Monthly Archives: October 2013

10/30/13

Puppy Love

I can’t tell you when it began.

Maybe I just slipped without noticing, losing just a little bit of the already precarious hold I have. Perhaps I lost focus one day, and everything went spiralling down.

I am so stressed.

Now, I am a little embarrassed to admit this, because some upperclassmen in Arts have talked about how they never had anything to do in first year (what on earth?!) and everyone thinks we’re supposed to be really chill and smoke weed and talk about how things are gnarly and so rad. I also feel bad because I probably have no idea what the kids in engineering feel. Maybe I just have crappy time management skills. Maybe I need to step my game up.

But I digress. Possible reasons aside, I’m tired. I’m not lucky enough to be able to function without many hours of sleep like some. I am a creature of rest. I am a monster of snores. I thrive on being dead to the world. Now I fall asleep in classes, and I even missed one shift in the cafeteria because I couldn’t wake up (yes, it’s the 7am one. Worst decision I’ve made so far, taking that shift). The worst part is that the more I’m stressed, the more I don’t want to do work. And when I have uncompleted work, I go berserk. It’s a vicious cycle.

“I just want to sleep, you know.” I’d say to myself, near tears. The blank page in Microsoft Word would mock me with its glaring brightness.

And then the walls would start laughing and calling me names, saying I’m crazy for talking to myself. Then I’d defend myself, you know, because the wall was talking to itself as well, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Or stainless steel. But apparently they were talking to my dresser. And that’s when I knew I had gone bonkers, because the dresser is usually silent.

Maybe my past self did something right for once – she foretold my mental breakdown and signed up for a session with a dog in the UBC Wellness Center in Irving.

Now, Wednesdays are intensely busy for me. When I don’t oversleep, I wake up at 6.30am, work, have an hour’s break, and head to back-to-back classes until 4. The dog visits are only between 12 – 1 on Wednesdays, and that so happens to be the same time as my Sociology class. But screw that, I thought. I want to see a dog. You have no idea how much I love dogs. Every time I see someone walking their gorgeous little pooch on campus, I want to run up and play with them, and it takes all of my energy and lots of squealing just to restrain myself. So boo to Sociology.

(Disclaimer: This is not the right attitude to have towards your classes. Please attend lectures diligently.)

(If you’re my prof or TA and you’re somehow reading this AND know who I am… I’m sorry.)

In case you didn’t know, you can sign up to play with a dog for 10 minutes every day in the Wellness Center. You can get more information here.

This is Jasmine

This adorable little cockapoo nearly licked my hand off. I was so overjoyed to be able to actually play with a dog for once that I flew into that room and went all maternal and started speaking in my doggy voice.

“Who’s a good girl? Who’s a good girl?”

The essays and readings may be piling up, but don’t forget to take some time to relax. Maybe you like to jog (which is something I cannot identify with at all, I’m sorry), or maybe you like singing at the top of your lungs or killing pixels in the shape of humans (this I identify with). Being 20 minutes late to Sociology and busting into the lecture like James Bond, and having people give me dirty looks was completely worth spending time with Jasmine.

What do you like to do to relax?

(I like to eat to de-stress, which just ends up making me depressed and angry when I gain weight, which makes me want to eat again…. )

10/18/13

Friday Nights

Parties. Alcohol. Music. Dancing.

 

Not for this girl. For one, I am not good with alcohol. Before you go gasp alcohol taboo topic what what what, alcohol consumption is a real thing among first year students in residence, and I think it’s common knowledge that many underage students here at UBC drink. YOU MUST FACE REALITY. Plus, I am actually of age back home, so I could potentially chug gallons of it if I wanted to. Just not here. But a sip of vodka or beer or wine or whatever leaves me choking and near tears. Contrary to an earlier post, I am not that masochistic.

On the other hand, I don’t like parties. I’ve experienced some raised eyebrows in my direction when I mention this sometimes, which just makes me a little mad on the inside. Some people like fish, and some people like chicken. Some people like parties, and some people just don’t, you know.

It’s okay if you do, really. I can see the appeal… maybe. I went to two frat parties and I had so much fun. So much fun that I never went back again. I get really persnickety about physical proximity and gestures of affection with friends – I only feel comfortable being touchy-touchy after I hit a certain point in my friendships, so I honestly don’t see how I would find grinding with strangers fun. I mean, I’m the kind of person who finds mindless small talk extremely boring and taxing. Heck, I’m not even good at pretending that I’m good at it. I ended up standing in a corner of the dance floor, live-tweeting the frat party to my friends from across the world. Yeah. I’m that girl. Sorry.  

My idea of a fun Friday night just happens to be locking myself up in my room, and going on the internet, watching bad Korean dramas, random videos, and stuffing my face with snacks. That doesn’t mean I don’t like going out with friends or being obnoxiously hyper. I’m just a tad reserved and a little bit introverted, that’s all. I just need a lot of time to myself.

So if you spend your Friday nights indoors, or taking walks by yourself (and meeting drunk people who mistake you for a thug and challenge you to a fight.) (That really happened) (really), or just meeting up with a good friend, you are not alone. If you like gorging on Ben and Jerry’s or whatever, catching up on television shows or whatnot, you’re not the only one. There are more of us out there. We’re just probably not going to meet each other anytime soon, because we’re all cooped up in our rooms.

10/11/13

The Drop

Hello muchachos!

I have pretty much settled into a routine now. Not to say that I wasn’t used to university and being in a whole new environment, yadda yadda yaaa, but I now have a routine that I abide by. My whole life is basically just me, trying to nap whenever I can. That’s about it. In fact, I just got up from a toasty little siesta in Koerner, and another quick cat nap outside on a bench by the flag pole not too long ago.

Can you believe we’re in the middle of the term already? There’s only like a month (?) to go, which is cray. Why are university terms so short? The work has been piling up and I often find myself eating away my sorrows in the dead of the night. Pocky is my friend. Ramen is my friend. Liszt’s paraphrase of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March is my friend when I’m stuffing my face and (figuratively) crying at stupid o’ clock. I’ve only gained one pound so far, in spite of the insane amounts of sugar I’ve been shoveling into my body. Lucky me. Probably because of all the walking I do from Totem to Buchanan and the Anthropology/Sociology building. My exercise used to be rolling around in bed, trying to find a comfortable position…. That’s it.

The past week or so has been a blur. I feel like I’m in The Hangover, only there hasn’t been any drinking or parties involved, because I am one of the more subdued first years. COUGH. I recall cursing the world as I woke up at 6.30am to get ready for my 7am shift in the Totem kitchen, and I also finally met your favourite first year Blog Squadder Derrick, who, while intensely funny and adorable online, is more amazing in person. [This is a paid advertisement.] But what really happened, was that I got my assignments back.

In university, you are bound to be registered in a really weird course that turned out to be the opposite of what you expected. TABL100 – Basics of Table Manners? Cool, you think. You will probably be learning about how to be a proper lady/gentleman, and you will gain all sorts of valuable insights into the art of etiquette. A few weeks in, and you realize that you’ve been misled. What are you doing, learning about ballroom dancing and how to properly sit inside a limousine? If you’d wanted to learn that, wouldn’t you have taken SNOB 100 instead? What is this doing in your class?

Well, I have one class exactly like that (which I am not going to specify), and I recently got my marks back.

I don’t want to sound like a complete butt, but I was an extremely good student in Grade 12. Grade 1 to 11, not so much (I got 12 marks on a Physics test once… Good ol’ days). But I completed Grade 12 in a Canadian school, as opposed to the national curriculum, and I did incredibly well. I’m not going to specify how when why what, but I was a pretty damn good student.

But what I got back for that class, was easily 15 – 20 marks lower that I would have gotten just a few months ago. Sure, I could make excuses and say that the assignments were ridiculously ambiguous and abstract. Sure. It’s not even like I wasn’t prepared for this – I knew that a drop in grades was to be expected in university. I knew that getting anything above 90 wasn’t going to be a walk in the park anymore. But knowing and actually experiencing something are two completely different things.

So I experienced a little bit of a crisis for a while. What am I doing in university? Did UBC make a mistake accepting me? Where is my brain? Am I even smart enough for university? Am I going to fail out of first year? What is life? What is x when y=4? Are the hobbits going to Isengard? And when am I going to do my laundry?

I recovered quickly, though, with the help of copious amounts of chocolate bars and some potato chips. I wasn’t going to let something that trivial knock me down. I am strong. I am invincible. I am gaining weight. I would learn from this experience, and emerge as a wiser, worldly person. “Why do you look so different?” People would ask, gaping at me in wonder. They’d sense that I have changed, that something has somehow shifted.

“I don’t know,” I’d reply, flipping my hair. “Maybe I’m born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline.”

Well, I guess that’s just first year for you. You make mistakes, and you learn from them. You fall, but you get back up. Or maybe you don’t, and that’s just too freaking bad.

 

I still have to do my laundry. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

10/2/13

Of self-loathing and decidedly athletic things

I have a complicated relationship with my past self. It’s all sorts of complicated. It’s like those relationships where sexual tension is so rife in the air, but there’s still all sorts of passive-aggressive behaviour, rampant and angsty subtweeting and intentionally vague Facebook posts about how much it hurts. I simultaneously love and absolutely detest my past self. I love her because she is (was?) me, and I am full of self-love. So full of it, that some people might describe me as being narcissistic, but the haters will continue to hate while I remain fabulous. But I also hate my past self, I HATE HER SO MUCH, because she says stupid things that make the both of us look intensely awkward and rather silly, because she does things that I wouldn’t, and because she makes the most unthinkable decisions that never affect her, but me. I have to pay for her mistakes.

An instance of this extreme stupidity would be how my past self decided to accept a shift at the Totem Caf that starts at 7am. SEVEN. FREAKIN’ AYY AM. No sane person is up and about before seven, bright-eyed, walking around with a skip in their step and a pip in their pep. People who are actually capable of that are not normal. They are secret agents from an ambiguous agency with an equally ambiguous acronym, stealthily infiltrating the very fabric of our society and threatening to tilt our world on its axis. But I digress. My past self signed up for a shift that begins at 7am. What part of that does not scream stupid?

(Yes, I work at the Totem Cafeteria. I may blog about that another time.)

So you see the crazy dynamics between my past self and I? (Actually, it seems to be more of a one-way relationship since my past self can’t interact with me, but I believe my ardour will be returned someday. *sniff*.) I was feeling the exact same way on Sunday, colourfully cursing my past self – and oh, I am pretty creative when it comes to getting vulgar – as I rubbed my numb fingers together, shivering like a jelly in an earthquake on Jericho Beach.

I know. Nice segue.

Yep. I signed up for The Day of the Longboat. Mostly because I was in the whole spirit of omg-I’m-at-university-new-beginnings-new-everything-let’s-do-new-things-just-because-we-can, and signing up for this event seemed like the obvious thing to do. Plus, I’ve always wanted to try my hand at rowing. I didn’t know where on earth I was going to find a team, because my social ineptitude and decidedly off-putting awkwardness has effectively obstructed me from becoming bosom buddies with every random stranger. But luckily for me, the RA on the second floor was looking to form a team. Sugar, spice, and red hot flames – the Shuswap Superheroes were born.

As it turned out, the weather on Sunday was pretty shi crappy, but we still braved the rain and cold to row a longboat. Remember what I said about hating my past self? Yep, I was full of self-loathing when I stopped being able to feel my fingers. I wanted to go home. Boo.

Then the race began, and I hated myself even more. Rowing takes stamina, man. I am a former athlete who has succumbed to the decadent pleasures of stuffing my face and rolling around in bed; I think that’s pretty self-explanatory. My arm hurt, our longboat was being crazy pants (almost tipping over, among other things), and my butt was soaked. Not fun.

But this story has a happy ending, like all stories involving me do. My team – comprised mostly of people who had never touched a paddle before – started moving in sync. The rain started to feel pleasant. The ache in my arm started to hurt so good. Our vessel stopped tipping from side to side and began moving like a dream. This was it.

And now I am going to ruin the climax of this story by jumping ahead and telling you that we advanced into the next heat, but we were all starving and just wanted to go home and eat. I got a cut on my thumb from vigorous rowing, but I will tell you that the adrenaline rush and the sudden euphoria that comes flooding in after I finished the course was worth the pain, the cold and earlier feelings of misery. I would be down to row anytime now. So down.

So I leave you with this: You MUST do the Day of the Longboat before you graduate. DO IT. Even if you end up not liking being in a boat and moving your arm in repetitive motions, you can brag about it to anyone who’d listen. Everyone knows that people who have rowed longboats are so fetch. It is so in.

Next up on the list… Storming the wall? Stay tuned to find out.