you look so tired and unhappy bring down the government

I have signed up to go to a 6 hour review of chemistry tomorrow. I figure that at least guarantees I study chemistry for 6 hours this weekend. I hear the class average for the chem midterm is usually about 33% and I'm very worried about it. Of course, I'm mostly just worried that I won't find out what room it's held in since I haven't gone to any of the classes in weeks. The prospect of learning 6 weeks of chemistry this weekend doesn't seem all that bad. My mum told me it would be easy and she's always right.

I remember at sfu how mathematics and comp sci (discrete math) 101 was supposed to be the killer course that chewed up and spat out first years, but I didn't go to class, didn't read the textbook, and got a B- by deriving the principles of counting and probability during the exam. Tra la! It's the courses with big assignments that fill me with dread, really.

I can't stop eating the bad desserts at the hospital cafeteria. Gelatinous chocolate mousse with marshmallows in it. Lemon meringue pie with a faint greenish tinge. Dry cake with rock hard whipping cream product on top. Something I think is jello but might be rock candy. This is jello garnished with PARSLEY. I have not been brave enough to try the "home made!" custard but it's only a matter of time.

I wonder if there's a course in the department of food and nutritional science that teaches you how to make cafeteria food. It's so uniquely and consistently bad that there must be a secret to it. When I make bad food it's nothing like this stuff. I burn the sauce or don't use the right spices. They somehow produce wax sculptures of real food, with sauces in heretofore unknown colours. That people PAY for. Repeatedly. There must be a secret.

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with a tekelili here and a tekelili there

Ew, that wasn't fun. Whoever wrote those questions was on DRUGS. I /think/ I passed. I didn't study any for it, but man, I think the only thing that would have helped was a psychic connection to the crackbrains who thought up the questions. And ew, I don't want a psychic connection to my insane intructor. I think about half the questions were multiple multiples (How many of the following statements are true: 1, 2, 3, 4, none.), with the options frequently (a) using technical terms not mentioned anywhere in our "textbook", (b) requiring you to make assumptions about conditions, where assuming different things will give you different answers, or (c) requiring you to infer solid rules from vague statements in the notes. (For instance: "NADPH synthesis takes electrons from an electron source" means "An electron source is hereby defined solely as something which provides electrons for NADPH synthesis. Electron donors are not electron sources." They should have an anti-prerequisite for this course, steering anyone who's taken a course in logic away from the notes package.) The best part was how proctors were forbidden to answer any clarifying questions. Whee!

Well anyway. The nice thing about taking 9 courses is that any one course means SO little. As long as I pass I get to take microbi next term.

I am so boring lately, all I talk about is tests and skipping class. La la la. I can't wait until this term is over. I will learn latin and cook elaborate squid dishes. Today at the drop-in centre they were singing old macdonald and only with great restraint did I stop myself from suggesting KRAKEN and OKAPI and KOMODO DRAGON. One day I will have children who want to dress as squid for hallowe'en and I'm not entirely sure that this will be to the net benefit of society but neener neener.

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coffee coffee where are you

Rainiest day ever! Well, not ever, but I have a bad case of rain denial. I pretend it never rains like this, and most of the year the city does not confront my delusions of tropicality. Is that a word?

Today I skipped school to go play in the rain with a toddler. I almost went to school, but after the fourth bus passed me by I gave the concept of buses the finger and went home to bed. But the joke is on me: I am at school now anyway, for a midterm at 7 in the freaking evening. Boo. I am so sleepy; I'm convinced it's their way of bringing the curve down. Oh well. Off to stimulate the economy by buying stimulants.

I saw a punk rock singer at the drop-in play center we went to today. She has a punk rock baby, that's why. Whee! That made me really happy.

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I thought I had your heart forever/now I find it's only lent

Ah, I love google. "sexy laxin" (which would be what, a romantic laxative?) "chef boyardee jingle" "pictures of a wallabee." I like to pretend all my google hits are the same person, perhaps the very fellow with a corn plane hangar in his home. He is probably constipated from having too much chef boyardee, and not even wallabees can distract him. It's a hard life for this guy, man.

I love exams too. I mean, obviously I HATE exams, but they're also great. I have picked up evil classmate psych-out habits somewhere along the line and they bring me too much glee to stop. I walk in to the room reading some trashy novel, like I have no use for last-minute studying. I do not go back and review my answers. I leave the room first, sometimes 20 minutes before anyone else. I am that person in your class that you hate. Secretly this is all unconnected from how I acutally perform on the exam: I act totally confident even on exams where I have no clue and I am drawing pictures, although fortunately there aren't many of those exams these days.

Well anyway, my anatomy midterm was today. I did well, I believe. As usual I totally blew off my elaborate study schedule last weekend (studied 3 hours out of a planned 16. Har.) and did 2 hours of review yesterday and 2 today, which was perfect. I have to stop looking at my inability to keep to a study plan as a liability, I think. It's more like an efficiency measure, preventing me from being hindered by my chronic overestimation of my need to study. Mmm, rationalizarific.

Of course I really did have 16 hours of things to do, but most of them were chemistry, which I still haven't done anything for. The midterm is next thursday, so SOMETIME between now and then I need to do 9 chapters of problems, since I haven't been GOING to the classes so there's no chance that I'm secretly already prepared. I don't even know the names of the chapters. So hello chemistry! Tomorrow is the biology midterm, which is open book and I think impossible to study for. The difficulty of the biology exam, judging by the sample questions, will lie entirely in deciphering the obfuscatory wording every question is couched in to make the simple material hard enough to have a normal bell curve even on an open book exam. I hate that shit, but I'm good at it. Also next week is a pharmacy midterm, which I will probably study for on the bus to school. That course is really interesting and cool, but with 8 other classes I don't have time to love on the interesting and coolness, only time to suck it up and move on. Boo.

I am going to try to take biochemistry this summer so I have more time to soak in my pharm courses next year. We just found out it'll be 39 credits (2 less than I'm doing now) next year, but only 33 if I do biochem first. 33, how relaxing! Actually I feel much happier about my courseload now that I know dentists have to take FIFTY NINE credits in second year. Damn. I have it easy. I feel vaguely suspicious, like I /should/ be taking more now. But then I have 3.5 years of professional school plus practical stuff in the summers and one term, while dentists and doctors basically cram 4 years of academic work in to 2 and spend the other 2 madly learning their practical stuff, which is of major importance to their work while my practical stuff is easily picked up quickly, I gather. I am becoming an informational expert and auditor, and they are becoming experts and physical fixers. To be ridiculously oversimplistic, I guess.

I had two thanksgiving dinners. First we went to see my relatives out in the valley. I had to almost physically drag boy out, because he was so not enthused, but it was unexpectedly okay. Cancer-grandpa was not only civil but in a good mood, and I think me-as-an-adult (I last saw him several years ago, I think) and me-with-my-new-husband amused my grandparents. I'm sure they could use some amusing, so. And my crazy cousins-aunt-uncle complex are as crazy and excellent as ever AND have a new kitten, which they are all hilariously devoted to. Yay. It was nice. Then we had thanksgiving dinner with his family, which is always fine. On saturday I said "Okay, I'll make you a deal: you come to my relatives thanksgiving, and I'll come to yours." and he laughed and laughed. Because of course I don't mind seeing his family; I see them more than he does.

62 more days in this semester. I'm off to make a new elaborate study schedule that I will probably ignore. I have a lot of work to do but it just seems more and more manageable by the day. Hello, it's me, I will ownz0r school! I haven't felt this sure of myself since grade 8, and it's so fabulous that I will ignore what an arrogant prick I sound like. Har.

Oh! I could get girl guide cookies today! HMM.

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moving sale, one day only! - 2003-11-24
start spreading the news! ASA is used as a platelet inhibitor and is in the reference drug program! - 2003-11-20
I've got a disease, I'm addicted to cheese - 2003-11-20
when I think of the time gone by - 2003-11-16
the pancakes of blushful Hippocrene had not been entirely filling - 2003-11-14
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