Turds, Coffee and Mantras

Today had its unfortunate moments as well - keeping with this quarter's theme.

First, in my Art History class, I had been sitting there for an hour when I decided to check the time. I don't wear a watch so I pulled out my phone. I unlocked the screen and noticed that I had a new email so I checked it. Just then the teacher went quiet and approached my desk. I looked up with a slightly confused, slightly terrified face and she asked me: "Are you busy?"

"No...I'm sorry."

"You're only in here for an hour and a half. If you want to be talking with someone, just don't come to class."

I wanted to justify myself by saying that I wasn't talking to anyone but stopped thinking that would just be even more disrespectful, so I just sat through the remaining half hour of class feeling like a grade-A turd.

In my next class, a discussion, I felt like I should make a concerted effort to pay attention and get as much out of the class time as I could so I made my way to the front of the classroom and claimed one of the frontmost seats. Every couple of seconds I would get a really strong whiff of coffee, but I just assumed that a classmate had brought a cup of joe to class. I was right...sort of.

About thirty minutes into the class period, I noticed that my left sandal was oddly stuck to the ground. At first I thought, "Great! I stepped in gum". I turned the bottom of my foot up to get rid of the gum but there was no gum to be found. I then began my investigation.

I put my foot back on the floor and found that it was still somewhat sticky. I tried sliding it back and forth with increasing force until it actually un-stuck from the floor and shot out at high velocity. I received a funny look from the girl next to me. I still had no idea why my foot was sticking to the floor.

Another whiff of coffee.

I looked back farther under my seat to find a lake of brown liquid - partly liquid, partly dry and gummy. That's where the smell was coming from. That's what was making my foot stick to the ground. Someone had spilled coffee all over the ground under my seat.

"Gross," I thought. And then I realized it was even worse. I had unknowingly laid my backpack and laptop case (luckily my laptop wasn't in it) in Lake Starbucks.

"BAAAHHHH!!!"

I moved my dripping stuff out of the coffee flavored sludge and propped it up to dry for the rest of class. I wish there had been something there to wipe it off with but I just had to let it dry out on its own. By the time class was over, my laptop case had mostly dried off since it is made out of duct tape (gotta love that stuff), but my backpack on the other hand had only absorbed the liquid like a Bounty-quicker-picker-upper.

I made my way back to my car once again, thinking about my bad luck streak that started 3 weeks ago on January 3rd. I was trying to figure out why these things were happening.

Was it because I've been unorganized? Was it because of my laziness? Or was it just actually bad luck?

I opened my car door, got in and sat down. Just then I realized that my brow had been extremely furled all the way back to my car. It was also then that I decided to try on a new perspective:

"I don't care!"

I even said it aloud to myself while unfurling my furled brow and forced a little smile onto my face. It's weird, but I actually felt better! So I have a new philosophy or perspective or philospective for unfortunate things occurring. "I don't care!"

The drive back to my apartment was chock full of morons with driver's licenses, whom I would normally get mat at, but I would just say my new found mantra: "I don't care!" and move on.

Of course, this philospective won't and shouldn't apply to important things like assignments and relationships with friends and family, but I see great potential for it to relieve stress about the little things that boil my blood. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I still smell coffee.

Pardon My French

I really hate writing. Not writing itself, but the writing class I'm in this quarter.

First of all, the teacher is a short, hairy man with a trimmed gray beard. He reminds me of Gimli a little bit - just less awesome (he doesn't have a battle axe). So far, without fail, this teacher has begun each class by typing instructions on the computer projected on the front screen. The class is held in a computer lab, so we then each turn to our desktops and carry out his typed instructions. It's just really weird to me that he would forego saying a single word and just "compunicate" (definition) to the class.

On the bright side, this means that I don't have to hear his voice. Now, that may sound like a mean thing to say. And it is. But this guy seriously sounds like a slightly deeper version of Herbert the Pervert. That's right. He whistles whenever he says a word containing the letter "s". That is SUPER annoying!

Oh! How could I forget? He's an asshole too!

**note: I literally spent at least 30 minutes trying to find a more proper word to describe him, but nothing else conveys the douchebaggery of his character as perfectly. Please forgive me.

Allow me to explain. On Tuesday, class began with an "oh crap" moment as I saw the rest of class walking up to the teacher's front table to turn in the assignment that I thought was due on Thursday. Each class begins with a freewrite, so I took that time to write about how I felt about screwing up:

Here I thought that I had a whole week left to work on this thing. Nope. Of course not. That wouldn’t fit the theme of my life these last few weeks.

I thought, "It's alright. There's nothing I can do about that now. At least I have my powerpoint presentation ready to go for today."

That's when I found out that the powerpoint wasn't due until Thursday. Another "oh crap" moment. I had mixed up the dates the two assignments were due! I must have spent at least two hours working on the powerpoint on Monday and many more over the weekend.

So I walked up to Gimli after class and said as politely as I could, "I'm really sorry but I screwed up. I accidentally mixed up the dates that the paper and powerpoint were due…Is there anything I can do about this?"

Here is what he said verbatim:

"Well that's not MY problem! I can only give you the information as clearly as I know how. I can't process it for you too."

!@#$$%%$#@@$%$@!

I've only hit one person in my entire life, and for good reason (that's a different story though), but this guy almost became number two. I felt the rage swelling inside me but the only outward physical change was an "are you serious right now" look on my face. He eventually told me to just bring it on Thursday.

I left in a terrible mood that made everything around me feel like it wasn't even there. All I could think about was how angry I was at this guy.

Fast forward to Thursday. Today.
I was fully prepared for class with my paper that I should have had on Tuesday AND my powerpoint presentation ready to go. Throughout the day today, I kept double checking everything for this writing class. I made sure that my powerpoint was working on the Windows OS (since I made it on my Mac), reread my paper to make sure it contained all the necessary parts of the assignment, and then packed up my bag with all the things I could ever need for this class. I put my usb drive with the powerpoint on it in a safe pocket and headed off to get to class early.

I got to the computer lab about 10 minutes before class started. I was so ready. I was sure that I had covered all my bases.

So I pull out my usb drive and plug it into the computer I'm sitting at just as a final check. The drive pops up on the external drives list but when I go to open it, I get an error saying that I need to reformat the drive.

WHAT THE!?!?!?

My hands met my face in utter defeat and I thought, "it figures…I shouldn't be surprised".

Thankfully, I was sitting right next to my soon-to-be best friend for life! I quickly explained my predicament and she graciously allowed me to use her laptop to move the files from my drive to hers and then let me use her usb drive to complete the presentation of my pac-man styled "Transactional Communication Model" shown in the video below:



The audio didn't work properly when I showed it in front of the class, but that's an acceptable loss in my book. I finished the presentation and sat back down. That was it. Done. All that work and stress and hair-pulling for less than a minute of presentation time. Whatever. I'm just glad it's over now.

I sat through the rest of the presentations just waiting for class to be over. When that time finally came, I approached the hairy dwarf to hand my paper to him. I gave him my paper and said, "This is my assignment from Tuesday. You told me to brin…." He cut me off. Not by saying anything, but by walking away with my paper. I followed, curious as to whether the "conversation" was over or not. We both walked up to his desk and he pretended to be busy doing something on the computer while I stood on the opposite side waiting for eye contact. Eye contact never happened.

"So…Is it going to be alright? You'll take my paper?" I said.

No reply.

I peered around trying to get him to take notice that there was somebody trying to talk to him. It wasn't working so I gave up and walked out with confirmation that pseudo-Gimli is an ass.

EIGHT
MORE
WEEKS.

Another Bad(ish) Start

I went to bed last night after putting my first day back at school behind me and looking to tomorrow to be better. I set my alarm for 7:00 a.m. (since my first class started at 8) and after reading my bible for a bit, I went to sleep.

I awoke to the sound of my roommates cell phone receiving a text message. I looked at my phone to see what time it was.

7:45.

AGAIN?! REALLY?! The alarm I had set on my phone didn't go off. So I hurriedly sprung out of bed and threw my clothes on again and I was just about to close the front door behind me when I remembered...

Class had been cancelled. The first meeting was called off since the professor was out of town.

"So that means I actually start at 10:00," I thought. "Hm...that's a relief. But what now?"

There was no way I was going to be able to go back to sleep after having at least 5 gallons of adrenaline pumped through my system during my early morning freakout session. I decided to just sit at my desk and wait for the clock to tell me to go to class.

Finally, the time came to go to class and I walked out to my car to find this:

How lovely. I could barely see out the window during the drive to school. It was gross.

The rest of my day was a lot more "under control". No surprises or anything. But I was reminded of the reason I chose to be a math major. Reading is DEFINITELY not my thing. Especially when the material we're covering would put Richard Simmons on speed to sleep in a heartbeat.

On a brighter note, I also learned that my grammar and spelling skills are above average for UC students. But also worse than a high school sophomore. Whatever... I'll take that.

The day definitely could have been much worse than it was, but at least it's an improvement on yesterday. Hopefully this trend continues.

Off to a Bad Start

First day of school 2011...What a day.

It started off nice finding out the night before that my first class was at 10 rather than 8 in the morning. That's an extra 2 hours of sleep that I wasn't expecting. That's about the only thing that went right.

The extra two hours of sleep turned into 3 hours thanks to the fact that being in my bed is much nicer than being out of it. I awoke at 9:48 am and immediately jumped out of bed to throw some clothes on and rush off to class. I ran to my car and began my track to campus when the car started jiggling as I drove down the street. I forgot to release the emergency brake. Nice...

I finally got to class almost 10 minutes late with literally the worlds squeakiest shoes. I sat in the first available seat so as to not drown out the professors voice with each obnoxious step. It was a lefty. Whatever...I'm fine with sitting in a desk designed for left handed students even though I'm a righty. A minor setback.

I pulled out my special dot paper notebook to be used with my special smart pen only to find that I had forgotten my smart pen in my other backpack. How smart.

I sat through the rest of the class noteless and feeling incredibly stressed and unprepared. Oh well. I couldn't do anything about that. I decided that I would just catch my breath while I waited for my second class.

I went back to my apartment and just chilled. My next class wasn't until 12:30 so I had a little time to relax. I watched some YouTube videos, ordered my parking permit, and even checked out what books I would be needing for the winter quarter. I left my apartment with 20 minutes to class time so that I'd have enough time to walk to class. The class is farther from the parking lot than my classes usually were so I thought I'd give myself some time to make the walk over.

I ended up having to speed-walk most of the way since the drive took more time and the walk was longer than I expected. I walked into an already overfilled classroom at 12:32 and had to walk over to the other side of the room in front of the entire class accidentally kicking a girl sitting on the floor on the way to my floor spot against the far wall. Keep in mind that I was still wearing the worlds squeakiest shoes.

I sat down and got as comfortable as I could and looked up to see the projector displaying the class information on the front pull-down screen. It said something about Greek art.

"Wait a second...I thought my class was supposed to be on African American art." I pulled out my phone with a puzzled look on my face to double check my schedule.

"Yep. It's supposed to be African American art," I thought. "Oh crap..."

My class ENDED at 12:30.

I stood up and made my way back to the door having to walk in front of the entire class again - this time with my tail between my legs. It was as if my shoes were saying, "I'm stupid" with each squeak on the way out.

I hate my shoes.

I adequately beat myself up over this enormous blunder and now, I sit here writing this story down. It seems to be the only proper response at the moment. What a day.

Screw it...

I'm going back to my apartment to take that shower I didn't get to take this morning and we'll just have to try again tomorrow.