I had my first comparative invertebrate zoology lab today. My TA is awesome and super friendly and nice.
Oh, and I have to question where all the money that everyone pays to the school goes to when I had go to through three compound microscopes in order to get one that “works okay”.
My first microscope? The light would turn on, but one of the pieces were broken and when I looked through the eyepiece, there was nothing, no matter how bright the light was turned up.
My second microscope? Plug it in, no light. The area around where the lightbulb was would get hot (very quickly) but no light. My TA took this one away.
My third microscope? The light would turn on (yay!) and I could see things through the eyepiece (yay!). But… for some odd reason, the light wasn’t ‘even’. There were some incredibly bright batches that would always be lighter than the rest, no matter what magnification I would turn it to.
Which makes me glad that I get to use quality microscopes in my plant physiology lab (because they work?), but annoyed as heck because I had to play musical microscopes until I found one that would work well enough. The lab for that class normally occurs in another section of the building (with better microscopes!) but that wing is being renovated (which really sucks because you can hear construction sounds from everywhere in the building), so I’m in an older section of the building with shabby microscopes (obviously). The lab itself is good, but the microscope kinda sucks.
Other than that, went to a local college to hand in some stuff for my application (whoo, nursing programs!). And oh my goodness… My school’s Registrar department is an entire building. It’s a gorgeous building with three floors and high glass walls (that is obviously where my tuition money is going to!) and the local college? I could have fit their Registrar’s department into maybe half of a lecture hall of my school. The ‘front’ section where students are allowed to go is about a third of the size of my bedroom. It was teeny tiny, super crowded. And my goodness, the inside area of the building looked like the outside of my school’s campus (minus all the cars, gardens, etc.). It was a bit weird to me, I wasn’t expecting something that looked like the steps outside of one of the buildings I’m very familiar with on the inside of a school. But…. That application’s done!
We do get quite a long uni break! I got about one week, three times a year, off from uni. Then there’s this long break which is three months from Dec-Mar. O_o
What a shame about the microscopes. You would have expected my high school to be in that condition too, seeing as we were very poor, but we had pretty good ones.
It’s good to know when you know your fees are going to something useful! Congratulations on completing that application. 😀
Oh I see. (: I never knew that BC high-schools had bookstores, that’s pretty cool.
Haha yeah, the physical contact on crowded buses makes me angry most of the time especially when people have bad body odour. ew.
LOL my friends and I obviously weren’t being serious about having sex on public transport, but we were just joking around and figured that it’s actually a good way to get close with someone. . xD.
I don’t think our buses and trains have security cameras. :O Or maybe they do, and I’m just clueless.
Omg that sucks that your first microscope was defective. That would have made me mad. >:( YAY third times a charm though. 😛 Glad it finally worked for you. Even though it didn’t work perfectly, at least it worked for the most part.
Lmao @ musical microscopes. I’ve never tried that before. 😉
You don’t seem to have very good luck with finding a godo microscope. Something always gets in the way. D:
The way you described your schools building sounds beautiful! Congrats on completing the application. 🙂
Ahh… Not quite. My high school did used book sales (like… once while I was there?) from used library books.
The university I attend has a book store (two, actually, on campus). It helps since we need to buy textbooks and course materials.