Tag Archives: blog squad

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…. )

10/11/13

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!