...with homework.
Here's how my life has been this week:
Sunday: working until 2 a.m. on an article discussing a book reading for my journalism class.
Monday: class all day, then coming home and working on a critical reading essay and anthropology essay until 1:30 a.m. then studying statistics until 2 a.m.
Keep in mind I leave for work every morning at 6 a.m.
Tuesday: class all day, then working on an article discussing a family selling their farm for my journalism class, then working some more on that anthropology essay until 1:30 a.m. then studying statistics until 2:30 a.m.
Wednesday: class all day, church, finishing that anthropology essay, then being too whooped to even look at my statistics book.
Today: work until 10 a.m. then studying statistics for the EXAM I have today. Yeah. Then anthropology lecture at 11, anthropology recitation at 12, stats exam at 1 (!!!), and critical reading at 2. Then I've got to make a trip to the campus bookstore to pick up the newest book for my critical reading class. Then I have to catch a bloody city bus into downtown Pittsburgh THEN catch ANOTHER one into my town since my dad has a gig tonight (I usually ride home with him). Then I have to work on some homework for stats before going out to the gym to play volleyball until God knows how late to work out all my frustrations. Of course I'll probably just bring my homework to the gym and work in the lobby. It will be more peaceful there than at home anyway.
Lord, help me harness my emotions long enough today to keep from killing someone.
Showing posts with label Thursday Night Volleyball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thursday Night Volleyball. Show all posts
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
...like a chicken with its head cut off.
Life went from busy to nearly-out-of-control-losing-my-mind busy (wow, that WORD was busy).
Since the last time I updated (read "really updated"), school has started back up for me here at Pitt. I really love it here: there's such an atmosphere about it. Everything from the buildings like the Cathedral of Learning to the faculty and staff - all is wonderful. Well, actually, I can't say that. But we'll come back to that in a bit.
Anyway, school has also started up for my siblings. In fact, we all started the same day (the 25th). To be honest, this fact alone has made my life a living hell - even trumping my college homework - over the past two weeks. Between my brother needing help with geometry and the twins needing help figuring out how to work the PA Cyber school online program PLUS all of their homework, I barely have enough time to do my own. It's actually resulting in a lot of last-minute (what I like to call) "puke-up" homework where I pretty much BS my way through the assignment to get enough length on it even though I probably didn't do the reading needed to write the essay/paper/short answer well. Alas. But I am apparently good at it though, because I haven't had any poor gradings on them yet.
On the other hand...
I don't think one needs to be a Hindu to believe in the idea of Karma, which is (as one definition reads) "the effects of all deeds actively create past, present, and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one's own life, and the pain and joy it brings to him/her and others." I usually see this mostly in the teams I end up on when playing volleyball on Thursday nights: I get on the elite team at the beginning of the night and we dominate every other team, laughing in their faces and making them kiss our big toes (okay, I embellish); then Karma kicks in and I get stuck with the clumsy, uncoordinated people of the group, and we lose every game.
Anyway, back to how this relates to school.
I'm taking a Statistics course and my teacher is positively off the wall. On top of being down-right scary looking, she's flighty, absent-minded, and clueless to the fact that all the students know it and are making fun of her. I missed my very first recitation for this class due to circumstances outside of my control. I told her this and asked if there were a way to make it up. She told me to just wait a week and go to the next one. I did this (already a week behind in homework, mind you) and lo and behold! No one was there! Apparently, they moved recitation and didn't tell me. So that's two weeks of homework in the hole. Finally, I am able to make it to the third week. The TA is Hungarian and very soft spoken, so I had a difficult time making out what she was saying over the two air conditioners in the room. The period seemed short: she spent the first 15 minutes milling about jotting things on the board and the remainder of the class was spent showing us how to take a survey on the Stats website and assigning a quiz to us (which I ended up taking and definitely bombing). I met with her afterwards to schedule a meeting to get me caught up. The guy next to me was nice enough to give me the website with the homework syllabus on it. I was ready to pull all of my hair out.
So one bogus class out of five isn't bad, right?
...right? :-(
Since the last time I updated (read "really updated"), school has started back up for me here at Pitt. I really love it here: there's such an atmosphere about it. Everything from the buildings like the Cathedral of Learning to the faculty and staff - all is wonderful. Well, actually, I can't say that. But we'll come back to that in a bit.
Anyway, school has also started up for my siblings. In fact, we all started the same day (the 25th). To be honest, this fact alone has made my life a living hell - even trumping my college homework - over the past two weeks. Between my brother needing help with geometry and the twins needing help figuring out how to work the PA Cyber school online program PLUS all of their homework, I barely have enough time to do my own. It's actually resulting in a lot of last-minute (what I like to call) "puke-up" homework where I pretty much BS my way through the assignment to get enough length on it even though I probably didn't do the reading needed to write the essay/paper/short answer well. Alas. But I am apparently good at it though, because I haven't had any poor gradings on them yet.
On the other hand...
I don't think one needs to be a Hindu to believe in the idea of Karma, which is (as one definition reads) "the effects of all deeds actively create past, present, and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one's own life, and the pain and joy it brings to him/her and others." I usually see this mostly in the teams I end up on when playing volleyball on Thursday nights: I get on the elite team at the beginning of the night and we dominate every other team, laughing in their faces and making them kiss our big toes (okay, I embellish); then Karma kicks in and I get stuck with the clumsy, uncoordinated people of the group, and we lose every game.
Anyway, back to how this relates to school.
I'm taking a Statistics course and my teacher is positively off the wall. On top of being down-right scary looking, she's flighty, absent-minded, and clueless to the fact that all the students know it and are making fun of her. I missed my very first recitation for this class due to circumstances outside of my control. I told her this and asked if there were a way to make it up. She told me to just wait a week and go to the next one. I did this (already a week behind in homework, mind you) and lo and behold! No one was there! Apparently, they moved recitation and didn't tell me. So that's two weeks of homework in the hole. Finally, I am able to make it to the third week. The TA is Hungarian and very soft spoken, so I had a difficult time making out what she was saying over the two air conditioners in the room. The period seemed short: she spent the first 15 minutes milling about jotting things on the board and the remainder of the class was spent showing us how to take a survey on the Stats website and assigning a quiz to us (which I ended up taking and definitely bombing). I met with her afterwards to schedule a meeting to get me caught up. The guy next to me was nice enough to give me the website with the homework syllabus on it. I was ready to pull all of my hair out.
So one bogus class out of five isn't bad, right?
...right? :-(
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Busy, busy, busy
First off, happy belated fourth.
Moving on.
So here's my timeline of the past three days:
Moving on.
So here's my timeline of the past three days:
- Thursday: work - home - volleyball until 2:00 a.m. - LotR on Gamecube until 4:30 a.m.
- Friday: tennis with my dad and twin B until 1:00 p.m. - MAJOR in depth weeding of the back and front yards - trees and rhododendron bushes - running the lawn mower on both lawns - running out to Giant Eagle for fudge ingredients (to make for my cute begging grandfather) - stopping in at Family Video for National Treasure II (I had seen it, family had not) - coming home and watching NT II until 1:30 then popping in Robin Hood, too [w00t!]
- Saturday: trip to J&S with dad and twins
- CURRENTLY: taking twin A to the mall to follow through with a deal I made her.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
So today marks one week since my sister ended up in the emergency room. Every Thursday – glorious, beautiful, wonderful Thursday – I go play volleyball with a bunch of people in the area at a local church’s gymnasium. It’s a lot of fun; there are quite a few experienced, skillful players which makes it all worth it when you get to seriously play hard. Last week, my 14-year-old sister wanted to tag along. She’s on her school’s volleyball team, so sure, why not. Since I’m nocturnal, I’m always among the last to leave the gym. My sister knew this and didn’t mind. So around midnight or so (actually an early night for the lot of us, but we were getting kicked out this week), she and I packed up and headed home. About half-way home though, she mentioned that she was thirsty. Being the amazing sister that I am, I pulled into the Sheetz that we always pass to and from and popped in, snagging her a bottle of flavored water and ordering a MTO soft pretzel with nacho cheese for her dipping pleasure. When I returned to the car, she was delighted to see what I had brought her. She was finished with both before we pulled into the driveway. I unlocked the door and we were both greeted most exuberantly by our little mutt, Max. I went upstairs to take a shower, and she went to bed.
Fast-forward five hours. My dad and I are on our way in to work. He keeps yawning for some reason. “Tired?” I ask.
“Well, yeah, kinda. I mean, I just got home awhile ago from the ER,” he replies nonchalantly. WHA??? How did I miss this? Here, while I was in the shower around 1:00, my poor sister was in my parents’ room barely able to breathe. And from what my dad was able to get out of her on the way there, this wasn’t the first time she’d felt this way – it was just “the worst it’s been yet.” Great. So they took an x-ray of her throat and chest to see if there were any obstructions of any sort. When they showed nothing, the nurse asked her what the last thing she ate was. Go figure: pretzels, I guess, wreak havoc on the lining of one’s esophagus when they scrape their way down and often get lodged in the back of kids’ throats. I suppose that may have been a suitable enough explanation if she were, say, 8 years old? No, this seems a little more complex than crunchy food not being chewed well enough. (Plus, hello? It was a soft pretzel, dufus!) After a few hours, they decided to go home. When we took her to a follow-up at the family’s PCP, though, I heard stranger news.
“He ordered a pulmonary function test?!” I asked.
“Yeah…why?” my mom questioned.
“Well, she said so herself that it wasn’t in her chest. She made it pretty clear that it was her throat. So why in the world would he be running tests for asthma?”
I told my friend this last night after we pulled a girls-night-out at Starbucks after church. She admitted that it seemed odd and commented that at the college she attends, it seems “asthma” is the answer to everything, and that “no lie, you come in with any symptom – be it cold, flu, or GI issues – and they give you an inhaler script.” How retarded is that? They tried “diagnosing” her with asthma when she came in with a fever after she forced herself through her PE class.
Retards…
My prognosis? I think she has panic attacks. At work, I get to see firsthand what a lot of our patients are experiencing, and panic attacks in that age group are quite common. And if you spent two hours with my sister, you’d probably agree that it was a possible solution: on top of being OCD, having several “phobias,” and possessing a constantly intense personality, she had an especially high amount of caffeine that evening.
Anyway, it's just a theory. Could be right, could be wrong. Still, it makes me feel less guilty about the idea of almost killing my sister with a soft pretzel.
Fast-forward five hours. My dad and I are on our way in to work. He keeps yawning for some reason. “Tired?” I ask.
“Well, yeah, kinda. I mean, I just got home awhile ago from the ER,” he replies nonchalantly. WHA??? How did I miss this? Here, while I was in the shower around 1:00, my poor sister was in my parents’ room barely able to breathe. And from what my dad was able to get out of her on the way there, this wasn’t the first time she’d felt this way – it was just “the worst it’s been yet.” Great. So they took an x-ray of her throat and chest to see if there were any obstructions of any sort. When they showed nothing, the nurse asked her what the last thing she ate was. Go figure: pretzels, I guess, wreak havoc on the lining of one’s esophagus when they scrape their way down and often get lodged in the back of kids’ throats. I suppose that may have been a suitable enough explanation if she were, say, 8 years old? No, this seems a little more complex than crunchy food not being chewed well enough. (Plus, hello? It was a soft pretzel, dufus!) After a few hours, they decided to go home. When we took her to a follow-up at the family’s PCP, though, I heard stranger news.
“He ordered a pulmonary function test?!” I asked.
“Yeah…why?” my mom questioned.
“Well, she said so herself that it wasn’t in her chest. She made it pretty clear that it was her throat. So why in the world would he be running tests for asthma?”
I told my friend this last night after we pulled a girls-night-out at Starbucks after church. She admitted that it seemed odd and commented that at the college she attends, it seems “asthma” is the answer to everything, and that “no lie, you come in with any symptom – be it cold, flu, or GI issues – and they give you an inhaler script.” How retarded is that? They tried “diagnosing” her with asthma when she came in with a fever after she forced herself through her PE class.
Retards…
My prognosis? I think she has panic attacks. At work, I get to see firsthand what a lot of our patients are experiencing, and panic attacks in that age group are quite common. And if you spent two hours with my sister, you’d probably agree that it was a possible solution: on top of being OCD, having several “phobias,” and possessing a constantly intense personality, she had an especially high amount of caffeine that evening.
Anyway, it's just a theory. Could be right, could be wrong. Still, it makes me feel less guilty about the idea of almost killing my sister with a soft pretzel.
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