Em's Adventures

My brain is not on, so if this post flows poorly, blame term two. Before I begin though, I must ask, Does anyone know of a website that shows what’s going on in each room at a given time? I know that in the EOSC building, every room has a sheet outside of it that shows what class is in that room for each day of the week. I have two classes with a one hour gap between them, both in BUCH A101, and I want a good place to read (and I entirely suck at reading, so I can’t read anywhere loud/distracting), but I don’t want to go around opening every door I see and looking if someone’s in there or not. Any suggestions?

Anyways, it’s term two. Again. Last year, this term was terrible. This year, it’s terrible for different reasons. Last year, I was feeling awesome, like I could do anything and pass my classes no problem…and then the opposite happened. This year, I am feeling like a confused first year (I would say again, but I honestly wasn’t too confused or scared first year – pneumonia can be distracting like that). I have unofficially switched to psychology and I only have three classes. Previously, I put all of my arts classes in the backseat. There were no real deadlines or assignments like in science, so I did what I wanted to when I wanted to (and when I had time/motivation).

This term, I’m a bit lost. So I have all of this reading to do…but how important is it? Should I be taking careful notes or should I be skimming? Are there some things that are assigned that are less important? In science, it’s read enough so that you can do this assignment well/pretty easily. In arts, it feels more like a gamble. I read enough so that I can pass the midterm or write an essay. But how much is that?! I feel like the good students are the ones who read the correct stuff and remembered the correct stuff, but how do they know what that is? Do they just get lucky or do they read everything and memorize everything?

Such is the life of a psychology student with a science brain ._.

As the term approaches its end, I figured I might as well follow up my initial impressions with how all of my classes actually turned out.

CPSC 101: Connecting with Computer Science
Status: Bored
Difficulty: 1/5 Interest: 4/5
This class moved up in the interest ranking not because it’s more interesting than I expected, but rather, the others are more boring than I expected. Still quite easy, it has become pretty boring to sit in class, which doesn’t exactly motivate me to get out of bed in the morning and walk 20 minutes across campus to get there. But our course project is a website about Pokemon, which has to count for something, right?

PSYC 308A: Social Psychology
Status: Interested
Difficulty: 4/5 Interest: 5/5
Secret: When I made the original list of ratings, I wanted to put this one’s interest as 5/5, but I figured I couldn’t do that since I am majoring in EOSC, so that should be what I like the most, right? Anyways, I am quite enjoying this class, but it is quite difficult. I did terrible on the midterm, probably partially because I am not a psych student, so I’m not used to how their tests are formatted and they seem to go over the same material in multiple classes, which also gives them an advantage.

EOSC 211: Computer Methods in EOSC
Status: Frustrated
Difficulty: 2/5 Interest: 2/5
Aye. This class isn’t hard. Midterm was super easy, worksheets are easy. But when it comes to the labs and assignments? Nothing but frustrating. The labs are 2 hours long and you are not expected to finish the lab in that time, the average time is more like 4 hours. No problem if you have resources or know what you’re doing. But when you get stuck in this class, you can’t Google your code and have the internet tell you what’s wrong with it. The TAs and profs are not around enough to answer questions and they sometimes answer questions with other questions or when you ask “What does ‘plot’ do?” they answer, “There’s something called ‘help plot’, use it,” despite you already doing that and being confused as to what it means. Not to mention overlaps in assignments (given every 2 weeks starting the middle of the term and expected to take ~15 hours) and labs (every week, takes ~4 hours), which make it pretty much impossible to do both of them well.

EOSC 220: Introductory Mineralogy
Status: Confused
Difficulty: 3/5 Interest: 3/5
This class started out with me being bored to death by the simplicity of the material. And then we switched profs. Immediately, everything is SO much more complicated, and she puts things on slides that she never explains. She expects you to understand things immediately and the number of people in class seems to have decreased since the switch. Anyways, this class is a lot of memorization, which is what I’m terrible at, so it’s been pretty hard as far as tests and such goes. The worst part about this class though is that there’s one lab in the middle of the term (which equals rainy season) where you go outside for 3 hours and look at rocks on campus. Raining. Cold. Windy. Miserable. I don’t understand how that ever seemed like a good idea.

EOSC 329: Groundwater Hydrology
Status: Dropped
Difficulty: 5/5 Interest: 1/5
The prof is what really tripped me up in rating this class. He’s quite interesting and comical, but when it comes down to the material, it’s hard, confusing, and boring. There’s a high percentage of engineers in this class (aka people way smarter and more experienced than EOS students), which leaves the EOS students behind in the material and there are no tutors or any kind of extra help besides the lab TAs.

Warning: Philosophical post to follow

I was thinking the other day, if we’re so young and this is so difficult, what am I going to do for the rest of my life?

I imagined that life gets more difficult as you go on – at the beginning, you do nothing for yourself except breathe and look cute. Then you keep increasing the amount of things you can do…eat, walk, talk, read, drive, etc. until what point? When do you stop learning?

Of course, the answer is never, you learn something new every day they say, but at some point, there will be a line that you cross when what you’re learning is not essential to your life. But before that line is the gray area where you think what you are learning is not essential, important, relevant, etc. and this is where people lose momentum. For some, this gray area can start in middle school or high school. For me, it was university.

For my entire grade 1-12 education, I went to college preparatory schools. Everything led to college. College was the goal, the end, and if you don’t get there, you are nothing in life. So of course, motivation to be someone and not be useless led me to taking honours and AP classes, trying in all of my classes, and despite all of the frustrations that I had, I was still able to move on and conquer because the end was near. I was almost done.

They were right, I was done. But not in the sense that I had imagined. In my dream world, university was a place where you were free. Free to take whatever classes you wanted, free to come and go as you please, free to dye your hair blue, free to wear your pajamas to class, etc. Which of course, in my real world, you can do, but for a price. Done means that and also being done with guidance, structure, people helping you learn, and people helping you in general (clean, cook, laundry).

You’re at the bottom of the food chain again, like a new-born baby you’re a new-born adult. You move from a dorm to a quad to an apartment to a house. You cook for yourself, do your own laundry, take care of yourself.  You live in a state of constant confusion from overloading yourself with new material every single day. You fear what will happen if you don’t learn it or fall behind. And you’re learning more than you did in high school, with added responsibilities and without support.

But luckily, things get better from here (or so my crystal ball tells me). You still learn, you still move up and on in life, but you have your basics. You have a degree. You can live by yourself. You know how to do your job. But that’s not to say that life after university is easy – it has its own challenges, yet you’ll be better equipped when problems arise.

With midterms season upon us, I have switched from “Alright! Let’s go to class and do homework so I don’t get behind!” mode to “Blaaaahhhhhhh, I think Halo sounds like a better idea” and generally more complainy mode. Anyways, being the complainer that I am, there have been a few things that have been bothering me.

People who walk into classrooms before everyone else leaves

Alright, so if there’s one or two people left from the remaining class (at max 10), you can go inside. But when the class hasn’t even finished?! This is ridiculous. Besides the general principle of you’re already where you need to be and the people inside need to run to another part of campus so be nice and let them out, there’s absolutely no reason why people need to get into class 5-10 minutes early. Sure, you can get more comfy and get out your notes and stuff, but you can do that in 2 minutes just fine. Maybe if you have a midterm you’ll want to push and shove your way in so you can have as much time as possible for the test (and to cram/panic beforehand). But really, please explain to me why every time my EOSC 220 class is finishing up (around 1:47) the next class comes in like a hurricane, pushing to get through and sit down. I’m really quite curious.

People who don’t wear pants

At first glance, probably only a select few people know what I’m talking about and the others are either confused or think I’m talking about shorts and skirts. I’m talking about wearing leggings/tights as pants. I would add a picture for demonstration, but I’d feel like it would be NSFW, so I’ll link to it. That’s one of the better pictures of wearing them as pants. The best one I found to attest to why I hate it so much happens to be of Paris Hilton, so I’m not sure that actually counts. Anyways, aren’t leggings designed to keep your legs warm or be somehow fashionable and be under another piece of clothing? I have seen this way too much around campus and today I saw someone wearing some that were not opaque enough…and it was not pretty. No sir. That’s the kind of stuff you can only wear in your house. So if someone knows why this is a good idea and how these people do not know that they are revealing way too much, please enlighten me.

Majors

This has nothing to do with things that people do that bother me, but rather, with trying to understand what I like and what my major should be. I’m a science person. End of story. Well, kind of. I’m good at science, I liked it in high school because it was easier than history and English. I always thought what you’re good at you like because you can easily get a sense of accomplishment and such. You can like other things too of course, but for myself, someone who likes doing easy things that produce a bigger result, I stuck with what I was good at.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been EOSCing myself out and guess what? I don’t like it. For various reasons and compounded experiences from my classes and discussions with others, I’ve determined that I won’t be a geoscientist. But what about other sciences? I suppose I could, but that would add some time onto my degree and I still wouldn’t be very interested in it. So what should the science minded and bored Em do? Dual degree, at least until further notice. I like psychology, but I’m terrible at arts in general (which contradicts my previous thought of liking what I’m good at), so dual degree in Earth and Ocean Sciences and Psychology, here I come.