psychology – Imaginary Sunshine

Protected: Thoughts on courses for 2011-2012

Michelle — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 05:37:04 +0000

So… Who here uses ahem on a regular basis?

Michelle — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:27:33 +0000

Douche. My psychology prof apparently scaled down everyone’s term paper grade. Just the term paper, the test grades weren’t touched, but no matter what I do with math, it doesn’t turn up the ‘right’ number. =/ Hello, emailing my prof again.

Life’s been okay the last few days. Gotten a lot of reading done for math (ohemgee, I’m such a dork, reading math), for biochemistry and my two biology classes. Yeah, total dork/geek. Go me? But such is the life of a university student! I sent a few of my biochemistry note packages/work packages to work with my mom because there’s a 3-hole punch there… Unlike at home, where I have a single hole punch where I normally use a lined piece of paper as a template. But the packages are pretty thick =/ So I asked if she could and she just kind of waved her hand and went “Just put it into my bag…” Eh, as long as I get everything back with three holes in it, I’ll be fine. I need one of those packages when I go for tutorial on Monday.

I’ve also been watching my “bean buddy”. During my first plants physiology lab, we got to plant things (sunflowers, which stay in the lab room, and bush beans, which we got to take home). Someone in class asked what would happen if we didn’t continue to water it, my prof gave the guy and look and went “It’ll probably get mouldly.” Oh, also, in biochemistry, I learned how to keep a high from recreational drugs going longer than it should. I also learned how to refine tobacco plants and cannabis in my plants physiology class.

Yeah, I’m getting a lot of education for my tuition money, yes? I swear, all 200-level science professors assume that their students drink, get high, smoke and really want to know how to make all of their students get high for longer, ahaha. After all, what are you supposed to say when your prof goes “So… Who here uses Cannabis sativa on a regular basis?” Honestly.

And lastly… A new girl traveling to my house… I think the Little Miss Sophie banner is going to get a little crowded (as it is, there’s three names on it).

Math and colour fun

Michelle — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:02:23 +0000

My psychology prof finally came out with final exam marks. Oh, and then he came out with final course grades. On the file, I had high 70’s for a grade. At first, that seemed fine to me. And then I did the math (according to his course grade break down).

The grade that he had for me? 5.25% less than what it should have been. I emailed him with my math to show him how I came up to my grade (which would be a solid A, if he fixes it before submitting final grades!)

Anyways… I did a little shopping today at my school’s bookstore. I desperately needed highlighters (I tweeted about it sometime during my December finals time – I ran through 3 yellow highlighters while studying for my cell biology final!) as I no longer had any. So I bought some! Luckily, they were running a little promotion… So I got these little beauties (Staedtler Textsurfer Classics) and two books from the bargain section. Fabulous colours, no?

Arranged for fun:

This is more true-to-colour (I don’t know why the pink one in the first photo looks so orange!):

From left to right: blue, green, pink, purple, orange and this gorgeous teal colour. I didn’t get yellow (same price as the rest) because I wanted fun colours – plus the yellow was too bright for me (if that’s possible?).

The books I got were Survival of the Sickest: A Medial Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease by Dr. Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince and Charming: The Magic of Charm Jewelry by Deborah Alun-Jones and John Ayton. The second is for photo-inspiration for when I’m trying to figure out what to make with my beads, the first is for fun reading (because who doesn’t want to read a book entirely about diseases?). Both were discounted to $6.99 (one from $30, the other from $22). Photos!

School rants and raves (but mostly raves!)

Michelle — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:03:43 +0000

First class – biology (invertebrates)

Professor is really energetic, very young (but not as cute as my friends had made him sound like he was – they gushed about his stunningly good looks). Course seems very straight forward, in terms of marking and labs. He was very enthusiastic with the introductory material, so I figure that’s pretty good – provided he can keep up the energy throughout the term.

1 lecture midterm, 1 lecture final, 1 lab midterm, 1 lab final

Second class – math

Professor was not the one that was originally listed for my section – the university switched profs on me! I forgot how big math classes were… I haven’t taken a university level math class since second term in 2008, so it’s been a while… It’s also a first year class, so I’m (for the most part) 2 years older than everyone else in the class. Which makes me one of the oldest students in the class. I also had to buy a new textbook ($148, boo) for the class. Class is canceled for Wednesday (already?) and I have two sections in a chapter to go through for Friday’s class. As well, my professor uses a chalkboard and white chalk. Gah. I need to get a seat closer to the middle and to the front so I can actually read what he’s writing.

3 midterms, 1 final

Third class – biology (plants)

Two professors! Awesome teaching team! I love the botany department at my school. I get my favourite lab coordinator from my first term plants class as a professor for the first half of this class, plus as a lab coordinator. Plus I actually know people in this class. Yay.

2 lecture midterms, 1 lecture final, 1 lab midterm, 1 lab final

Fourth class – biology (biochem)

Don’t know yet – happens tomorrow.

I switched lab sections for one of my biology classes so I have a lab on Tuesdays and Thursdays now, so I end at 12:30pm on both days, rather than ending at 9:30am on Tuesdays and 5pm on Thursdays (because I just love public transit during rush hour).

So far, I’ve got 6 lecture midterms, 3 lecture finals, 2 lab midterms and 2 lab finals for 3 classes

I’m also still missing my infant psychology final grade. From term 1.

Dear so-and-so, you suck

Michelle — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:39:23 +0000

Dear my (first term) psychology professor,

I know, you had stage fright issues. It was obvious from the first time when you stuttered and said ‘the’ maybe five times in a row. It was even more obvious when you continued with this pattern throughout the rest of the term. And I do know that the final exam time that the school set for the class that you taught was the second to last day of the exam period and I know I was expecting a lot from you to have the final grades posted when the rest of my professors got their grades post.

But I wrote the final for your class on December 21st. Yes, I know there were a lot of students and I also know that there were 8 short answers and 2 essays to mark per student. But this was on the 21st. Of December. Of 2009.

It’s now January 3rd, 2010. Term 2 starts tomorrow and frankly, I can’t fathom what could have hindered you from getting the marks out before the new decade began. You even mentioned that we had to write our names and student numbers on all the pages because it would be separated for marking purposes. That implies that there would be more than one marker. Probably like 3, considering there were 3 pages. And I know you’re a very busy man.

But at the same time, might I remind you, that the new term starts tomorrow.

And this was not a two-term course.

So, that being said, I would like my final psychology grade for Infant Psychology soon. Before I have to go to your office and ask you for my grade. I’m so incredibly grouchy when I have to go to a professor’s office when I don’t want to be there. I’m sure I’m not the only student who’s wanting to know what they got in the class. While I’m positive that I did not fail the class (because that would be rather sad), it would be nice to know what I got in the class for other purposes.

Like calculating my term GPA. Like knowing where I rank, in terms of averages, with the rest of my peers.

And also just so I don’t have a glaring blank looking at me when I go and check my grades transcript.

Because, you know, I wrote the final on the 21st. It’d be nice if you could pick it up a little and actually get the grades out.

Sincerely,
Michelle

P.S. Don’t they have some kind of deadline for submitting grades? Also, you were fully ineffective as a professor and I learned more from the textbook than I did from you.

Hello, 2010!

Michelle — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:43:27 +0000

Whee, new theme for welcoming in 2010! The photo was taken by my mom when she was on vacation. I’ve also rearranged things and removed some things from my sidebar *points to the side*. I changed the number of Flickr images that show up and just changed up the way things show up over there. Also, some pages have been organized (for example, all my past layouts are now on a page by themselves) as well as some being removed so things are getting cleaned up around here, which is nice. Umm… Let’s see, what else have I gotten done lately? (Also known as me dumping all my new website stuff in one go!)

Ames got a new layout (grey, slightly monochrome), Chelle-Chelle.com got a little change with the header and I’ve written a few articles lately and also been working on Heartbreakee.net (not open, yet!). Oh, I also went pro on Flickr – go add me as a contact!

Oh, I’m also talking to my friend J on msn and she goes:

J: If I go over in the summer*
J: you wanna learn pole dancing?
M: ROTFL
M: Seriously?
M: Sure

* She’s currently out of the country for school – a school where she has classes on Saturdays.

Ahh… Anyways… I went to a friend’s boyfriend’s New Years party last night. J (the friend, not the same one mentioned above!) and N (her boyfriend) were hosting it. And I only stayed for a little while, because N has douchebags for friends as one of them dropped a pill into my drink (a screwdriver, for all those who care, which was quite good before it had a bright blue pill floating at the top). I dumped the drink of that guy’s head, by the way, before I left. So I walked to one of the train stations downtown, and got home super early (way before midnight) and worked on some online stuff when I got home, as well as taking a nice hot shower and watching a chick flick while eating potato chips.

School starts on Monday – wtf. I only got 13 days off from school =/ One of my friends has been off school 10 days before me, so she got 23 days… Oh, the unfairness! Anyways, today is all about purging out my wardrobe (boy, that’ll be fun) as well as cleaning up some things and hopefully being productive (and cursing my psychology prof for not issuing our final grades yet!)

Hope everyone’s been having a wonderful first day of the new decade!

All the days of the week look the same to me after a while.

Michelle — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:32:15 +0000

I suppose I should have explained in my last entry that both myself and my sister already have valid bus passes, Alex. It’s not the first time that I’ve separate from my family or my sisters and I opted to take public transit home for whatever reason, we know the regular schedule pretty well, which does help. It wasn’t a big deal at all.

Anyways… My psychology final was easy peasy and was done fairly early by a lot of people in my class. The exam started at 7pm and we were allowed 3 hours to write it. The first person who handed in their exam left at around 7:40pm (when I first noticed the time). See, the exam consisted of 2 essay topics (we were given 8 possible essay topics ahead of time, knowing that 2 of them would show up on the final) and there were also a list of words that we would have to supply definitions for. Now, because the midterm had 8 terms, I expected more than that for the final (the midterm had 8 words and 1 essay, it was reasonable to expect like 16 terms with the 2 essays) but there was only 8 terms to write out the definitions for. I handed in my exam paper and left at 8:02pm. I got home much earlier than I honestly expected – I thought that I would need probably ~2 hours for the final. Needless to say, I still tired after studying nearly non-stop for that psychology final for so many days and hours… Only to have it all over in one. Can’t win them all, can I? It doesn’t even feel like it was worth all the trouble that studying and the preparation was. Oh well, it all works out in the end.

But getting home early has its advantages. Like being able to plan how I’m spending my first entire school free day tomorrow. For starters, I’ll be going to the bank, then off to volunteering for a few hours. Then I will be hopping onto a bus and heading to this awesome store where I will hopefully be buying copious amounts of wonderful yarn (there’s a sale going on… $2/ball for wonderful yarny goodness – but I haven’t been “allowed” out of the house, and I only found out this weekend, so I haven’t gone – yet). Then it’s to the library, where I’m picking up a hold, then off to finish wrapping up K’s birthday gift and then hopefully dropping it off before Christmas. Note to self, send her an email about that so she knows I’ll be dropping it off soonish. For some weird reason, I’ll be all into making or buying presents… But when it comes to the actual wrapping portion… I’m a bit slow in terms of it’ll be sitting in a bag (to keep it clean!) and be sitting… and sitting.. and sitting… there. Until I remember that “Oh shit, I need to give that to someone!” before, you know, I forget what it’s sitting there and it magically gets incorporated into my everyday wardrobe and then I wonder where on earth that present went. Yeeep, that’s me.

On the brightside, now that I’m officially on my winter break, it means that I can clean my room. Or at least organize it. Sort of. A little bit, maybe. I’ll start by taking those new shirts I bought out of the shopping bags and putting them into my closet or wardrobe. See, I can be really productive at times.

It’s late. I started writing this when it was still Monday, and my laptop is now informing me that it has been over 29 minutes of Tuesday so far. I got distracted by writing an article about amigurumi for chelle-chelle.com, as well as reading threads over at Ravelry (wonderful resource if you’re looking to crochet, knit, spin [yarn] or dye [yarn], by the way).

Hope everyone had a wonderfully awesome Monday and that everyone has an even better Tuesday.

There’s been a jail break…

Michelle — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:12:09 +0000

I must say, Caity, your comment made me crack up. Especially all that enthusiasm in the caps. But I am a dork… I think I sort of have to in order to find enjoyment in classes like that. =)

I left the house today (zomg). My mom wanted to go grocery shopping (again, she only bought fruit yesterday, heh), so we went out for lunch before shopping. Got groceries and hit up the dollar store at the mall. My sister got eyelash yarn for ‘hair’ for the stuffies that she’s making (trying to make… her tension is too loose and the stuffing is poking out quite a bit) and I bought a few packages of butterfly boxes (they’re adorable) for packaging jewellery purposes. Then my mom sent us home via public transit because she ran into a friend and whatnot. And she comes home with two packages of small little hair clips, because thought they’d be small enough for my dolls. I’ll take a photo of those later – there’s even a cartoon girl in the corner of the packaging that kinda looks like a Blythe, too cute.

I did not get much else done today. However, I did get green coloured sugar for my baking purposes! Not entirely impressed with the price that I paid (too embarrassed to share THAT online – I was ripped off, but it was the cheapest that I could find). Didn’t get the photos I wanted to take done (… mostly because I ended up spending most my morning/afternoon out of the house – surprising got a bit of studying done, thankfully I brought my textbook out with me). Tomorrow’s going to be just buckets of fun. Studying… cramming in more knowledge into my head (that I will promptly forget over winter break)… Yeah, just loads of fun. At least it’s just one more final! Then… hopefully… relaxation? Three cheers for that. Wait, not relaxation. Baking, wrapping, running around trying to find my embroidery scissors… Then relaxation. I think. Maybe.

Oh well, cross your fingers for me for tomorrow! And hope you all had a lovely Sunday.

Saturday’s almost over… =)

Michelle — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 07:57:31 +0000

What’s a girl to do when she’s the only one in the house who doesn’t leave the house? (Because everyone seems to think that ‘psychology final on Monday’ is synonymous with ‘making sure Michelle realizes that she is under involuntary house arrest’. So I didn’t go to the crafts store today, despite a somewhat decent sale on beads, jewellery findings and yarn (argh). I didn’t go to the grocery store and get to pick up more coloured sugar for baking purposes (I have a full container of red but no more of green…). I didn’t change out of my pjs today (I swear, the only good thing about not leaving the house). But oh, I was still the “only one” who was available to cook dinner though (because one sister was out, the other was ‘busily crocheting’ – or rather, attempting to crochet, and my mom was watching television).

Anyways… Today I did more essay prepping (yay!) and then emailed back and forth with my friend who’s taking that class to see what we’re hopeless on. Unfortunately, my psychology prof is an idiot and cannot string together sentences that are easily understandable by university students. It’s one thing to translate part of the topic into everyday English, it’s another to be able to translate the entire topic into everyday English for easy understanding. Oh, I’ve also noticed that people in organic chemistry are still posting on the discussion boards. The final was on December 10th and there’s a thread going on about ‘exam weighting’ and ‘What did you think about the final?’ that each have over 200 posts, and counting. It’s a little odd. Do my fellow sufferers of organic chemistry have nothing better to do than to post and whine about the final exam and what they think would be a fair weight for the final in comparison to the two midterms? Obviously not.

On the other hand, someone posted on the discussion board for my invertebrates biology class that I’m taking next term (the one that I’m really looking forward to! Crustaceans, insects, worms, the whole nine yards!) about how they’re really looking forward to the class. I replied with a very enthusiastic “Me too!”. Have I mentioned lately how much of a dork I am? Then again, I’m the girl who used her organic chem model set to fashion a bracelet for a day or two before. Ugh. Note to self, stop making myself seem like a complete geek online. Not that it can be helped.

I finished a scarf for my mom’s Christmas present… In a colour that she likes, if you noticed some of my tweets tonight. I started one scarf but she noticed it and commented on how she wasn’t a fan of the colours (tear), so I started a new scarf in a more open pattern (so it was finished faster, but it was still nice looking!) and finished that tonight. I’ll finish the other one some other time, it went back into my closet for now. I even added a fringe to it. And now I know what my sister bitches whenever she decides that a fringe would look nice on something. Why? Because they’re a PITA to do, that’s why!

Anyways… Oodles of photos to be taken tomorrow, plus lots of studying and reviewing before my final on Monday (7pm, whoot… I hate evening finals. You have the entire day to go ‘zomg, what does _______ mean?! and hopefully find out what it means.). Hope everyone had a fabulous and stress-free Saturday!

Low-key Friday ftw.

Michelle — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 06:13:35 +0000

Back in 2003, I got my first and second domain names. One was initially bought to be shared with my bestest, K. The other was one than online friend, whom I have since lost contact with since. My second domain name was always my favourite, I had it for two years (June 2003 to June 2005) and then when I was unable to renew it, it got scooped up by a squatting companies which kept it for a while… (2005-2009). And today, when I was bored, I just happened to put it into the search engine at a registar. It happened to be available, I happened to have credit available (thanks to a certain twitter contest) so I registered it. I’m going to move all of my writing over to it (so that chelle-chelle.com is just crafting related). Right now, it’s just a ‘coming soon’ page, but heartbreakee.net is registered and up. I love that name. Merry early Christmas to myself!

Today’s been full of watching a Christmas movie (Borrowed Hearts) and some non-holiday-related tv shows (Dollhouse), as well as some Facebook applications, some forums, Flickr, and working on the possible essay questions for my psychology final. Still not done yet. I have two more to attempt before I start bugging my friend for help, heh. Feeling ridiculously unprepared for it, I wonder how bad I’ll feel for it on Monday. However, I did make dinner tonight (yay) and it was edible (even more ‘yay’). Not much else to say today, since there hasn’t been a lot going on.

Hope everyone had a nice Friday.