I believe that most of my friend group is suffering from midterm madness, a terrifying yet unavoidable disease.
Symptoms include the inability to focus while studying, a desire to consume more food than usual, and an excessive amount of internet surfing. Insomnia or excessive sleeping can both occur.
It's definitely midterms time. It seems like everyone I know has a midterm or two creeping up on them. For me, the terrifying one is my Japanese history midterm - 1500+ years of history to remember, and all - which means that I've been putting in some serious study-party time. Yesterday and today, a group of us got together to review all of the primary-source readings, the handouts, and the textbook readings.
However, we were studying perhaps 55% of the time. The other portion of time was spent making cracks about Prince Shotoku's excessively complimentary historical portrayal ("So what did Prince Fabulous do NOW?"), or about changing power structures ("Shugo-daimyo already knows four moves. Shugo-daimyo did not learn LOYALTY TO EMPEROR."), or about Japanese vocabulary ("'These Buddhist nuns were called bikuni.' 'Wait, bikinis?' 'Well, you have to gain the illiterate townsfolk's attention somehow.'"). We also made a much-needed study trip into town, where we ate Chinese food and talked about potential essay questions (and chopstick etiquette)
All in all, we probably got less studying done than we could have if we had been going at it on our own, but we did get some necessary stress relief.
In other news, the applications to be a tour guide for Oberlin have come out; I'm finding it tough to fill out some sections... None of my teachers have posted grades yet, so I don't have any idea what my official GPA is, for example. I hope that won't be too much of a problem... I would dearly love to be a tour guide and spend my time babbling effusively at potential Obies. My fingers are crossed.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Settling into Routines
It's been a pretty quiet couple of days. I spent the last weekend doing homework - an abnormally repetitive, tedious econ problem set and a thirty-page reading that I had to prepare a discussion for - and avoiding the overtly friendly bees that came out to enjoy the sunshine we got Sunday. I'm pretty sure the bees here can sense who they will freak out most if they land on.
Several days after it first fell off, our doorknob is still broken. I managed to screw it back on, but it's still not turning properly... Our work order has been changed to "in progress," but honestly, I don't know what the policy is for work order fulfillment here. Do Roommate or I have to be in the room all the time? We're hoping that they call before they come to help us out.
The question that's been waiting on my mind lately is what I'll be doing over Oberlin's week-long fall break. Most people go home, or travel (the school sponsors service trips, and a local bus company runs shuttles to NYC, Boston, and Chicago). The dining halls shut down for Fall Break, the library closes at 5 PM, and so people tend to get the heck out of dodge: Oberlin is not an exciting town if there's no concerts/comedy shows/movie screenings. It's still a nice town, but it's also a town with a three-block-by-three-block downtown.
One of my friends here is an international student, and so has made puppy-dog eyes to get me to stay over the break with her so that we can cook and hang out together to alleviate that boredom. I've been invited to another friend's house a few hours away for Thanksgiving, so I'm thinking that I'll stay here over the fall break. Perhaps I can use this time to get some sewing done for Sakura-Con at home in Seattle, or Halloween. I don't know what Halloween is like out here, but I'll be disappointed if there's not a huge fanfare about it - this campus is full of artsy, creative people whose favorite holiday is likely Halloween. I'm personally hoping for inter-dorm trick-or-treating and the chance of costumed adventures. Halloween parties with college kids will likely lead to a whole bunch of drunk people, so I'm not planning on going to anything of that sort.
Other than this Fall Break question, my life has been reasonably quiet these last few days, just going to classes, doing homework, and occasionally meeting to tutor a local high school kid. Perhaps it's because I ran with the geeky IB kids in high school and am going to an intellectual, geeky college, but I find myself frustrated that this student isn't willing to put in the effort to catch up himself. I have to keep reminding myself that patience is a virtue, and that I am getting paid to be helpful - even when he doesn't know the difference between a consonant and a vowel at age seventeen. (What kind of elementary schools do they have around here if a kid doesn't know what vowels are? AIUEO, Y?)
On that note, the tutoring is the only job I've managed to find so far - it seems like a lot of the on-campus places like the library tend to hire at the end of the first semester and train during spring semester. I'm told that being a tour guide for the admissions office works the same way. I'm hoping that I can get into the ranks of the tour guides, because I love talking about Oberlin and how fantastic it is, but as of right now, I'm mooching money off my parents for groceries. The money I made from my first tutoring session got put towards my copy of the Avengers movie, but having some more "fun money" to go into the reopened town movie theater ($5 tickets, a shock for this girl who's used to $9 or $10) or go out to dinner would be appreciated.
Many of the jobs that are listed on the Oberlin classifieds website specify that they only hire or only pay federal work-study students, but my financial aid package didn't include that. It's a bit frustrating - I would dearly love to work, but the jobs that I've applied for haven't even had the courtesy to send me a "thanks but no thanks" email. I'm hoping that next semester I'll be able to find something.
Several days after it first fell off, our doorknob is still broken. I managed to screw it back on, but it's still not turning properly... Our work order has been changed to "in progress," but honestly, I don't know what the policy is for work order fulfillment here. Do Roommate or I have to be in the room all the time? We're hoping that they call before they come to help us out.
The question that's been waiting on my mind lately is what I'll be doing over Oberlin's week-long fall break. Most people go home, or travel (the school sponsors service trips, and a local bus company runs shuttles to NYC, Boston, and Chicago). The dining halls shut down for Fall Break, the library closes at 5 PM, and so people tend to get the heck out of dodge: Oberlin is not an exciting town if there's no concerts/comedy shows/movie screenings. It's still a nice town, but it's also a town with a three-block-by-three-block downtown.
One of my friends here is an international student, and so has made puppy-dog eyes to get me to stay over the break with her so that we can cook and hang out together to alleviate that boredom. I've been invited to another friend's house a few hours away for Thanksgiving, so I'm thinking that I'll stay here over the fall break. Perhaps I can use this time to get some sewing done for Sakura-Con at home in Seattle, or Halloween. I don't know what Halloween is like out here, but I'll be disappointed if there's not a huge fanfare about it - this campus is full of artsy, creative people whose favorite holiday is likely Halloween. I'm personally hoping for inter-dorm trick-or-treating and the chance of costumed adventures. Halloween parties with college kids will likely lead to a whole bunch of drunk people, so I'm not planning on going to anything of that sort.
Other than this Fall Break question, my life has been reasonably quiet these last few days, just going to classes, doing homework, and occasionally meeting to tutor a local high school kid. Perhaps it's because I ran with the geeky IB kids in high school and am going to an intellectual, geeky college, but I find myself frustrated that this student isn't willing to put in the effort to catch up himself. I have to keep reminding myself that patience is a virtue, and that I am getting paid to be helpful - even when he doesn't know the difference between a consonant and a vowel at age seventeen. (What kind of elementary schools do they have around here if a kid doesn't know what vowels are? AIUEO, Y?)
On that note, the tutoring is the only job I've managed to find so far - it seems like a lot of the on-campus places like the library tend to hire at the end of the first semester and train during spring semester. I'm told that being a tour guide for the admissions office works the same way. I'm hoping that I can get into the ranks of the tour guides, because I love talking about Oberlin and how fantastic it is, but as of right now, I'm mooching money off my parents for groceries. The money I made from my first tutoring session got put towards my copy of the Avengers movie, but having some more "fun money" to go into the reopened town movie theater ($5 tickets, a shock for this girl who's used to $9 or $10) or go out to dinner would be appreciated.
Many of the jobs that are listed on the Oberlin classifieds website specify that they only hire or only pay federal work-study students, but my financial aid package didn't include that. It's a bit frustrating - I would dearly love to work, but the jobs that I've applied for haven't even had the courtesy to send me a "thanks but no thanks" email. I'm hoping that next semester I'll be able to find something.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)