Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Smelling The Fresh Air...Of My Apartment

The school semester has been over for a couple of weeks now, and I have been enjoying my free time. "Jacob" and I will play video games on a typical morning until it's time for me to go to work, then when I come home we might go get something very unhealthy to eat and settle in with some late baseball thanks to the DirecTV MLB Extra Innings package. When I'm not working, like today (I still have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, which I hate), I'll make myself useful by cleaning up or doing the dishes or laundry, and in the evening I'll cook the only thing I know how to cook, pre-prepared chicken breasts, and veggies and pasta or Rice-A-Roni. I'm not worried at all about my grades because I definitely got at least a B in physical science, and maybe even an A, and I'm fairly sure I got an A in psychology and media. The psychology class came to a very curious end. From the beginning, we knew we would have a ten-page paper due at the end of the semester, and the syllabus says, verbatim: "The topic is to write a paper describing exactly how you will apply learnings from this class to your own life objectives." There's nothing in there about it being specifically a research paper, but during the last class before the paper was due, I decided to ask the teacher if I was on the right track doing a paper on major depressive episode (basically a recounting of what "Karen" did to me). She expressed to me an expectation that the paper would be more of a research paper, with medical explanations of what depression was, citings from the book of diagnoses, etc. So I had to turn around and put together a ten-page research paper in two days. However, I didn't do much research. I only used two sources, and all those were good for were listing symptoms of depression and major depressive episode. The rest of the paper was a little of my childhood as background, then what happened with Karen. I hope it was good enough to keep the A that I had earned through the tests. The psych teacher pulled a typical psych job for the final exam, too. After telling us that the test would be 100 questions, no essay, she told us the morning of the final that something went wrong with making the copies of the test, so she made up an "impromptu" final consisting of seven essay questions that she scribbled on the board. I was not ready for an essay test that day, especially since I had been up until 1 the previous night rewriting her damn research essay. I think I did okay, though. Besides my girlfriend coming up for the Sick-A-Cell Walk-A-Thon weekend in June, the other interesting event coming for me is some sort of catered dinner with the new boss at my job. Everyone who works there will eventually be invited, from what I understand, but we have to do it in clusters because otherwise it would be impossible. My cluster goes on June 12. I'm debating what I should bring up with him. Do I complain about the methods by which I am determined to be working at less than 100% productivity, even though I am consistently near the top of actual documents processed per month? Would that sound like I'm whining? What else do I talk about? I'm not very good at brownnosing. It's not my personality. I'm either reserved and introverted or confrontational and irritated, but I'm no good at submissive and eager-to-please. Unless I'm trying to get laid. I have a couple of weeks to figure out a strategy to get in the boss's ear, and if that doesn't work, I may not have long after that to find a new gig.

(GRADES UPDATE, 5/22/08, 10:50A--It's an A for media and physical science, and only a B for psychology. Guess Mme. Daramus didn't like my paper.)

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Finals Week! Run Screaming!!

Ah, the excitement and pandemonium of Finals Week. The syllabus for my psychology class wasn't very clear about the 10-page paper due at the end of the semester, so I thought that my final project would be a detailed analysis of my bouts of depression over the years. The teacher informed me that, no no, she expects this to be a research paper, with sources and shit. So I have to spin that gold out of yarn today, as well as prepare for the 100-question final exam. Then Thursday is the finals for media class and physical science class. Because I got an A on my last physical science test and I've done all the homework, there's a chance I can sneak an A out of that class if I perform on the final. The other two classes are virtual guaranteed As. Wow, it's all coming together. With only one more class left until I get my A.A., I can actually see a finish line. But in typical self-deprecating fashion, my gut reaction is to dismiss it all and claim that I haven't done anything yet, lest I start to feel satisfied. I still insist that I'm not walking across the stage for my A.A. I feel that's like taking public bows for finishing my sophomore year of high school. I won't do it. But I am proud of what I've done thus far. Psych class didn't quite teach me why I feel the need to shit all over things that I do, but hey, that's part of my "charm." Well, off to work. Wish me luck.