oceanography – Imaginary Sunshine

One down, six more to go!

Michelle — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 02:32:09 +0000

I’ve completed one midterm so far, yay! It was the first (of three) oceanography midterm that I had.

Between now and the end of the term I have:

6 more midterms
1 major term paper
2 ecology lab reports
2 statistics lab reports
1 week off (!!!) for reading break
Many stats and oceanography assignments
Many ecology quizzes and assignments
Not enough sleep

Today was an alright day though. I slept in a little (until around 8am, which is later than my usual 5:30am!), I went and got awful passport photos taken (heh) and got the forms. I went to a thrift store with my sister and didn’t find anything I wanted (they had some nice old sewing machines, but they were $50 each and were super heavy and not near outlets at all for trying them out – and I had no car with me). I also went to the grocery store and bought several bags of bagels ($1/ea, most of them went into my freezer), some lunch meat (chicken), brown sugar (for baking) and Crispers. Everything was sold at a dollar, mmm, I love it when stores have sales!

So now that I have food for lunch purposes (yay) and snack foods (for studying aids), I’m set for at least a couple of weeks (at least until my mid-term break).

I’ve been subjected to my sister’s home-buying related rants (and raves) as my father’s gone off his rocker regarding the fact that his daughter is invest in real estate and he doesn’t like that because… it means that she’s not moving back home. Which I think is fine, because why else did she move out to begin with? (Beyond the fact that she moved out to e closer to her work place…)

But regardless… Life’s been good so far. I finished one midterm, I didn’t have a feeling of impending doom of failure in my stomach when I was done (I always feel like this is a very important thing). Next week I need to get a stats lab report, a stats assignment and ecology assignments done… As well as studying for an ecology midterm, so I’ll probably be rather productive while at school all of next week! Plus I’m going to be starting to lay out the groundwork for my term paper (due late February) and I’m hoping to get most of it done before my mid-term break, let’s cross my fingers there! But Saturday was my ‘day of rest’ and tomorrow is when I plan on really kick-starting my week where a lot of things are due.

Productivity is a dirty word

Michelle — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:56:23 +0000

I had an impromptu study group today – all five of the people who were in the group (four plus me!) are in the same oceanography course (which I’m taking as a requirement). So there was R, S, T and N. Fantastic.

T had missed half of the lectures so far (there’s been ten and she thinks that she has attended ‘about five’ so far).

R has attended all the lectures, but she only started studying today.

S has attended all the lectures, but she was busy freaking out over a genetics assignment that was due today (which was worth 0.5% of her final grade – the oceanography midterm is worth 20% of the final grade for that class).

N hasn’t attended all the lectures, but he at least started studying and we bounced ideas off each other mostly because no one else really knew what they were talking about (but they had plenty of questions!).

So it was a mostly productive time (for N and myself), somewhat productive for S (even though she spent the time working on her genetics assignment) and not very productive for T. She contributed one factoid that none of us had to share. And spent the rest of the time asking us questions.

Oh, and then R, S and T started in a conversation about “Which prof do you think is younger? Because the blonde looks really old!”. And then T started talking about getting her ‘monthly gift’, at which point N got very uncomfortable and was all like “I don’t need to talk about this! We should do something about the productivity in this room!”

And to which T replied “Productivity is a dirty word, y’know. And you shouldn’t feel uncomfortable about a bunch of girls talking about their monthly cycles. Your girlfriend gets one too.”

Then N goes “Yeah, but she doesn’t share the details with me!”

So overall, a productive study group time (for me!) and I didn’t get home too late in the day.

What I learned today:

I enjoy my classes a lot better, even if I find the material difficult to grasp, when I realize that I understand it.

The lesson that I learned over my Christmas break was: I’m fully capable of applying myself and getting good grades. Who would have thunk it?

I’ve got a routine, bonus points for me

Michelle — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 03:30:01 +0000

I’ve been preoccupied with school lately, it’s basically my life at the moment. That and job searching. Speaking of which, if you know anyone who’s willing to hire a BSc student, currently in 3rd year, that has some some lab experience working with both living and dead animal and plant tissues; handling chemicals in a lab setting; and oodles of data entry experience and is a quick learner for most things computer related, let me know! Bonus points if the job is located in British Columbia, by the way.

I have weekly assignments and online quizzes and labs for oceanography (assignments + quizzes), ecology (assignments + quizzes) and biostatistics (assignments + labs). Plant geography blissfully doesn’t have any of that, but that also means that my grade is based solely on a single term paper, midterm and final exam. Peachy, isn’t it? (Reminds me of Animal Mechanics all over again.) But I’ve been keeping up with all of my classes thus far – it does help that I have two 3-hour breaks each day where I just sit in a comfy chair with my biostatistics textbook or read over notes for oceanography. Because I really am that much of a keener. It’s good though, right? Getting into a good study habit? I still have friends who complain about still being in holiday mode because they only had 3.5 weeks of winter vacation (yeah, you read that right, three and a half! I thought I lucked out with 2.5!).

Needless to say, I’m not feeling overwhelmed (yet), like I did at about the same time in first term. School’s exhausting sometimes, and it’s difficult to get a lot of sleep and time in for things for me. When it’s all school, school, school and study, study, study, I end up losing sight of what’s really important to me. Which includes things like watching a movie or hanging out with people that who’s mugs I don’t have to see every single day (I kid, I kid, I heart my school buds, even if they drive me insane with their constant “Why are you always studying?”)

This weekend has so far been doing assignments (oceanography, ecology) as well as doing online quizzes (oceanography, ecology), some review of already taught material (plant geography) and reading (and taking notes) for chapter 4 (biostats).

I plan on taking a little bit of time tomorrow to get some baking in because I really want cupcakes… Plus I need to do some grocery shopping for bagels (breakfast for the week!) and some more juice (someone keeps on drinking all my orange juice). I’m currently on a goal not to spend money on campus unless absolutely necessary. Necessary spending (in my mind) includes course materials (i.e. my biostatistics textbook was a necessity, lunch during first week on campus wasn’t really one and could have been prevented). So in other words, my goal is just to really not buy food on campus. Which means I either bring something to eat (due to a few ‘short’ days, my idea of bringing something to eat is usually an apple and a few granola bars and a bottle of water; for my longer days, with large breaks, I’ll bring another bagel, hah, with cream cheese along with fruit, granola bars, water). Trying to save money and eat remotely healthy… Interesting combination, no? I’m trying my best to cut out junk food right now, exceptions are things that are at home (i.e. cookies, cupcakes, ice cream – I deem these as okay as I can only eat them at home, and I spend more time outside of home than in, and I eat them in moderation, as opposed to when I’m studying and food just disappears…). So it’s really like, anything goes, as long as it came from my house. And that was a long-winded blurb about food.

I really try not to dwell too much on food and intake of food too much. Me getting too obsessed with checking my weight has led to incredibly bad things in the past that I would very much like to not revisit, but my craptastic eating habits during first term (a lot of buying food on campus = both disgustingly expensive and disgusting for my body) are not to be repeated.

I hope everyone had a lovely week, I should be getting back to my studies for the weekend!

First Impressions x4

Michelle — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 06:34:57 +0000

I’m about to bore you all and talk about first impressions of my classes. I’ve had 2 lectures of each class so far.

Class #1: Plant Geography
Prof comes highly recommended, he’s good and so far the class has been interesting! It’s my first 4th year class, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Apparently the class is supposed to have nearly 80 students but from the numbers that actually attend, this is not the case. I already have an assigned term paper topic (well, I got to choose, but he has to okay it). The material is fascinating and (the most important thing) I know someone in the class!

Class #2: Ecology (the continuation)
Profs are new-to-me (and one of them is new to the school). I know what to expect from the class (higher concept learning, weekly reading assignments and practice problems). The people I sat with in the first course (as this is the continuation) decided they were going to take it in the summer (note: I’ve already called them all traitors. To their faces.) but I know some people who are in my class and I’ve found people to sit with (yay).

Class #3: Biostatistics
Not just any regular old statistics class, it’s biostatistics (which means I’m going to flipping die of formula usage by the end of the term). Meaning we talk a lot about rate of births and rate of deaths. Because what’s essentially what you study in biology – sex and mortality. Survivorship and death rates. Whoot. Prof seems okay thus far, I have 2 friends in this class to sit with (yay) but there’s a lab component for my stats class. A lab. For stats. Holy hell in a handbasket.

Class #4: Oceanography (the continuation)
Profs are old to me and one of them is new-to-me. He’s old, reminds me of a professor from the Harry Potter film franchise (like a rounder Lupin, which is unfortunately because I used to like Lupin). And he’s from France and has a horribly thick French accent. So far it’s okay, I have a grand total of 4 friends in this class – I’m really happy about that. So far it’s okay.

So four classes. My schedule isn’t that bad… I do, however, have a 3 hour break every Tuesday and Thursday which makes me want to take a pencil to my eyeballs (but I haven’t gotten around to that yet). And I have an atrocious amount of breaks all throughout my schedule but I’ve been using my breaks to study and review material, so that’s always a good thing. My problem so far is that I have no one to hang out with during my 3 hour breaks, so I need to figure out a way to entertain myself with school work or something. There’s only so many Sudoku puzzles I can do before I get tired of numbers.

That time of year…

Michelle — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 05:20:27 +0000

And I don’t mean the winter holidays (although I so wish I was talking about that!). In just under a week, I’ll be writing my first final exam for the term (for my ecology course). At this point, I’m usually in some kind of weird head space, just trying to go over everything and remember everything. It’s so helpful when I have professors that put together practice problems that reflect the difficulty of the kinds of questions that will be on the final exam. It’s also so helpful that my ecology profs will be doing a combined total of six review sessions. I’ll be avoiding the ones that are occuring the day before the final – I cannot deal with crazed and panicking people who didn’t bother to start studying until a night before. But I’m definitely going to at least one review session per professor (both go by a Q&A style, which I like).

For my other classes, they all just have extended office hours, so perhaps I’ll make a day out of it (going to campus to ask questions and such). I’ll be certainly making use of the office hours for my Oceanography class – beginning to doubt myself in that case, although I can recall the most oddest (but useful) facts in that class. Like the entire Redfield Ratio (106 mols of Carbon : 16 mols of Nitrogen : 15 mols of Silicone : 1 mol of Phosphorus) or how to calculate N* (N* = [N] – 16*[P]). Which is actually a good thing, seeing as those are some of the things not available on the formula sheet… Have you noticed that I’m a complete science geek sometimes? I have (noticed).

I wish I could just think about sugarplums dancing in my head but I just… can’t. My brain’s all wrapped up in how animals swim, fly, walk and run (animal mechanics), how species richness changes with changes in the environment and human destruction (ecology), the beautiful and not-so-beautiful insects of the world (entomology ) and plankton and why they exist where they do (oceanography). Just, such a geek overall.

But… this geek did take a stop by the bookstore at school today! They were having a sale so obviously I went to take a look. There was a lot of crap to dig through, as well as a lot of classics that I would have been interested if I didn’t already own them in one cover type or another (seriously, there’s only so many copies of a Dickens or Austen novel I can have before people start thinking that I’m a complete nutcase). I got Holy Sh*t: The World’s Weirdest Comic Books by Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury and a package of Jones Soda Co. Carbonated Sours (candy). Delicious. And I always love reading about comic books – it’s a full colour, glossy-paged, hardcover book that’s absolutely gorgeous when I flipped through it. Not recommended for the children though, as some of the world’s weirdest comic books includes ones with covers that feature scantily clad (or completely naked) women. Oddly enough, they don’t have naked men anywhere (or at least that I’ve seen so far).

And now… I’m just going to go and watch television for a bit, seeing as how I’ve spent over 4 hours today studying (since getting home – I studied on the bus and at school before class…).

I hope everyone had a fantastic day and that your life is so much better now that you know what the Redfield Ratio is!

Whoosh!

Michelle — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 02:43:29 +0000

I made the decision to go private on Twitter recently (erm, today) after getting more and more spammy-types of accounts following me and then sending me messages with spammy-type of messages. I could go through and block ’em all, but it was just so much easier to just go private all in one fell swoop (accounts that *I* don’t follow can’t send me messages). But if you wanted to follow me (and maybe I’d follow back, if you’re not a spammy-type of person), you can find me at @chelleshocks.

This weekend I’ve been working on my insect collection (due on Thursday, December 2nd) – just finishing up a few small things like gluing teeny tiny insects onto little triangles cut from index cards (I’m using light purple) and typing up all the information I’ll need for the tags that will be cut out and pinned as well. It’s going well though, I’m nearly completely done with a few days go about finishing it and putting down the final touches.

I have, at the time of writing, 3 more Oceanography assignments to do and 3 more online Oceanography quizzes. I also have maybe 2-3 more Ecology online assignments/quizzes to complete. There’s 5 more days of lectures, since I go to school Monday to Friday. I have one more project to hand in (my Entomology project that takes the place of a lab final, yay). After this week I have 4 finals before I get my Christmas/winter break!

I got really sad today because one of my stick insects had died. She was the one who moulted nearly a month after the other one and had a lot of issues with moulting (wasn’t able to pull free by herself) so I think in my heart, I knew she wasn’t ever going to really ‘make’ it because of that, as she had a lot of issues. She was the one that started off with the remaining egg casing stuck on her foot. The other one is still doing well, very much alive and eating and drinking whenever it wants (it’s fun to watch her eat because she eats a lot in one sitting). So while I’m really sad that one of them died in my care (although with all her issues, it’s possible that it was just nature taking it’s course), I’m quite happy that one of them is still doing well. This particular species is supposed to live for about 8 months, so we shall see how long I can keep her alive for (hopefully for the full 8 months, because then she’ll start producing eggs – no males/mating required).

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend!

Protected: Breakdown of term 1 classes

Michelle — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:55:51 +0000

Ready for school? Maybe!

Michelle — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 01:51:41 +0000

My last day of work was on Friday. It was rather bittersweet, seeing as I knew I had to go back to school (tuition’s already paid for and my school is incredibly stingy with doing refunds) and I was actually quite happy that I no longer have to go and do reprints of everything printed previously (the rate at which people lose important paperwork is astounding). Although, to be perfectly only, right up until 5 minutes before I was supposed to leave, I was reprinting paperwork. Oh, I also didn’t leave on time on my last day either (oh, OT, I’m going to miss you after my last paycheque!). Needless to say, I don’t miss the people at work right now (save for my boyfriend), but I’m sure I’ll miss them (eventually). Where else am I going to find people with children that can be willing (unwilling?) hat models for me?

Preperations for school have kind of stalled. I got some new clothes yesterday – but nothing with long sleeves, nothing for the weather I’m supposed to be preparing for… So instead, I’m all set for spring of 2011! Awesome, yes? But I did get 5 pairs of knee socks to replace some of the ones I bought last year that are just starting to show any sort of wear (beyond a little bit of pilling). I made a list of all the textbooks I need (one of my classes finally listed a textbook – it’s $16.07 online!). I’ll go and do a little comparison shopping with my school’s bookstores before committing to buying anywhere (if worse comes to worse, I’ll order them all online and probably pay the $5 for express shipping just so I don’t wait for too long for them to arrive). In other awesome news, I got all new bed stuff (fitted sheet, flat sheets, pillow cases, comforter, and pillow shams… I still don’t know what that actually is). I was hoping to get dark purple, but my mom found this set in shades of blue and it’s alright… better than the pale pink one that’s currently on my bed (and slightly clashing with my lime green walls!).

I finished my readings for my first oceanography class on Wednesday… I also have an assignment and an online quiz to do for that class before my Friday’s lecture. Already. Apparently each class will have an assignment, and they do random collections (so excited? At least I’ll be forced to keep up with the material!). I’m really glad that I never sold or threw out* my 100-level physics textbook set now, as the class borrows heavily on first year physics (that I took in 2007 and 2008…).

So I am looking forward to going back to school… and I’m not all at the same time? I’m taking two courses this term that have physics listed as a prerequisite, so I’m kind of nervous about how much I actually need to know (class 1: oceanography. class 2: animal motion and locomotion – focuses on flight, undulations, swimming – I’m actually really looking forward to this). So far, the class with the most expensive textbook(s) is my entomology class (yeah, the one that I really want to take is going to cost me the most money!). But looking forward to it all the same – insects galore!

Still some things to do – primarily selling back an old English textbook (that a professor is finally using again, I wonder of it’s LM that’s teaching that class? I liked her, she incredibly difficult to please with papers, but it was a good kind of challenge), figuring out if I need the textbooks listed, sorting through old stuff all around in my room, cleaning, more baking, etc. Such is life.

I also have 2 domains I’m still working on… Oy. What’s new with you?

* The other day, my father was trying to convince me to throw out all my books because he never sees me reading them. This included pointing at my physics text and my anatomy & physiology textbook. Cripes. I’m never selling that one (the A&P), it was $200+ and the most beautiful textbook I have ever owned.