A FIRST!

So for the first time in a million years, it's a weekday and I'm posting on before 9 PM.
I have a need to do so right now because I'm on the edge of unleashing violent tendencies on inanimate objects, my specifically my analytical chemistry books and I would prefer not to do so since I spent so much money on them in the first place.

So today has been very frustrating. Immunology not so much, mainly because I only went to one immunology class. The stuff we did in the morning one was exactly the same as the stuff we did in the afternoon one, so Lisa, one of the instructors, told me not to come. This gave me an amazing opportunity to actually enjoy eating my lunch (saving this freaking annoying bee that would not leave me alone).

However, the analytical chemistry has been much less helpful. The class is pretty much painful to sit through, between my teacher doing this thing where he explains something, then at the end squints and nods thereby driving me insane. Not to mention that he seems to just have this totally pompous attitude that says "I know everything about analytical chemistry and it's the most important thing you'll ever learn, and if you don't get it then you fail at life." My main response is obviously that the man cannot round.

The lab is equally as frustrating. Today we had this lab where we had to graph a whole bunch of stuff and I was having a hard time getting the differentiation to work out on one of the problems, and so she's walking around the room and says "oh, that doesn't look right" and I say "I know, I'm having a hard time figuring out what I did" and so I'm starting to show her and she goes "Well I don't know what you want me to tell you. If you need help, go to this other person."

Essentially, she is a lot like my professor, expecting perfection when it's obvious that I cannot give perfection. She is the quinessential opposite of my biology professor who stumbles on herself trying to help you whenever you have a problem and tries to work with you to get better.

Analytical Chemistry is definitely this field that says "you must understand everything I tell you the second I tell it to you, otherwise, you suck".

This semester is going to be very long and very painful thanks to the bravado of analytical chemistry.

My first semester analysis of my courses based on how much I like them:
BIOL 391-Immunology
BIOL 409-Methods in Immunology
SPAN 425-Latin American Civilization
FR 101-Intro to French
BIOL 481-Biochemistry I
HIST 411-Medieval Europe
BIOL 383-Genetics
CHEM 451-Physical Chemsitry
CHEM 417-Analytical Chemsitry.

Thank goodness for a long weekend this weekend.

Wow

For the first time in months, I think I might be able to post more than half the days in a month, which is a major accomplishment for me right now.

Today was a pretty decent day, however, I have not gotten anywhere near what I could have gotten done done. If that makes sense.

I wore my new jeans, aka, my ridiculous pants that shrunk like 200 inches so that I'm wearing highwaters, today. Somewhat disappointed by the whole length thing, but I could just wear these pants around on the weekends.

I still have so much homework to do tonight. I have like 10 pages left in my history book that I want to finish, a lot of French homework, and something for my methods class tomorrow.
Possibly some physical chemistry homework, but not sure of that right now.

Tomorrow is not going to be loads of fun, because I have two A-Chem sessions. I just don't like a-chem, and I still have to live through 27 more classes (BLECH!). Not my idea of a good time.

Then there's the whole lab portion, of which I am not a big fan, mostly because two labs in one semester is not a whole lot of fun.

I think I'll be taking my philosophy thesis this spring, as one of my co-workers told me that Dr. Cutter is going to be doing it, so that will be awesomeness.
Which makes my tentative schedule look as such:
PHIL 495: Senior Thesis
FR 102: French II
HIST 3XX: History Upper Division Elective
SPAN 310: Literary Analysis
BIOL 482: Biochemistry II
CHEM 452: Physical Chemistry II

Leaving me with 3 hours of philosophy and history each, 7 hours of French, 0 hours of Spanish, 4 hours of biology, and 2 hours of chemistry.

Obviously that gives me a LOT of freedom for next year. I can't wait.

Last Tuesday for two weeks

Yes, I have next Tuesday off, but I would much rather have it later in the semester. However, I'll take the opportunity and go visit peoples in Denver, i.e. all of my old professors, friends, etc.

Today was definitely a very busy day. Immunology lab was pretty good, as I got to use the micropipetters and automatic pipetters for the first time. I know it's so basic, but it was my very first time.

Then in immunology class, I asked about a billion questions. My professor is going to be sick of me by the end of the semester. She'll probably kill my cell bio professor for telling me to contribute to class.

A-Chem was again a personal survival disaster. My teacher does this thing where after someone asks a question, he'll answer it and when he's done, he'll squint his eyes and nod his head like "oh yeah, I know everything". I guess he knows a lot about A-Chem (a useless field for ever learning anything new, in my opinion. Oooh analysis techniques!), well, except rounding. The man cannot round for the life of him. He rounds up when it's like 15.02 and down when it's 12.977

Wasn't wounding something we did in like third grade?

I dunno.

History was pretty good ,but I think I will be definitely going to the meeting for writing history papers because I think it would help me get back into the groove of writing history papers.

French was cool because we started our conjugations of -er verbs, which apparently make up like 60% of verbs.

Sobrevivo. Well, except for my Spanish oral, that did not sobrevive for anything. I probably got somewhere between a C and a B on that. Not good. Argh.

Well, at least there are lots of written things. My written Spanish is perfect. My oral, not so much.

I don't have much else to say. I need to write about something other than school, but there's just not that much to say.

Los días tormentosos

I know that's probably not right. I did a lot of things not right today: eating a slice of carrot cake, eating a bag of M&M's, and completely fucking up my Spanish oral. My only hope is that since I went first she might be a little lenient.

And tomorrow continues on the path of pain for this week. Good things: I get to go into the lab tomorrow (to learn how to use micropipettes), I get to go to French, history, and immunology. Bad things: A-Chem, being at school ALL DAY, having to deal with classmates throughout the day.

Thankfully, this weekend is a four-day weekend. Unthankfully, there are no more days off until NOVEMBER. Shit doods.

That's serious crap.

My job continues to frustrate me, causing immense heights in blood pressure and systemic chaos. I wish I never learned how to do everything. I have a certain level of job security, but too much job responsibility.

I hate my life right now.

108 days left till the end of the semester! WOOT.

I am yet again exhausted, for a variety of reasons.

However, I have A LOT about which I should discuss before I go to bed tonight. I have some Lady Grey tea in my system, so that should help me stay awake long enough to get this out and to finish putting together some organizing thoughts for my Spanish oral tomorrow (YIKES!).

I basically worked on my oral all day, learning more about Hugo Chavez than I every cared to learn about him, how is paranoia came about mostly after the coup attempt against him and that he's basically the reason that gas prices will pretty much always be high. I think I'll do pretty well, but maybe go a little overboard on the time. Hopefully not too much. I think I can get everything in in 7 minutes, however this experience makes me wish that I had not volunteered to go in the first day because this has really made me see that my Spanish skills need some refinement.

Suffice it to say, my birthday was spent doing a variety of things I never really wanted to do.

However, today I did get new pants (which I suppose I kind of needed), socks, jackets, and THE VIRGIN QUEEN. Hawt. I absolutely love that movie because it's the closest out of all the accounts of Elizabeth I've seen, to the historical events and how Elizabeth handled them. Hellen Mirren had good acting as Elizabeth, and caught the somewhat unstable nature of Elizabeth, but the Masterpiece Theatre is much closer to fact.

So my boss. I said I would mention things, but it's honestly not that much. I just wanted to say that I'm disappointed that he cared more about his French conversation stuff than the German classes that had orientation on Friday. It's really sad to know that he's not too big on the multi-tasking aspect of this job. I sometimes feel that I have to do things I should not have to do to make sure that everything that he forgets to look at is done right. A couple of times he's forgotten to turn in our pay slips on time, and the whole set up of the place is additional evidence to the difficulties he has with certain things. He's great a certain thigns of course, like trying to promote an awareness of the center, getting people to come in, getting an ASL tutor, and getting all of the technology stuff taken care of, but there was all the little things that I've had to handle that I probably should not have had to do (like essentially assume orientation responsibilities).

I don't know.

My other "boss" at Memorial, is technically the morning charge nurse, but she's never there when I get there, so my real boss is the evening charge nurse. One of my responsibilities is to post the patients for the next Monday so that when people start coming in on Monday, all the early patients have someplace to go. In order to post the board, I need room assignments for all the patients, which is the job of the charge nurse for Monday, to make sure is done (if that sentence made sense). Well, two weeks ago, no one did it, so I did. Even though I'm not supposed to. And I know the basic philosophy behind assigning the rooms, and the evening charge nurse said I did it right. Anyways, how a hospital works is that when someone doesn't do their job, you let them know. So I left the nurse a note saying that I should not have to do her job in somewhat more diplomatic words. Apparently, when she found that note, she threw a fit, erased everything I had done, and replaced it in some order that made no sense to anyone.
Next time it happens, I'm not updating the board at all and they can have chaos on Monday.

Anyways, I have survived the first week of classes.

Blah.
Such is a frequent sentiment of mine in this last week. I've been going from sheer exhaustion to some sense of optimism to just plain tiredness. Staying up until 0000 in the morning definitely does not help these things.

Today I have gotten a TON of stuff done. I finished all of my French homework for Monday, all of my genetics reading for the first two chapters, most of my second Analytical Chemistry homework assignment done, and all of my history reading done for Tuesday. This weekend's lovely list of activities includes my genetics homework due tomorrow, a math sheet for my methods in immunology class, continuing reading in my history book, and, most importantly, doing my oral for Spanish class on Monday on Hugo Chavez and recent Venezuelan history. I thought I could give a basic comparison to economic and political conditions both before and after his presidency and then talk about his actual presidency and personality.

I'll write about work tomorrow, because I definitely have more things to say, including my boss basically seeming to give up on German.

Blech

I am so eff tired, it's not even funny, however with school back into swing, I'm definitely starting to feel the pinch to blog more frequently.

So far, I am generally keeping on top of things. I finished my first analytical chemistry homework (10, yay!) and between my genetics and biochemistry extra credit quizzes, I now have earned a grand total of 19 points on the semester. Out of, oh, 5200, por lo menos.

Yeah, I'm not so much on this semester so far. However, I'm almost done with the first week, out of 16....grr.

Well, not 16 for everything. My Analytical Chemistry lab is done two weeks early and my genetics class ends a week early. But besides all of that...I have nothing that ends early.

So I found out that the philosophy teacher of amazingness might be teaching the thesis class for philosophy next semester. Which means I MUST take it. Then there's the history one too. I might take my two theses, Biochem II, P-Chem II, and Literary Analysis for Spanish, and French II and that's it. That would leave me with 3 hours in philosophy and history, 2 hours in chemistry, and like 4 in biology. Which means that if I want, I can apply for graduation next Spring, and then just work that next spring in a research lab and take French IV and Applied Molecular Genetics. Because my final Chem class is going to be Molecular Biology, I'll be taking a logic course and a upper-division history course then I'll have biostatistics, and biology seminar plus French III. That's 4+1+3+3+3+3=17 hours my last semester. Hot.

I'm starting to mix up French and Spanish. I said tonight "Je voudrais un cafe natural" for those who have no familiarity with either language, after I said "un cafe" my Spanish mind clicked into gear and said "natural" instead of "nature".

I need to sedate that brain on Tuesdays and Thursdays and activate it on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

What should be exciting to me is the possibility that by the time I graduate from college, I could be fluent in three of the seven Romance languages. Most people think there are only four or five, but there are seven. Most everyone gets at least Spanish, French, and Italian. The majority of people tend to get Portuguese. Few people know Romanian, and even fewer still know that Latin is the original for some reason. Then, there's the essentially bastard Romance language, English, which I already speak.

After I get French, I plan on spending that Spring semester learning Portuguese. For a fluent Spanish speaker, fluency in Portuguese takes about 6 months.

Which is something kind of weird, since the general rule says that the first language takes 12 years to master, the second 8, the third 4, the fifth 2, the sixth onward 1. But I guess since Portuguese and Spanish are SOOOOO interrelated, a fluent Spanish speaker can get there faster.

I can feel French coming on faster than Spanish ever did, but still, my brain likes to mix up langauges.

To BED!

Initial Considerations and Such

Well I have now had every class at least once (except my analytical chemistry lab) and I think I can give a suitable introduction to my semester experiences, which might be more challenging than I had anticipated.

BIOL 481: This class surprisingly seems to be one of the easier classes to survive this semester, for a variety of reasons. Namely, the professor does not seem overly strict about grading and pretty explanatory about the information in the class. Attendance is not required, so I might indulge on the occasional mental health day.

Anticipated Grade: A

BIOL 383: I mentioned some of my initial considerations yesterday, and after submitting the pre-quiz I am somewhat less sure. I'm pretty sure I can do well on the homework, readings and discussions areas of the course, which is a little less than half of the grade. The exams though I'm not so sure on, considering that on my pre-quiz that is supposed to measure my skills in the prerequisites, I got a 78%. I'm going to have to withhold an anticipated grade until I start getting some grades which can project my long term grade. The prequiz didn't count against us at all (5 points ec), so I cannot really use that as a tool for my skills.

BIOL 409/BIOL 391: These two course kind of go together because one is immunology and the other is immunology lab, and I can tell right now that I am absolutely going to love these classes. The topics already seem incredibly interesting and I can't wait to delve into these fantastic things. Even though the grading scale is much higher than I would like (a 95% is an A, a 90-94% is an A-), I think I'm going to like it so much that I will definitely excel.

Anticipated Grade: A/A

CHEM 451: My professor for this course has gotten nothing but good feedback for his grading and his tests are multiple choice. PLUS, he throws out the bottom two scores. Out of 14. Damn. I'm not too familiar with the material, but I hear he makes it really understandable for his students.

Anticipated Grade: A

CHEM 417: Ooooh. This is a tricky one. A-Chem definitely seems hard and the professor does not seem like one of those accessible types. Not in the sense that he's never there, but rather that he expects that since he understands it, everyone else should understand it too. I don't like that. Plus, I've already started off on the wrong foot with this guy. BUST ASS, RAY!

Anticipated Grade: A-

HIST 411: This one seems kind of squeaky too. The professor seems like a very hard-liner with his expectations, and he said "I've had students come into my classes with all A's and leave with D's from my classes", so that's definitely scary, but the good news is that most of our grade is made up of papers. Considering my last semester success with papers, I should be good to go.

Anticipated Grade: A, but barely.

SPAN 425: This is my class which will work my ass to the bone. Which is good because my ass needs to lose weight. I'm still a little rusty with my Spanish, but from what I hear, this professor gives so much work and is so willing to work with students that it's hard not to do well in her class. This does not prevent me from having some apprehension, so I think I'm going to withhold an anticipated grade from this class too.

FR 101: This one is my yay class-one in which I should get A's very easily, causing me to go yay. I've got the language gene down pat, with my experiences in Spanish and Latin giving me an awesome opportunity to learn French and learn it VERY quickly. I was starting to memorize a lot of our words right away in class.

Perdon, monseiur. (Ok, so spelling is not great)
Oui, mademoiselle, qu'est ce que vous desirez?
Un the au lait, si'l vous plait.
Voila.
Merci
Je vous en prie.

So pretty basic, but I'm getting there.

Anticipated Grade: A.

I already have tons of homework, so I had better get started on that.

First DAY!

So here I am at school, waiting for all of the "excitement" to begin. I'm definitely apprehensive for my courses this semester, and I'm not sure how successful I will be.

I have something of an initial impression of Genetics, considering that it's an online class. I think the online version is probably better than the in class version, simply because I am a more independent learner. Not to mention, there are no clicker questions in the class, making my life a million times easier.

The benefit of Genetics over Cell Bio last semester is that there is less pressure on the exams. We have 700 points in the class (as opposed to 310 last semester), with 400 points going to tests, 100 to homework, 100 to these mini-essay things, and 100 to online discussion.

Anyways, I have not seen any of the actual assignments yet so I cannot really give myself much to go on when it comes to grades, but I think I should do pretty decently.

The technology of this campus is giving me hell today. Between our printer and the internet, I'm on the edge of screaming. I also would like to scream at the slowness of this morning. I've already been here and hour and I feel like I'm going nowhere.

My sister moved into her dorm last night, and apparently, it's like a prison cell and both she and her roommate have to share a closet that's the size of a small wardrobe. By the way, the closet has no door...odd. Plus, there's like no room to move anything, so apparently, she's not going to want to spend much time in her dorm room. Fortunately, she's on a ginormous campus, so there are lots of things that she can do with all of her time so that she's basically just sleeping and eating in her dorm.

At first I was kind of jealous of the opportunities she is going to have, but I realize that I definitely am not jealous of her going to a huge school. I think UCCS is about the max size a school I would want for my undergrad degree. I've been carving my niche here, and so far, I've impressed a lot of people with my abilities. I only wish that this will carry through in the fuure.

I'm scared for Spanish (for the first time ever), because I looked at the course register, and there are 8 out of 14 people who have Hispanic names, meaning they are probably native speakers. Whereas I have had no Spanish in a year.

I'm actually scared for everything. Everything sounds and feels intimidating. I'm confident that as I adapt, I'll do well, but right now, I'm just really unsure of myself and unsure of what these classes are going to expect.

This building is irritating me right now with this pulsating thing. I'm starting to get a headache.

So maybe I should do something now?

Trying to get to 10

I need to post more frequently, because I really don't want this to be the first month in the history of Ray's blog usage that I don't get to at least 10 posts in a month. I was looking at some of my old blogs, and it was not uncommon for me to get at least ten posts a week. Now, I'm so boring that I cannot even get ten in a month without stretching it.

So yesterday was definitely weird. My dad was on edge all day partially because of their trip today. It's kind of weird to think that my sister's gone for the next 4 months, off starting a new college life and starting on a completely fresh plate. I mean, talk about fresh, she doesn't know anybody at her university, but it looks like based on her emails back and forth from her roommate that she should have a much better experience with dorms than I had.

We spent like 2 hours last night trying to figure out her schedule. There aren't many options for her, but hopefully we got the things she needs. Her schedule is pretty cool, as it consists of Essentials of Hematology, Hemostasis, and Urinalysis, Calculus I, Physics I, Physics I Lab, her military science class for ROTC, and either Histology or Swahili I. She's trying to get into a full Swahili class because she's going to Tanzania next summer for a nutrition program there and she wants to be able to converse with the people over there. Isn't that cool?

Then we looked, and they had all the spring classes posted, so we figured out that she should do Physics II, Physics Lab II, Spanish Grammar, Chemistry Lab II, Swahili II, Basic Human Nutrition, and her second military science class.

With all of that, she's set for her nutrition trip to Africa, and is a good ways toward her majors, in Human Biology, Spanish and a required minor in Military Science.

Meanwhile, I'm here desperately trying to figure out what I might be taking in the spring, having enough money to cover all of my books and credit card expenses, working out a study schedule for all of my classes, worrying about the two GRE's that I have to take, fitting in everything I want to do with college and life over the next two years.

Not to mention that I have to look for internships at research places this summer--which looks like it's going to be REALLY hard to get into. [Bad grammar, I know]. I have two that I'm looking at right now, and it's certain to grow. My first two choices right now are at the Pasteur Institut [not a spelling error, it's French] in Paris and the University of Wisconsin's summer research program.

Then I have to save money for my grad school tour, which my father so kindy reminded me is going to be really hard for me to pay for. But this is a serious decision. I have 10 schools now that I'm considering-two are really easy to see because they're CU-Boulder and CSU-and most are not in Colorado. I'm down to Hawaii, Washington State, CSU, CU, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Purdue, Indiana, Penn State, and Harvard. Of those ten, Harvard is the easiest to cut because I want to just see if I can get in (they only take 15 people out of over 500 applications, trust me, I'm not getting in). So really, it's only nine schools I'm serious about. I figure that this spring break, it would be good for me to go see 5 of them, since WI, MI, IN, and PA are all really close to each other, compared to western states. However, my dad insists that I'll probably only be able to see Wisconsin, Michigan, and MAYBE Purdue with how much I get paid and how much I work.

So, when would I get to see Penn State and Indiana????
Ironically, Purdue and Indiana are like 4 hours apart, and I don't have time to see them how?

But yeah. Rough stuff.

Hopefully though, things will work out. For me, they have a tendency of doing that. The only thing I really have to worry about long term is GRE and finding research opportunities. However, I tend to excel under pressure, so it's pressure that's coming.

I have to work tomorrow, since Dwire has a community open house. Any Coloradoans in the Springs want to see what the state spent over five million dollars on? It cost you at least a dollar. For me, it cost like $500. If you want to see where your dollar+ went, then you should come take a look. It's SERIOUSLY nice. Plus, you can come see me!

Ok, that's not much of a plus.

Starbucks tomorrow with peoples. That should boost me somewhat.

Alack!

I actually have no real reason to be saying the word alack, but I so love the word alack that I must use it con frecuencia.



As you can tell, I've been trying to reenergize my Spanish brain, as I'll be immersing myself into a Spanish environment coming next week. I'm probably going to "borrow" one of the Spanish grammar books here over the weekend so that I can bone up on my verbs and subjunctive rules.



Technically, we're not allowed to take out books, but since I'm a tutor and no one's going to be using the books anyways between now and Monday, I figure it's not that serious. I open on Monday, anyways.



I'm getting somewhat excited for the start of a new semester. Somewhat, because I have no idea what to expect in most of my classes. Generally, I've had some expectations of what is to come. For example, I have heard nothing but wonderful things about my Spanish teacher.

Ok, so this was from this morning, but after my boss came in it was work work work most of hte morning. We had our first open house for the regents, and mainly bigwig figures of the university, and not too many were pleased to come in. Over 150 people were sitting there and we only had 20 come in; however, I did get to give a brief tour to one of the state legislators. I have no idea who he was, but I gave him one.

Tomorrow is my sister's last day in CO for a while as she goes off to college on Saturday. It's pretty weird knowing how much older we're all getting.

I wish I had something useful to say, but I just don't. At least, nothing that I can post in a public realm, considering that what I say on here might come back and bite me in the butt.

Sigh.

More terrible states of updating from me....

Well, everything is functional in the LTC. My last two and a half weeks of work have hopefully paid off, both in monetary and more reputable ways. I'm starting to stand out from the rest of the crowd, and my suggestions are really getting something done this semester, as opposed to last when I was drowned out.

My pay situation was fixed, so my next pay period will be something ridiculous like $600. If not, then it goes onto the next one (which would be like $300). My schedule is an improvement over last semester too, as I work 6 hours a week instead of 4. I've got Mondays from 8:30-10:30 and Fridays from 8:30-12:00. I always go in early, so it's basically like 8:15 both days.

I like opening, it's much less busy.

I would love to go to so many places. I was thinking about some kind of viaje over winter break, since I should not have to spend so much money on books and tuition, and no money on parking.

My financial crisis is starting to subside, with my energies turning towards the impending semester. The impending semester that will likely physically kill me.

In any regard...
I actually have next to nothing to say. I have a lot of things I want to do before school starts on Monday, but I doubt I'll do all of them. Sadness.

I'm eff tired.

So bad

I'm such a terrible updater. I should try to do it everyday but I'm right now only managing a few posts a week. Pretty soon, I'll disappear forever. Well, that's probably true, considering how fall is going to go for me.

I'm pretty pissed off right now, to be honest. In my last pay period, I worked at least 13 hours, and I'm pretty sure that it was more like 14.5 (I remember that being the number I wrote for total hours). However, in my paycheck yesterday, I was only paid 45 dollars. I'm pretty sure that my pay rate has not changed, so I figured that it had something to do with my hours. Of course, my boss reported that I had only worked 5 hours over two weeks. Five. Out of at least 13. I got gyped over 80 bucks. So basically, I have to go in and complain about it, and given my wonderous record with the CU system, I'll probably not get paid what I worked.

This makes me REALLY anxious about my possibilities for these last two weeks, considering that I worked over 57 hours. Which means I should be getting paid about $520 two weeks from yesterday, but if that's messed up, I will literally explode.

I'm going to have to talk to my boss on Monday, and if the situation isn't resolved, I guess I'll suck it up for those two weeks, but if I'm fucked over on these last two weeks, I'll probably quit.

I've gotten pretty angry over the last couple of weeks at him, for a variety of reasons. It just doesn't seem like anything is really organized.

I have three pretty big examples recently. The first is that when I unboxed all of the computers, there was this cord already attached to the monitor (the blue VGA cord) that goes into the back of the computer part thing (modem?). Anyways, I had connected all of the blue ones together, and I find out, about a week after I do it, that he decided he wanted the white ones connected, when it would have save me a lot of time just to do the white ones in the first place.

The second is that he asked me to work the open house for Dwire Hall on August 19th, so I was coming up with ideas for what we could do that day, to show some of our programs and resources, and I'm talking it over with him, and there are apparently two open houses, one which he neglected to mention to me. But instead of having a week to prepare for the open houses, I have a mere three days, as there is one this Thursday (Tuesday is training for LTC people, so that will be a non-open house day). Then there's one mysteriously floating in September land of which the details are obscure to me.

Starting next week, we're suppsoed to give presentations in class to the various languages, with the vast majority of the presentations being our software, which is supposedly our biggest achievement of the summer. Not the fact that we have moved, but rather, our "innovative" software, which cost us...oh, about $1000. Software that we really didn't need, in my opinion, but my boss thought that the "technology" part of language technology center was lacking.

I don't know. I don't think that these presentations, which are supposed to orient students to the LTC should be presentations of our software. The whole thing he said, is supposed to take 20 minutes. Compared to the other tutoring centers on campus, this is excessive. For example, the Science Learning Center director is the one who does all of the schpeals, and they take about 3 minutes. The writing center doesn't even do them. The math center I think is the same as Science, and the oral communications center is this blip in the middle of limbo to me.

It's frustrating, because I think my boss thinks that I'm psychic and can read his mind about his vision for the LTC and that it's my job to make sure that everything is presentable enough (by the way,everything HAS to look perfect).

Tutoring has gone to the dinosaurs for college. Now, it's basically babysitting.

Oh, and my final thing. I told my boss yesterday that I had to leave at 1:30 to go to work at Memorial, a place where I have had a longer commitment (and more hours). Keep in mind that I had gotten there at 9 AM. At 1:15, he comes in and tells me that I need to hook all of the computers up to the internet and connect the power cords before I leave. We have 30 computers. I was livid. I mean, I had been there all day, listening to the software and crap so I can give a decent presentation on it, vacuuming (which other people are paid to do), and installing software. Suffice it to say, this does not take a lot of effort.

So why could he have not told me at say 9 AM? I don't know. But I'm just getting really frustrated with my job, and I've been looking at other opportunities, but nothing looks flexible with my schedule. I just don't know how much all of this stress is worth it.

Ok, I have to wrap up soon because I have to work, again for placement tests.

Well, I did volunteer for this, so I'm not complaining too much.

I just hope I get paid for what I work this week.

Because my credit card is breaking my back. Last week, my savings account had $800. Today, it has $150. I had to spend $250 on my tuition (nothing compared to what my dad had to pay--$5800), and $450 on my last credit card--school books, CLEP test, etc.

Next month's credit card bill: $450 again. I have to pay $350 on my parking pass for the year and $100 for more school books and other essentials.

I think looking at this post, these next four months are going to be the hardest in my life so far. I have so much going against me right now--the stress of finances, the stress of school, the stress of absolute absence of sanity--that I have no idea how I'm going to make it.

I'm determined to find some weekend work to buttress my accounts. I've been looking on all the employment sites, hoping for some weekend hours (if I can get 8 hr on Sat. and Sun., that would be great).

I'm equally determined to make straight A's again. I did it this summer, so now, my hardest challenge is to come: can I make it through these next four months of work and basically human devastation? Or will the stress that I put on myself finally be too much?

It seems that the chaos that I once missed is going to come back in new ways.
I only hope that I can live up to the challenge. If I can make it through these next four months, I can handle anything.

Time to work.

By the way, I just reached my target weight! 149 here I am!

Vivir es Trabajar

Yep, that's essentially what these last couple of days have been for me. Monday, I pulled a 730-500 shift (or something like that), absolutely wiping out my body. I had nothing to eat, very little to drink, and was doing a lot of serious physical labor. I was pretty much devastated that night, as I only ate when I got home and then went straight to bed. Basically, I was lifting crap all day (seriously heavy equipment, movies [25 loads of them], tons of boxes, computers, desks, furniture, and hauling trash to the garbage), which followed with some serious fifth degree burns on my arms, whihc now are sadly tanner. I despise tanness. I've been trying to get as freakishly pale as humanly possible, and Monday did not help.

Tuesday was another pretty long day, from 630-200. However, yesterday was mostly an indoor day, as our dumpsters were all full. I managed to sort all of our resources, so that books and videos are everywhere they belong, and I organized the storage room. After these I put all of our posters up and went to get my badge for the hospital (YAY! Now I can go anywhere). My sister turned 18 yesterday. I definitely makes me feel older knowing that my siblings are starting to turn into actually legal adults. I'll be freaking old when my other sister becomes one (I'll be 29 [just a month or so from 30] when she turns 18). Think about that. My life will be one third over, when hers is just beginning. Damn.

So avoiding life crises, we move into today's activities, which were diverse. I had one placement test today and I had to swap out all of the VGA cords on the computers for the DVI cords. I can't tell you what they do, but that's what I did, and I typed up stuff for my boss. Speaking of which, Ph.D. people cannot write in appropriate English. I had one vision statement I typed that lacked commas and had listed adjectives, as such: "collaborative low-anxiety friendly warm welcoming environment". That screams for commas. I love commas, by the way, in case you didn't know that. I also labeled pretty much everything that we have (computers, TV's, Storage, you name it, it's labeled) and dumped what little trash we had left that facilities would not take.

I came up with a list of things that we need to do between now and Tuesday, which is a LOT. Essentially, I need to get all of our supplies in order and on order, I need to finish organizing the storage room, I need to organize the student workspace, I need to make our presentation power points for French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Latin classes, come up with a schedule for where tutors can go into foreign language classes to encourage visits into the LTC, a million printing jobs, and a whole bunch of other things that take up a whole sheet of paper. In my miniscule writing.

YEAHHHHHH tomorrow is going to be seriously busy. It will probably be an 830-500 day. While one could complain about such things, This is getting me a WHOLE lot of money, and saving me from completely sinking into credit card debt. Not to mention it's going to let me start saving up a bunch of money towards my Spring semester, which will be my cheapest yet.

Thursday is probably going to be a full day, but hopefully Friday is a normal 10-1 day.

I'm assuming so much charge over things, it's actually pretty nice. I'm going to be running the open house for the professors, which is no small task. I'm going to have to make sure that we have some food to eat (hopefully not a whole bunch of Sodhexo, if necessary, I will spend the entire day baking spanakopita), a presentation planned which shows all of the professors our new computer programs, encouraging them to send students into the labs, encourage participation in our conversation tables, and giving an overview of all of our services offered. I'm going to have to make sure that the professors feel comfortable scheduling classes in our computer lab, and much much more. I'll probably have to put together some complementary packets or something for them as well, that gives instructions on how all of the new stuff works.

Then we have LTC training on Tuesday, and basically, since I've been putting everything together, I'm going to be doing some of that stuff, since over the last few days, the LTC has become basically my little baby. My boss is in his office, and has left me a LOT of control over how the LTC looks, how our storage is set up, etc. I'm surprised that he's given me so much leeway to be honest, but I think the amount of work I've put in over the last few days has shown him that I have genuinely good intentions.

Well, to work again tomorrow!

I am literally exhausted. All traces of energy have been sapped out of my body by these last few days and the rest of today will not improve things any.

Yesterday was all work all day. I went into the LTC at 6:30 AM and was there until 1:00, unloading boxes of computers, moving more stuff into storage, doing something with the 100 tons of boxes we had left over from the computers, preparing all of our metal to be painted. It was definitely blah. Monday is going to be seriously blah because I'm going to be turned into the department slave, essentially. Not high on my list of fun things to do.

I'm going to see if I can get the rest of the LTC organized before I'm sent into departmental servitude. I also REFUSE to work for Steen. She can lift her own shit. I won't work for her, ever, ever, ever. If she wants help, she can hire someone else.

Work last night was exhausting too, mostly because I was pushing a lot of people, and things were pretty stressed out for a while. I'd like to have one day where I go from open to close in volunteering, just so I can see how things go throughout the day. It would be an absolute mess on my body, but it would definitely be a good experience. Maybe next Friday...

In the hour I had between volunteering and work at LTC, I got a quick lunch of meh pizza, another doubleshot (I had already downed one that morning) and a sample of blueberry and cream frappucino, which tasted wowalicious.

I went to get my badge, but they have to put in a request, and I'll get it made on Tuesday after work, presumably.

Volunteer services sent me all over the city because they thought I had a positive TB test, and the people at Employee Health thought that they were crazy.

Today has been ok, I suppose. I went to this presentation thing from a Rwandan holocaust survivor, and I originally thought that it was sponsored by Colorado College, when in reality, it was sponsored by their Catholic Club or something like that. While most of her discussion was faith oriented, she had a lot of poignant, more secular observations which I found intriguing, and even though I didn't have a lot of connection with her faith based stuff, her discussions on human nature underlying her general thesis were excellent. I've always thought that people from more diverse and challenging backgrounds are the basis of wisdom, and she certainly has had the experience necessary for wisdom to prevail. And though I do not find myself particualrly religious, her convictions were certianly admirable.

However, despite the main speaker's general excellence, the other speakers and the atmosphere was by and large corrosive. One speaker was essentially a bible thumper on marriage saying that divorce is too rampant (when in fact, I don't care. If a marriage doesn't work, it doesn't work) and that homosexuality is destuctive to families. I'm pretty sure that that's not supposed to be an official teaching, that homosexuality in and of itself (not the actions, but the inner tendencies) are corrosive to families. It was a fundamentalist speech emphasising all of these religious things, with which I can no longer find agreement.

Seeing these things have made me realize that the kind of religious faith that at least Americans have is unbased. Something essentially violative of human nature exists at the base of American religious expression, and I cannot easily tolerate it. I cannot easily tolerate the people who form the basis of religion in the US either, the priests, ministers, "witnesses", because of there extremeness. Their immediate and unchanging judgments against different types of people.

I try to imagine that I have not been easy to be that way as well, but I know that when I was a fanatic religious person myself, I acted the same way, and that now that my religious influences have been defeated, I find myself more open to the possibility of a diversity of ideas and opinions, and much less of a biased person.

That I find this means that religion's direction in this country is a bad thing. Now that churches are governed as well by the almighty dollar demonstrates that the morality of religion is no longer as moral as it once could claim.

After the thing, I went to Old Colorado City and walked around a little, finding nothing of great interest, so I went to La Baguette and got lunch--gazpacho and an almond croissant--which was fantastic.

And now I'm home, determining what to do with the rest of my day.

Wow, I can't believe that I have not updated in the last four days. It does not feel like four days.

Actually, it does. Corrections.

So physics is done forever. I never ever ever ever ever ever have to take physics again, which is a wonderful relief. An even greater relief, is that the vile puta from the depths of hell (or Compton) got at best an A- in that class. Stupid person. I'm so glad that something from the mystical dimensions slammed her ass.

I finished the test (yay) and I know I at least got an 80%, which is more than what I needed to keep my A in the class, so that is definite excitement.

But the real story of my last few days has been the intensity with which I have been working my ass off in the language technology center. I have been hauling butt for the last two days, and I am on the edge of pure physical exhaustion. Sort of. Starbucks Espresso Doubleshots are basically saving my life. I have two packed for tomorrow, since I'm going to be at LTC from 7 AM to 3 PM getting everything ready to open permanently this Wednesday (hopefully). Then I have to be at the hospital from bout 3 PM to close, which will probably be around 11 PM. So basically, tomorrow is a 16 hour shift, and vast amounts of caffeine are necessary to my survival.

I got another book in from half.com ordering, which means that I have my two chemistry books left to come in, and that should be everything I ordered. I think the bookstore opens on Monday, so I can get everything I think will be important (lecture notes,etc.) then. Hopefully, nothing goes over $400, and I'm pretty close right now ($290).

But the good news is that with all this work in the LTC, my paycheck for this week will be $200, the one for next week will be around $200, and the one from the last two weeks should be about $150. Basically, this end of summer bash is saving my bank account.

Tomorrow, I have to unpack ALL 30 of our computers, set them up, etc.; prepare all of our metal objects for painting (a color which I picked, bwah hah ahahahaha!), do some general tidying, and a couple other things. Monday is going to be a biatch, as we'll have all of our metal stuff painted, so I'll be loading things onto and into all of our metal stuff, finishing my boss's office, more tidying, etc. Tueday will be more of the same, and by Wednesday, we should be done moving everything into the LTC. However, all of the language professors will certainly come by expecting manual labor. Hopefully, the biatch from hell Spanish lady doesn't come by, because I'm not helping her if she does. I'll say, "I'm sorry, but we're expecting placement tests, and I need to be here to administer them." or "I'm sorry, but you're a puta and kicked me out of a class I was more than capable of completing. Thanks, but payback is a bitch. Break your own back".

Everyone else in the department though is another question. I can definitely use the suck up points.