Holiday Priorities

The holiday season is traditionally seen as a time when we pay special attention to being thankful, generous, and kind. We are cheerful and relaxed and focused on genuinely enjoying the company of family and friends. Unless, of course, we're in the b-school. Then our family is simply a means of reaching that ultimate ideal of making more money; friendship is simply an opportunity that should be constantly and unceasingly exploited for all it's worth. A quote from this week's Junior Career eNewsletter:

"As the Thanksgiving holiday is quickly approaching, I wanted to remind everyone that the holiday break is a great time for conducting informational interviews and networking as part of your job search strategies. In fact, CareerJournal.com has a great article reminding us that even the holidays present interesting networking opportunities for us. Here is a link to the article . However, remember that even social events require professionalism. Avoid situations which are overly casual for which you might later regret any behavior unbecoming for a potential candidate. I am anxious to hear all of your great networking stories when you return. Remember to share your target list and attempt to gain new contacts from parents/parent’s friends/friends/friend’s parents – I think you get the idea, the point is that everyone you see is a potential network contact."

Season's greetings to you all.
- posted by Darcey @ 1:41 PM

 
Thank you, scary guy in my dream

This morning I was having a nice, pleasant dream. Then suddenly that dream went away and I dreamed instead that I was laying in bed (I'm a very creative person). Then, out of nowhere, this man popped out in front of me and I screamed. This startled me so much I woke me up. It's kind of hard to describe, but it was weird the way the shock was so real that it woke me up. It was different somehow from how I usually wake up from dreams, even bad ones. My first thought was to be annoyed because I remembered that, a second earlier, I had been dreaming about something good and now I couldn't remember what it was. Then I wondered what time it was. Then I realized I had forgotten to set my alarm before I went to bed. So I looked at the clock. It was exactly one minute after my alarm should have gone off. The rude, scary guy interrupting my dream had actually stopped me from oversleeping. Otherwise, I would have gone right on sleeping for quite a while, because I had stayed up late finishing a project I had to turn in in the class that I would have slept through. Well done, scary guy.
- posted by Darcey @ 2:35 PM

 
Farewell, Backpack

You have served me well for many years. I have asked a lot of you, and it is no surprise that you're worn out. So I'm giving you a break. I'm sure I'll still find uses for you every once in a while. You just don't need to come to class every day. Unfortunately, I still to do. Just remember all the good times we had Like how the dog used you as a pillow when I would throw you on the family room floor in high school. I think only recently have I gotten all the little hairs out. It's been great. The new backpack may be young and flashy, with its water resistance and its bold blue color instead of your traditional black, but I'll always love you. So there's no reason to worry. I would never throw you in the corner and kick you when I'm mad like with the old printer. The printer was evil. You are a good, faithful friend.
- posted by Darcey @ 4:38 PM

 
Why am I always sick?
Why won't they let me go home?
Why must I deal with advisors?
Why, God, why?

Yeah, I know, my life's pretty rough. Yesterday afternoon I developed a sore throat, accompanied, of course, by a lovely swollen eyelid. Those eyelids of mine love any opportunity to misbehave that they can get. Then, after not being able to sleep much, I woke up today feeling all weak and pathetic.

But I had an economics test at 10. Economics is the silly introductory class that I have decided it is an insult to my intelligence to not be getting an A in. Skipping a midterm would probably not have helped me reach this goal. I think I did okay on the test, though. It was actually a little harder than the last one, which might be good for my evil schemes for an A, by bringing down the mean for the class.

Then I decided I should go to Japanese History because I hadn't gone last time. Then I decided I should stay for fiction writing because attendance is important and I thought the class would be really short. One of the two people whose stories we were supposed to critique had not had her story ready on time to distribute last class. She said she would email it, but I never got it, so I figured we would just talk about the other guy's story and then leave. But then we get to class and it turns out she did email, it's just several people didn't get it and several other people didn't get it until this morning. So I still thought we were just going to skip it, but, no, the teacher made the whole class sit there while the three people who had the read the story talked about it, which I think is kind of contradictory to the set up of the class, where if you're late, other people shouldn't be held accountable for it. But, anyway, we discussed both the stories and actually did end up getting done twenty minutes early, and I was happy because my weak patheticness was making the tiny uncomfortable chair rather painful, and I needed to go to bed. (patheticness- that's my very own new word) But then the teacher decided that she would use the extra time to go over some extra idea she wanted to discuss. And so everybody just kept on talking. Nobody will shut up in that class when I want them to. They don't shut up when I try to participate in the discussion like I'm supposed to, and they don't shut up when I need to leave due to weak patheticness.

I wanted to take the shuttle home so I wouldn't have to walk. I missed the 4:00 shuttle, since my fiction class wouldn't shut up. Luckily, the 4:15 shuttle came early, so I at least got to go inside out of the wind. I expected that since the shuttle was several minutes early, it wouldn't leave until 4:15. However, when it got to be 4:15, the driver proceeded to turn the shuttle off and leave. Nobody would let me go home.

Eventually, he did come back and take me home, and then I got to sleep for a couple of hours and now I feel much better.

But I also wanted to complain about my advisor. My old one left the school, but when I checked Webstac a few weeks ago, it said I was okay to register without meeting with anyone. Then, last week, I got an email, with one of those obnoxious "urgent" exclamation points, from the person who said she was my new advisor. She had turned it so I had to meet with her before she would authorize my registration and said to email her back quickly to set up a time to meet. I did that right away. Then, after a week of being ignored, I did it again. This time, she decided to grace me with a response. That response was that all the times I wanted to meet were booked, since her schedule had filled up fast while she was ignoring me. But she did have a time the day before I register, a few minutes before I have a class. I'm sure I'll get a lot of useful advice out of that meeting; I'm so glad I have her to help me.

Well, I think that's all the whining I can think up right now. I better get back to bed.
- posted by Darcey @ 12:13 AM

 
Hypochondria and Toxic Fumes

I think I'm having a stroke. My left leg has suddenly gone a weird kind of numb, different from falling asleep. I probably need to exercise, but I just don't see how that's going to happen.

I have been a good little girl this weekend. I cleaned the bathroom! The toilet and everything! I spent a considerable amount of time in that tiny room with lots of delightful-smelling chemicals, but in the end, it looked pretty much as disgusting as it did before. I don't think anything short of complete remodeling is going to change that. I also went to church and to the library and, in about an hour or two, wrote an amazingly baseless, unfounded paper describing the future of the entire world in 4 pages. But I'm pretty sure that's exactly what my CS467 professor wants. I'm also being a good participant in university activities. I went to the Eliot Review meeting, where I'm helping on the fiction and layout committees (okay, maybe I'm not actually doing anything for them, but I went to the meetings). However, I drew the line when they suggested phone-a-thon for fundraising. I'm not selling my soul to the evil, money-grubbing university for $20 and an afternoon of free pizza. I'd much rather just give them $20. You know, $20 that I made this summer by selling my soul to the evil, money-grubbing giant insurance corporation, the one that steals money little children need for food and then refuses to pay for their dying baby brother's liver transplant. Other people seemed to have the same thoughts. About phone-a-thon, I mean.

Friday night I went to see the new Matrix movie. It was entertaining, but I've never really been into the whole Matrix thing. Later that night, I watched the Secret of NIMH and enjoyed it just as much. Saturday night I went and had Thai food with my former suitemates and then I followed them to Caroline's party and crashed it, because I'm wild and crazy like that. I played Pictionary.
- posted by Darcey @ 11:22 PM

 
Random Petty Rant About My Obsessive Online Euchre Habit

I was playing euchre. My partner was playing painfully slowly. Then, after the first hand, he decides to tell me that I suck, for no reason that I could come up with. The only possibilities I could think of were that he was too stupid to realize why I trumped the trick that I did or that he thought I should have ordered something up instead of passing, or of course, that he was just a jerk and that it had nothing to with the game. We play a couple more hands, and he orders a couple of really stupid things and I have to save him. Once he ordered me up with nothing but the queen and the ten. Luckily, I was going to make it anyway so I took three tricks. Then later on the other team had 8 points and I ordered on a moderately risky hand, though much better than what he had been doing. Of course, everything goes against me and he's no help at all and we lose, and so he tells me "way to go".

Not that this is anything of the slightest interest to anyone reading this. I really should have yelled back at him, and then I would have felt much better, instead of typing up this whole thing about a silly game.
- posted by Darcey @ 11:47 PM

 
Wasn't November Lovely in the Summertime?

Then sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday there was a wonderful Midwestern 40 degree drop in temperature, and now winter is here. So my roommate decided to turn on the heater for the first time. Of course, these things don't just work the first time you flip the switch. We learned that with the air conditioner. But the heater does much more than make a big, freaky-looking block of ice in the closet. It fills the whole apartment with smoke! Emily called the maintenance people, and they assured her that this had happened to several apartments already, and that it was just from the dust, and we should turn it own low until it gets better. What else were we expecting? It's not like we're paying for some magic electric box that can control the temperature for us without the use of open flames.

Also, since it's no longer perfect room temperature outside, I think that gives me the right tomorrow to start being lazy and pathetic and taking the shuttle to class. So what if I actually have to walk in the opposite direction of school to catch it? It would mean that I would have to leave on time, though. I'm not so good at that. I can be like my brother. Daddy, I missed the bus, can you drive to St. Louis and take me to school? But yesterday I did manage to use the Green Line to get to Schnucks and back in an hour. (That's back to Brookings, mind you. From there I still had to carry my groceries home or wait for the Gold Line. I chose to walk.) I think the shuttles that run for academic purposes during the weekdays might be semi-reliable, at least as compared to the ridiculous system they attempt to use to get people to the mall on the weekend.

I've had a busy week, but that's pretty much over now. Now I'm just going to take a minute to relax, to sit back and smell the smoke.
- posted by Darcey @ 2:45 PM

 
I Feel Yucky

Not really sick sick, but just nauseated every time I try and get up and do something, so that I want to lay down and do nothing instead. I am improved today, but yesterday was quite worthless. I couldn't do anything fun, so I kept trying to do homework, but that didn't work either, so I didn't do much of anything, except watch movies on PBS. I didn't know PBS showed movies, but apparently Saturday is American Classics night. I watched "Bringing Up Baby" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

My grades are all backwards. So far, I seem to be getting an A in the Japanese History class that I am taking pass-fail and not trying at all in. I don't quite understand how. She passed back papers on Friday and was telling the class that they weren't especially great and that only a few people got As. Then I looked at my paper and she had corrected it all over the place, because I hadn't proofread it and she seems to care a lot about old-fashioned grammar rules like split infinitives. Then at the end she commented that there were three major topics that I "really needed" to discuss that I hadn't. So I'm figuring my grade isn't that great, right? But then it says A, and I was confused. Can I still change the class to credit?

But then in my intro macroeconomics course, I am not getting an A. The class is a ridiculously easy freshman class; that's why I took it in the first place. (Well, I also took it because I thought it would be more interesting than b-school econ, which it is.) There's very little work, and I hardly needed to study at all for the midterm, but then I went and screwed up the test, even though I knew the answers. I usually have good test-taking skills, an ability which I am told is generally worthless later in life, but is normally useful in school.

But macro hasn't even turned out to be my easiest class. It turns out that my easiest class, and possibly one of the easiest classes at Wash U, is a 400 level computer science class. Who knew?

But then again there's my fiction writing class, which I had hoped would be my most fun class. But I haven't ended up being able to do very well in there, with my first story turning out crappy and me not getting into the class discussions much.

I also have two other classes, but I think I've babbled long enough about my backward academic situation, and now I should go back to doing the homework that I didn't do yesterday.
- posted by Darcey @ 2:59 PM