The Blog to Nowhere

Yay, had my convocation today! I'm bloody tired but I'm officially done school forever. :-D

I thought there would be more speeches, but only the guest receiving the honourary degree, the President of the university, and the Chancellor spoke. Funny thing about the President of the university, this is probably the only time any of the students get to see him in person. Usually he's too busy accepting cheques from people on the university's behalf. So he had a boring speech and just sat there for the rest of the ceremony. I didn't even get to shake his hand. But I have my degree and all is good. I majored in General Humanities and now I never ever have to explain what my major is to people. It's so obscure and useless that it was just me and one other girl who received BAs in General Humanities.

So bye-bye U of C. It was nice knowing you but you're never getting your hands on my money again. ;-)

Whoo, last day of classes! I will never ever have to take another Chinese class again or haul myself out of bed for a 40 minute train ride to the universe. Now I have the real world to look forward to. Oh boy.

As is the tradition here, the last day of classes is Bermuda Shorts Day. Wear your shorts and get horribly drunk before noon. I actually saw people drinking beer before 10:00 this morning. But the joke's on them. It was only zero degrees Celsius when I got to the university and it was snowing by the time I finished my last Chinese class (11:00 am or so). I've never been one for drinking so I can only laugh at how everyone had to scurry and move the beer gardens inside.

Just two exams and I am officially done university forever. It's kind of scary and great at the same time. In university all your time is spent worrying about work and getting that one essay done before it's due. At the same time you had entire summers to just slack off if need be. Now I have to find a job and that's eight hours of solid work every day. Only advantage of that is you leave the work at the office and when you get home you can do anything. No homework to worry about. The weekends are your own, too. I'll be happy to have more time to write but we'll see how I last with a 9-5 job.

And I am so close to finishing off the last essay I'll ever have to write. I'm tempted to have a note burning once I'm completely graduated. I've always wanted to do that.

(Rant time!)

I have to say learning Chinese for these past three years has been fun. I actually know a language that most people couldn't figure out at first glance. But lately I've been hating it more and more. It's not really the professor's fault; I'm more annoyed with the Chinese program as a whole I suppose.

Every year they have a speech competition. During my first year you wrote something and the professor chose two beginner students to take part in the competition. By the time you hit the intermediate level, you don't get a choice. You're automatically entered based on the criteria that you're enrolled in a Chinese class. I guess in the eyes of the competition people your willingness to be in a Chinese class means you want to participate. Um, no. I hate that we don't get a say in this. Yes, it's part of our mark, but I don't want to speak in front of a panel of judges for a prize I know I won't win. A panel of judges who ding a bell if you go over your time limit.

In addition, this year they're holding the speech competition in conjunction with Chinese New Year's celebrations. I'm not required to go to the celebration, but my prof basically is bribing us with bonus marks if we do go. I was even considering going just for the bonus marks when the prof sprang on the class lyrics for a Chinese song. A song, for whatever reason, that every Chinese program student must sing at the celebration. Wait, I didn't sign up for that at all. What happened to free will? Now it's bribes all around. The prof wants six students to sing the song on stage. Those who want to will receive a gift. You know, there's a reason why not a lot of the students have shown up for these things. Forcing us to sing isn't going to make it better.

I'm in my last year. I think I've just stopped caring.

Whoo, I'm half-way over to being over! Wrote my one exam for this semester so I'm officially down for the fall. I just need to get through the winter semester and then I'll be done university. And it only took five years. Now I have time to do nothing. :-D Slacking off is now just slacking off and not wasting precious essay writing time.

And I'll have time to get some writing done. All the good ideas always seem to come when you're super busy.

Term papers suck. That is all.

And so ends the first two heady days of school when the profs let you out of class early and you have no homework to worry about. It's all downhill from here.

In a truly sad turn of events I started the research for one of my Canadian Studies term papers. The thing isn't due until November 15th but I've taken courses from this prof before and I know he likes a lot of research. It's like a guaranteed A. I checked out three books from the university library and a fourth is on its way. I can't decide if this makes me really studious or really lame. :-) The topic isn't half bad though: "To what degree is Canadian popular culture a reflection of United States popular culture?" Basically, do we Canadians just copy everything the Americans do or do we have a unique pop culture of our own? Not really sure what my argument will be. First I have to find a definition of popular culture that's to my liking and I can't do that since the stupid university library website is down and I can't access the article index. Blargh! That's my best source for research materials. I do have one thing in my advantage. The other Canadian Studies course I'm taking is about Canadian humour and Canada definitely has a unique brand of humour. I can totally work in what I learn from that course into the term paper.

My other course for the fall semester is a genre fiction class, or a slacker English class. This year I'm taking the Detective Fiction course, or Dick Fic as it's sometimes called. While the books for this class look interesting I'm not that excited. I was more excited for the Science Fiction English course I took two years ago. It was stuff I actually liked and could BS my way through if needed in an essay. Also didn't hurt that the TA, who filled in for the prof while he was away sick, was a big Stargate fan and liked to use the show as an example. We'll see how Dick Fic goes. The prof wants to show some movies and was thinking about screening a Prime Suspect as well.

One final exam but my semester seems essay heavy this year. Hopefully I don't go crazy before Christmas.

(And it occurs to me that now school has started up again I'm posting more on LJ. Apparently procrastination starts from day one.)

As Mal likes to say: I had a good day. And I do realize the day isn't over yet but I've been up since 5:00 am so my day started a lot earlier than normal. I have my Bio-Ethics final exam to thank for that. Do they really expect us to think clearly at 8:00 am? Bio-Ethics was hard enough to follow when I was wide awake. But aside from that setback, everything else that followed wasn't half bad. I took my first steps towards finding a decent summer job. I stopped off at an employment agency on the way home; I was all prepared to just hand over a resume and then get a call back saying that would want me to come in, but they saw me right away. Naturally I was dressed like a slob, 8:00 am exam after all, but these were only the people trying to get me a job so it wasn't the worst first impression I've ever made. The only downside was I was really tired and hungry so when they asked me to do some tests, I'm sure I could have done better. Also, my math skills are like non-existent; I haven't taken a math course in four years so the math based questions probably made me look really stupid. But I'm all registered now so they could be phoning at any second to tell me there's a job waiting. I can dream, right? :-D

When I got home, I found some lovely e-mails telling me all of my academic stuff has been sorted out. Which now means I don't have to worry about that stupid half credit of Comparative Lit. I was moaning about previously. The Assoicate Dean is allowing me to take the entry level Comparative Lit. course, which is really nice of him. Plus, everything is in the right place now over at the degree navigator. All I need to do now is finish off my 20 full course credits and I'll be done university! Next year. A year later than I planned. Oh well, it's all good.

So, to top off a whole year of Creative Writing, the Creative Writing profs have got into their heads that all the students in the program, Fiction and Poetry, should do a public reading. Which I think is the most evil thing they could come up with. I hate public speaking. What's even worse, I have to read something of mine. In public. In front of people I mostly won't know. Did I mention evil? But I doubt I can get out of this. Unless I come down with laryngitis, which would be great. :-D

I also thought I would take this opportunity to post some original fiction. My class is making this chapbook to be sold at the reading so this is my submission. It's likely it's also the thing I'll be reading. So, good to know if it's crap before I get up there. ;-)

Because school is making me sleepy and making icons is more fun. Plus, Ten/Rose angst!icons.

Teaser:

     

I don't know how people do it. How do writers write drabbles? How can they create this wonderful story with so little words?

I only wonder because my Fiction Class is throwing together this chapbook as an end of the year project. We all have to submit something. Now that the layout has been sorted out, the request has come down: one story, 350 words or less. 350 words or less? Gah. We had to do something similar at the beginning of the year with these writing exercises. We couldn't go a word over 350 and it really bugged me. I rarely came up with anything decent.

And here's something else to boot. The chapbook is going to be sold at some Creative Writing gala thing in April (where I'll have to read something for two minutes but that's a post for another time). I doubt many copies will be sold outside of the class, but the thought of having my crappy story out there for other people to read is just... depressing. Or scary. I think I'll go with scary.