human sexuality – Imaginary Sunshine

The end of a chapter; the beginning of the next.

Michelle — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:30:35 +0000

So today I got all of my grades in for the term (the one I was waiting on was one of my harder classes this term – Animal Ethics where the last 45% of my grade was based on a term paper and web-based presentation). I ended off with:

Animal Ethics – A-
Health Psychology – B+
Human Sexuality – A+

I ended off my last term at this school with an A average. It was also my best year (September-April) of my undergrad yet with a B+ average overall.

When I started my undergrad back in 2007 (yes, it took me 5 years to complete a 4 year degree, shuddup), my average for my first year was 57%. I got put on academic probation, I failed a few (three) classes. And every term since then, I’ve gotten my average higher and higher. The only time my grades dipped again was when I retook first year calculus and when I took organic chem (but I passed it on the first go, unlike a lot of my classmates that had to take it twice or more). I actually aced the final of my calculus course (the second time around), but did poorly overall in the course but he passed me based on the fact that I got an A on the final. Me, calculus, an A final. Who would have thought?

That said, it’s kind of bittersweet that it’s all coming to an end. My graduation ceremony is in late May, which I’m pretty excited about. I won’t find out if there’s extra tickets for the ceremony until mid-May. I ordered the cap and gown (paid a deposit). The word “science” appears in the title of my degree four times. Yeah, they really want to emphasize my science prowess.

As for the future? I’ve applied to several schools for their nursing programs. I got rejected by one school (average wasn’t high enough, even though it was well above the minimum average), didn’t get enough “education points” from another school (it’s 0pts if you don’t have a completed degree, even though I was 9 credits away from finishing mine, that was disappointing and felt like a waste of money), I’ll find out about one school sometime in May (but it has 16 spots, so I’m not entirely sure about that one… Depends on my competition) and then there’s school #4. I’ll be finding out on Monday (30th) if I’m in or not. I hope I am… I have really strong references for it, decent grades, hopefully a good Letter of Intent that I agonized over before sending it in.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Guess what I’m good at!

Michelle — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 23:25:52 +0000

One of the components of my online/distance education class, Human Sexuality, was to participate in an assigned group blog. Near the end of the term, we were asked to nominate 5 people (out of ~35). Yours truly was apparently nominated quite a few times, and I got sent an email from the professor with some selected comments from my fellow blog group members.

Apparently I’m good at blogging about sex. Who would have thought?

Michelle has been a HUGE contributor to the Blog from the very beginning. She has countless comments and asks good questions. She includes personal stories in her responses and her posts. She definitely has the most Blog posts out of the group and she nearly commented on all of my personal blog posts. I think Michelle has surpassed the other bloggers by far in her blogging commitment. She was an integral part to Group Blog 1.

I think she did a good job just based on her number of posts. They were numerous posts of high quality ranging from a variety of topics from BDSM, sexual pills, and politics regarding sex. Her posts included funny videos, cartoons, and articles. I found her topics interesting and funny to look at.

Michelle has been one of the best bloggers in my opinion. She has made posts several times a week, and the quality of each post is superb – her writing style is very engaging and her topics include everything from her life experiences, media, and articles she has read. She is also a frequent commenter.
Michelle posted, I believe, the most out of everyone. I believe she put the most effort into this component of the course. Not only did she post relative issues, she also gave her personal experiences to most postings, which takes a lot of guts. She also commented on almost every post, and that being said, always commented on my posts. It is refreshing for someone to trust complete strangers and give their own personal insight, which is exactly what Michelle did.

Michelle of course was the most prolific of bloggers and would definitely get my vote as top blogger. She brought up many interesting issues and seemed uninhibited to discuss any issue that were brought up. While she had very liberal viewpoints she also was not opinionated in a way where she tried to convince you of her views. Through her blogging you could tell she had very strong self esteem and seemed confident in her sexuality. I enjoyed that she was actively aware of the issues being raised by the Republican debate and saw the absurdity of it all. I always enjoyed reading her posts and responses to other posts.

Michelle is my first pick. She posted without fail every few days. Her posts were always thoughtful and topics interesting. Its clear that she leads an interesting life (she often brings up every day life) and she is a skilled writer. I really enjoyed reading her posts, they were always worthwhile. She always mixed it up with links to different articles, photos, videos, surveys… you name it, tons of variety. She also pretty much always made comments on my posts, as well as other student’s posts. It was clear to me that Michelle was really into the blogging thing, and she did a really good job of keeping the blog moving and really contributed hugely to its progress. It would have been impossible for anyone to compete with her!

There were quite a few other comments as well, mostly about the number of posts I did (35) or the number of comments or just about how much I freaking blogged. See, while I wasn’t blogging here I was blogging somewhere else. FOR GRADES.

Three more days until final marks come out!

Studying and pausing to reflect

Michelle — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 22:26:03 +0000

Do I get some kind of award for being a horribly inactive blogger? Although I’m sure there are other people much worse at updating than I am… I hope so, anyways!

It’s April! Which means that it is spring time and that also means finals season. I handed in my term project (website + paper) last week for my Animal Ethics class (website + paper was 45% of my final grade) – thankfully there’s no final exam for that class so I really just need to focus on my two other finals. I have my Health Psychology final this week and then I have my Human Sexuality final online anywhere from the 11th to the 23rd (thank goodness for online finals!). I’m quite looking forward to being done as it will be the last two finals for my Bachelors! I’m graduating in late May with my B.Sc, which is quite exciting!

Of course, because I’m about to graduate means that I’ve been pulling out my resume and tweaking it and updating it. Just need to wait until after I actually graduate to be like “Yay, my degree is no longer in progress and I’m not longer a B.Sc candidate because I’ve actually got it now!”. Job searching is scary. Sigh. Such is the life of growing up. I’m still waiting to hear back from schools that I’ve applied to for August/September. Getting all my ducks in a row for that, which is fun and fantastic.

I just finished writing the finals for my two upgrade classes (Chemistry 11 and Biology 12) today (wrote them between 10am-12pm!) so I need to wait for my high school transcript to get updated before really starting the application process for that school, but should be soon! I’m quite looking forward to being able to check that off on the list of schools to apply to.

Having scheduled classes twice a week this term has been fantastic. It made it possible for me to volunteer more on a weekly basis (Fridays) and also made it possible for me to go and write the tests and work on the upgrade classes (Mondays and Wednesdays). I’ve really enjoyed Animal Ethics (plus, I got to do a website as part of my term project, how awesome is that?) and I did my term project on the Animal Welfare Issues in the Australian Wool Industry – because I’m a crafter and I like wool products. I’ve also really enjoyed my Human Sexuality class which was distance ed and completely online (including assignments, tests, debates and the final will be online as well!). It’s a different dynamic and I kind of wish I had taken more online classes, but at the same time, it’s all about self-discipline and I probably wouldn’t have been able handle that kind of self-discipline in the earlier years of my undergrad.
Next time that I post, it’ll probably be after my finals for this term. Hope everyone’s been having a good spring so far!

Classes, graduation, excitement?

Michelle — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:53:46 +0000

What has Michelle been doing lately? That is a very good question…

I had my first midterms for both Human Sexuality & Health Psychology (just this week’s Monday and Tuesday). I’ve also been working on my ‘upgrade’ courses for Biology 12 and Chemistry 11, so yay for that. Animal Ethics is heavily involved with class discussions, we also get assignments right after class for the next class, so there’s quite a bit to do for that course. I’m not a fan of needing to speak in class, I will if I have something that I feel that I need to say, but it sucks when you’re being graded on participation and therefore end up feeling like you need to say something.

I’ve been working on knitting a lot lately, it’s what I do when I procrastinate (at least I’ll be stressed and warm? I don’t know how that’s suppose to work). I booked my appointment for getting my grad portrait done, which is kind of exciting. It means that I’m nearly done (!) and I’ll have both the degree paper and a photograph of me in a cap and gown to show for it. It almost doesn’t seem as big of a deal as graduating high school was. In high school, everyone was getting cap and gown photos, trading the wallet-size photos and there was just this huge sense of excitement in the air. For university, there is no time to pause and really go “Yeah, we are graduating this year” because not everyone in my classes is graduating. Even though I’m taking upper-level courses, not everyone is in the same year level as me (there’s even a 2nd year student in one of my courses).

Maybe I just don’t find it as exciting because I’m taking courses that involve so much more work, hah. That and I’ve been applying for programs for the upcoming school year so there’s no definite “ending” to it. It’s not like when I was graduating high school because I knew from January on that I had already been offered spots in my top 3 schools with my interim grades so I didn’t really need to worry. Plus I had been offered entrance scholarships right off the bat (it wasn’t a huge scholarship, mind you, but it was better than nothing). This time around, it’s all nerves for me because I won’t be hearing back for final enrolment decisions for August/September until about April-June and that’s still going to be a while.

And… yeah, that’s all for now. How have you been?

New year, new term, new schedule

Michelle — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:06:35 +0000

Hello 2012! I started my second term on January 5th. I’m taking three courses this term: Animal Ethics and Welfare, Health Psychology and Human Sexuality. It’s also my first time taking an online course (Human Sexuality). I’m currently waiting on my textbooks to arrive – I won’t really need them until the end of the month. My courses this term involve a group blog (Human Sexuality), a term project with a website presentation (Animal Ethics and Welfare) and nothing but 3 tests (Health Psychology).

In other news, my application for graduation means that this is my last term for my degree. And I only have classes on Tuesday and Thursday – which means I get four day weekends all the time. Yes, I’m quite happy about that. Maybe not with the sheer amount of work for 3 credits in some of my classes, but still, quite happy with my long weekends all the time (yes, I’m rubbing that in now). I’m going to be retaking three high school courses though, because it’s been more than 5 years since I took them and I need them to apply for one of the schools that I was hoping to apply to. Other applications are going well, just waiting for transcripts to be mailed from my current school to the other ones and to hand in high school transcripts. So I think I’ll be working on those three classes (Math 11, Chem 11, Biology 12) when I can, along with other course work and volunteering and other commitments.

Other than school, that’s all that is currently going on in my life (yay…). School, school and… more school.