least, make some attempt to figure out which buildings you need to get to are which.

Overheard on the first day:
"Okay, so my class is in the English building, I guess."
"They have an English building?"

There were more, but I can't remember them now. I swear, I still think the high school exit exam is unfair to people who speak English as a second language and/or have certain disabilities, but for middle class white kids? They need to make that sucker harder. We are graduating some dumb people, I swear.

At least my class seems to have no freshmen in it- the good thing about upper division math. Though some of them are still not too keen. I think I'm one of about ten people out of thirty who's bought the book already (I bought it the first day, of course, knowing that this is a college math class, so we'd have homework the first day) and one of probably an even smaller number who's done the homework.

Just 'cause it's not due till the day of the test doesn't mean you should put it off till the night before, guys.

That said, I'm tired and I need a weekend. I really miss sleeping in two days in a row. And, yes, I need to catch up a bit on the homework- but at least I started it.

Current Mood: tired

I am so tired; way more exhausted than I was Moneday. I don't want to go to school.

I'm having to fight with the TAs in my political science class so I can have a seat towards the middle of the bloody front row. You would think I was asking for the moon. Talked to two of them on Moneday, and one's like, "well, lots of people wanted the middle seat, I can't give it to everybody..." Bitch. You know what I meant, and middle-ish would do, but oh no, you put me at the far right end of the front row. My bad eye is the left one. Ergo, problem.

I just felt like screaming. Damnit, I'm visually impaired, practically blind in one eye, and still recovering from surgery on the other. Give me a fucking break!

Then I talked to TA #2, who seems reasonable, so I'm going to check back with her before class today, and hope they've worked something out.

Computers is boring. We learned how to change the desktop background in one of my last classes; today it's "these are your desktop icons. These are your desktop icons on crack." Kill me now.

Algebra is almost my favorite class; I like my teacher a lot, and at least it makes sense.

Saw Pirates last weekend; love it. Love it lots. Need Pirates icons.

Got Two Towers last night, came home, and watched it. Three hours of fun.

Oh, and there are hundreds of stupid freshmen pouring over city college- you know, the kind who ought to be still in high school? They must be stopped.

*sigh* Okay. I'm off now.