#the professor for the capstone class last semester said the paper was good and i was in a good spot to finish it this semester | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

a-mountain-girl · 4 years

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alright it’s venting time because I think better when I write and I can’t find anyone irl who I could talk to about all of this.

But before I begin if someone could bring me a gigantic bar of chocolate (milk pls I’m so sick of dark chocolate that’s all “santa” gave me for Christmas like... did mom forget I don’t like dark chocolate?) or a pint of peanut butter, pistachio, or moose tracks ice cream that would help.

Like, I understand that this hasn’t been a bad day necessarily just a bad hour that has since spiraled into a several bad hours and I’m more upset about underlying issues than I am about what happened. So what happened?

Well it all seems innocuous enough. I went to my senior capstone class and met my classmates (all of whom I know from other classes) and the professor (who I’ve taken a class from before, this is important). We talked about the syllabus and class structure and I exercised an admirable amount of self-control in not excusing myself to go scream in the snow. I really, really wanted to go do that.

The problems are 1) This is the only professor I have ever given a bad rating and for good reason. I don’t want to spend too much time on this but at first I was thinking “this guy seems pretty chill if a bit annoying” and then when he was talking about his education and specialty I realized... this is That Professor. This is That Guy. This is the one I actually called a dick in the course evaluation. Because I took the required survey of american literature from colonialism to the civil war course from this guy; this was online which made things worse. Now this was supposed to be a LITERATURE course, a SURVEY of LITERATURE. His course design was literally 50% ART, another 30% was dense paragraphs about history (I’m ADHD I absolutely cannot get through gigantic blocks of dry, useless text within a reasonable time frame), another 20% was bits of literature and media that was not relevant to the time period because his big thing was “How are these things influenced or developed from early American literature and/or history?!” Like.... I DON’T KNOW BECAUSE WE HAVEN’T STUDIED IT DIPSHIT! Then to add to it his expectations were that C is Average bullshit like, you’re setting your students up for failure when you set it up like C is the grade you expect to give them and to get an A a student has to go above and beyond like no, if a student meets expectations they should get an A. You’re just an asshole. Then his expectations for regular coursework were buried on a completely different website and never repeated, they also didn’t make sense. They were not clear. And then his idea of “feedback” is to ramble for paragraphs on a tangent and NEVER TELL ME WHY TF HE GAVE ME THE GRADE HE DID! Feedback needs to include an explanation of what the student did right and wrong so they can improve in the future. His rambling along with the lack of clarity in instructions made it impossible to get good, much less consistent grades. I’d try to follow all the instructions, even put in extra effort and get excited and I’d get a poor grade on an assignment in spite of doing everything right according to his incomprehensible instructions and then I’d half-ass a discussion post, turn it in late, and get an A and three paragraphs of this guy rambling excitedly in the comments. Like, it was impossible to figure out what he actually wanted us to do and then I was already mad enough about the lack of focus on what the class was actually supposed to be about and all this led to me throwing in the towel and either half-assing everything or just skipping assignments because I couldn’t care anymore. I have no desire to study under this buffoon’s “guidance” again.

2) One of the classmates is Obnoxious Man, who I will point out isn’t even graduating this spring and therefore really doesn’t need to be in this class and I think he shouldn’t be. I’m uncomfortable enough with the professor but I would be willing to give him a second chance in light of his whole thing about it being “student-led” and it being easier to communicate in person. But Obnoxious Man makes this impossible. The professor wants us sharing and working together all semester. I am not comfortable sharing anything remotely personal such as a reading I find fascinating or working with this man. I will not be giving him any access to me outside of the classroom. He will not be getting my phone number or my email. His vibes are disgusting and I’ve been dealing with boys and men just like him since kindergarten. I don’t care if he hasn’t actually done anything to threaten me, based on previous experience I won’t even take a chance. The second to last guy like this spent weeks harassing me because he wanted me to date him, the last guy would steal my stuff and stalk me. I had to get the school equivalent to a restraining order which he still found every excuse to violate. I can’t do this but I also can’t just drop the class because I, unlike Obnoxious Man, have to graduate this spring. I thought I could tolerate him after last semester but there’s a big difference between having to put up with him in discussion-based classes during half of the week and him having access to me.

3) I was thrown by the actual expectations laid out in the syllabus. I thought I would be doing a whole new, intensive project. I had a great idea and was actually getting excited. Instead we’re supposed to do group projects (see above for issues with that) and a personal project which will be revising an old paper like... when I finish a class I am done. D O N E. I never want to see that crap again. I don’t think I even still have half of that material! There isn’t one of those papers that I want to look at, much less expand! And how is this really challenging? The professor, Mr. Dickhead, went on and on about how important revising is to critical writing yada yada yada but maybe I don’t care?! Maybe I’m only in this degree as preparation for grad school in a different area? I hate writing critical analysis 99% of the time. It’s like pulling teeth. That’s not a great metaphor because I’m now expected to drag all these papers I want to forget about back into the horrible light of day. And I don’t know if these expectations were invented by the department or by the professor so I don’t know who to be mad at or if I could possibly request some sort of independent project.

4) Because of this and some things said by other students in their introductions (all positive things btw) I started into a reactionary spiral of feeling inadequate, childish, stupid, helpless, etc. etc. Like, one of these classmates is a finalist for a Fullbright scholarship which apparently had to be applied to in October and I didn’t know any of this?! Like that stuff is important but nobody tells me things and I don’t know how people know about all these scholarships and awards and programs and stuff that is helpful. It’s hard enough just making it through the day and doing a mediocre job on my assignments. It took me months to get up the courage to ask professors for recommendations. Filling out graduate applications has been hell and I had to tell my advisor yesterday that she’s not finished with the recs because there’s on in her inbox she missed and I still have to submit one more application that I was feeling good about yesterday and now am about ready to give up on. And the writing center isn’t open and I don’t want to be a burden on my advisor and talk to her about any of these issues...

#ignore me #i just hate everything right now #i spent almost an hour sobbing in the shower

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milkteamarx · 5 years

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So all in all, I need to learn not to take things so personally.

I’m gonna be ranting a bit about my class and how I sort of.. get emotional and frustrated really easily. Also about taking on responsibility and realizing when you need to become a leader.

So last night I had my advanced crime scene course, which is essentially the capstone for the entire degree. We are investigating a missing persons case all semester and the class is split into two groups. My group has 4 girls, the other group has 5 girls. Last night, we knew we were going to be going out and collecting evidence around a suspicious car that may be connected to the disappearance of our victim. So our two groups go out and there were two cars set up for us that way we weren’t attempting to process the same car. The other group apparently got done with their car really fast, which we had no way of knowing considering they were in different parking lots. So we’re out on the scene and I was taking the crime scene photos because I know that’s something I excel at. Our fourth girl said she was going to be late and ended up being 45 minutes late. So I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were out there for like an hour. I took the photos, and the second girl was supposed to be swabbing the “suspected” blood on the car. There were two blood spatter marks, one on the bumper, on below the bumper, and a small droplet a little ways away. So that’s three swabs we needed to do... Tell me how I took all of the crime scene photos and also took two of the three swabs? Like what was going on, why did I feel like I was doing everything? Anyway my professor comes out and asks us what the hell is taking so long and I try to tell him that our group has 3 girls and the other group has 5 and we’re doing what we have to. And like I was taught by him that it’s better to be thorough than be quick and forget something. And literally no one in my group was speaking up after he asked us what we were still doing out here, so I had to be the one to speak up and talk to him. And like I feel like I do this so so so often in this class. But anyway, me and him start talking and he says “It doesn’t matter that you have 3 people, this should’ve only taken you 30 minutes max. Stop making excuses, do your shit (Since it’s an advanced class, we’re very informal), and get on with it” and I just got frustrated. Frustrated that my group was letting me take the heat, frustrated that our fourth girl was 45 minutes late, just frustrated in general. So then he calls me out again and is like “Don’t get pissed off, Devon” and I told him I wasn’t and he said I was and that he can tell. So after that I just sort of shut up and just tried to breathe. Anyway, last night I was really being hard on myself because I shouldn’t allow myself to get so emotional. I felt like he thought I was incompetent after that because if i’m getting emotional about this than how am I going to be in my actual field? But anyway, I come into class today (A different class, but I still had the same professor), and he’s joking around with everyone. He starts handing out this paper that we need and when he gets to me, he jokes and says “feeling a little better today?”. I felt so much better and told him yeah, I just got frustrated. He literally said “I was so hard on you because I know you’re good at what you do and I know out of everyone in the group, you’re the one that needs to delegate tasks. Don’t take it personally, i’m testing you because I know you’re good” and like alskfjhasfhj I feel so much better. I feel SO SO much better, knowing that he’s not writing me off. A big part of this class and this degree program is the fact that he’s an active Sargent with the police department and not only will he write a few people recommendation letters for a crime scene job, but he’ll be the one you work with and it’s just... important for him to believe in me and think i’m capable. So yeah, sick.

#personal #tldr im emotional but my professor believes in me #which is what counts #and it's better to be the first person to speak up than the followers that follow suit

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todd-becker · 5 years

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summertiiime and the living’s [independent research]

this post is officially written by a second-year!! that’s right! i finished the first year of my phd!!! i have absolutely loved it so far and have enjoyed it beyond measure. things are actually (strangely) lining up REALLY well… i earned straight “a”s this semester. i look back on this year and realize i’ve learned SO MUCH in such a short time. i do not remember the last time i truly felt i’d learned such a great deal. probably my first year in french class in eighth grade. i really enjoyed all of my professors. data analysis II was my favorite class (seriously, who ever thought i of all people would become a quantoid?). research methods II was also a good class. the exams and projects for that class are SO LABOR-INTENSIVE and also really good for building a solid foundation of knowledge about research. practicum was very challenging (quite honestly, most of the time) and i think we have built a solid base to go off of. our class just submitted the irb this week and is completing the pilot testing before we go live. exciting things!

speaking of exciting things… i was selected into the agesw pre-dissertation fellows program!!! who ever would have thought?! i began my application in december while at sara’s over break, so i am elated that my hard work appears to have paid off. i rewrote—i’m not kidding—probably 8 drafts of my personal statement for cassey and sara. once they signed off, i sent my cv and personal statement through charlotte. once she signed off, i sent the same materials through nancy kusmaul, who was in the first cohort of fellows and now teaches at umbc. once she signed off, i sent it through joan davitt, who was really great at helping me tighten it and pull it all together. apparently it worked? this is such a great step because, in the last third of the semester, i was lucky enough to have a skype call with dr. tracy schroepfer, who teaches at wisconsin and who is one of the co-directors. she is one of the pioneers of the body of research on the wthd. i first read her research in sara’s death and dying class in spring 2009 and marveled at how truly amazing it was. when i got into my msw, i continued to love the content, though i couldn’t shake how hard it would be in the logistic sense to carve out a space for myself in that area (e.g., irb concerns, people wanting to participate, people’s ability to engage, people’s priorities at their eol, etc.)… so, when i framed my research interests in my application materials, i’d simply framed them around a close secondary interest. once i got into the program and dove into the literature, i kept coming back to this content and sort of allowed myself to keep wading deeper and deeper under the premise of, “i’m going to keep going until i see a reason to stop.” so far, it’s paid off! so, forward. onward and upward! as a benefit of my selection, i will attend gsa (this year, in austin, tx).

similarly, the research i’m doing with caroline is expected to wrap up somewhat soon! we were selected to present at cswe in denver! we were also selected to present at inccip in huddersfield, england! i am hoping we will be selected to present at sswr in dc! i just need to figure out funding… i’ve applied for the travel fellowship through the phd program for cswe. caroline will use $500 of her faculty funding for my travel to england. she has requested the dean match that amount and that is still tbd. the only other thing currently on the docket is the secondary data analysis project i did for data analysis II with cagle… working with the HRS was a VERY laborious endeavor but it gave me really good data!! i seriously thank joon for helping me run the data and statement files in a way to bring about a workable data set and then helping me merge the six data sets i had into one final product. seriously—we met approximately seven times and every time i was throwing coffee at him, as a thank-you/i’m sorry you have to do this.

this project examined the predictive properties of healthcare encounters at different levels of care (i.e., hospitalization, er admission, nursing facility, and outpatient visit) on death anxiety. the death anxiety variable was ordinal, so my options were (a) keep it ordinal and run a multinomial logistic regression, (b) use it as continuous and run a multiple linear regression, or (c) dummy code it and run a multiple logistic regression. (have i mentioned before how much i love regression?) i had originally wanted to run an anova but then cagle pointed out the possible link between hospitalization and er admission would violate the assumption of independence of observations, so he encouraged a regression model. i ran the linear and found it legit violated 3/4 assumptions, so i ran the logistic and got some serious SS results! WAHOO! (i’d be lying if i said i didn’t tear up at my first “big kid” project working “successfully”—yes, i’m totally acknowledging the publication bias.) so, i’m now just waiting on cagle’s comments on the manuscript we handed in as our capstone project before i can begin revisions. i met with him before i presented my paper to the class and asked if he would be willing to mentor me through the publication process, as i had never published before. he was kind enough to agree, so once i make his edits, he and i will connect to discuss next steps. bruce also agreed to review. since his edits are always so solid, i think i will stand a good chance at getting my first publication! the plan is to target death studies, so we shall see! i am also planning on submitting that as a late-breaker session for gsa. this would bring me to four conferences in the very near future. i am hoping this gets selected for gsa partly because my travel is and registration is already covered through the fellowship.

speaking of cagle, he will be my gra this upcoming year and i could not be more excited! i am sad to leave caroline, though i also know i will learn and grow A LOT with john. here’s hoping for a productive year!! in her letter congratulating me on my fellowship (for which she wrote my letter of recommendation), joan apologized for not getting matched with me as a gra for the upcoming year. she explained she had no funding, so here’s hoping our timetables will align in the near future! in the meantime, she is in sweden presenting with rajean and has assured me they plan to complete their coding of our conference project upon their return. this will yield my second publication! i also need to check in with her about whether she has any other projects going on that i can help out with. when i met with her and brought it up, she told me she would check and see if she has any additional funding. i never inquire about funding because it truly is such a privilege to publish with her and it is honestly so wonderful that she always makes it a point to look into. she has no need to do that for me, but she does, and it is so admirable.

sara’s also agreed to let me jump on one of her projects, so that would give me another publication. i’m also currently working on a scoping review with the gerontology group on social isolation in informal caregivers of older adults with dementia. it’s actually going pretty well! we just wrapped the title/abstract screen. there are four of us on the project. the initial search across three databases yielded 301 articles. once duplicates were discarded, there were 182. so, we divided this into halves. ji and i took one half, while joon and sol took the other. those halves were then halved again. i screened one of these quarters as p1 and ji screened the other as p1. then we switched and reviewed each other’s as p2. joon and sol did the same. we will meet this wednesday to resolve discrepant opinions on whether articles should pass this stage of the screen or not.from there, we will begin the full article screen.

all in all, things are going pretty well! i just finished spending a considerable amount of money i do not have on clothes to present. the irony of spending money i do not have on clothes to go to conferences the ssw or gsa or faculty will pay for me to travel to in order to present research is not lost on me. thankfully, cassey is financially keeping my head above water because, if not for her, i’d surely be drowning… speaking of drowning, cassey and i will go to ocnj this weekend and then, in a few months, puerto rico! we had actually originally scheduled our trip to pr during (incidentally) the same exact weekend of the inccip conference in england. fate, huh? all things considered, i am hopeful for a productive and successful summer!

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okmagdalena · 7 years

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been feeling anxious all the time lately. not that lately, only the past few weeks or so. especially the most recent few nights. probably because i’m about to graduate. 1 more semester left, i mean. 4 months and then i’m done with school, finally. i tell myself that it’s not a big deal, it’s just another deadline. i know its hard to earn a degree but it doesn’t feel like a big deal. but lately I’ve been feeling so anxious.

the tears have started coming more easily, too. it started the second week of december when i got my capstone paper back and sobbed in front of my professor. only a b- but i knew i could have done better. put so much work into that fucking project and i couldn’t even get it right. i couldn’t do it the way he wanted to. i don’t know whats wrong with me, i loved writing that paper. i enjoyed the topic, didn’t care it was 20 pages, felt good to do my own research. meant so much to me but turns out i’m not good at this either. i don’t know how to explain it to people, they look at me like i’m crazy to be upset about getting a b-, but it’s not about the grade. it’s about the fact that i’ve finally started to hold myself to high standards. i finally let myself believe that i was the student i always wanted to be and that my work was paying off and that it meant something to go to a good school and be stressed all the time but encouraged by the challenges that were set forth by my classes. i thought i finally figured it out after fucking up so many times. but i cried that entire day. i cried in his office, i cried in my next class, i sobbed on the benches outside ward, i cried on my bike ride home, and i bawled my eyes out for the rest of the afternoon in bed. i needed to get my emotions out. i never feel like i have anything legitimate to be sad about, but this time it felt good. i’m still upset about disappointing myself but i think this whole experience is helping me accept that even if i hold myself to high standards, i’m still gonna mess up, and that’s ok.

i said goodbye to patrick on sunday morning. i’ll see him again this saturday for a night but i still felt really sad. we hugged goodbye in bed after waking up together on the first day of 2017, and again i cried. i tried to hide it but then i wiped a tear on his cheek so he would know. i don’t know why. i’m the only one between us that ever cries. it helps me feel like my emotions exist outside of my head. sometimes it seems like everything is stuck in there, like my head is the only thing that knows the truth about how i feel towards him and towards myself and towards life. and lately, i’ve been feeling like i carry patrick’s feelings, too. but that’s not true, everyone feels. the world feels. but in different ways that are best kept the way they are. i guess that’s why patrick and i are so different. i know he feels too but he shows it in other ways. it’s beautiful. i don’t want to rely on him too much, i need to be my own crutch. but he’s been the only stable person that has kept me going the past two years. i like the way his presence in my mind drives my life. i like having direction in relation to patrick. i get sad when we say goodbye, but looking forward to seeing him next time always helps me keep my chin up.

haven’t seen my sister since august and won’t get to for at least another 6 months. while she’s getting her masters degree in belgium i’m realizing a lot about our relationship. she’s always been the one to lead the way; i follow. but during our last year at college together, before she graduated, i started feeling the differences between us take their toll. she had already changed and i was beginning to really change too. i realize now that we chase different seasons, we have different fire escapes, differences between us that make us two completely different people. but these things don’t mean that anything has to change between us. i love her more than anyone in the world. she helps me be the best me every single day and the distance between us takes a toll on me that i’m afraid to talk about with anyone. just seems dramatic because she’ll be back in a year or so. but we share energy, we’ve always picked each other up when we need it the most. she’s the only one that picked me up during the lowest moments back in my early years at college. it hurts to think about those days but it’s comforting to know she was always holding my hand, even while she was away for a semester. she’ll always do that for me and i wanna do that for her too. i just miss her and i wish more than anyone that she could hold my hand at graduation because she’s the one that really got me there and helped me see it through. i see her in myself every day, and i need to appreciate that more. because it’s what keeps us close, even through the thousands of miles that keep pushing us apart every day this year. she’s my sister and my best friend and my soul mate, all in one.

#life #school #stress #love #me #sister

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art-of-living-and-philosophies · 4 years

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Reminder: don’t forget to expect the unexpected.

It is very easy to fall into a pessimistic thinking pattern when it just so happens that one usually faces undesirable outcomes on a daily basis.

Of course, part of that has to do with reality, but another part of that has to do with ones perception of reality. An undesirable outcome for some may be viewed by others as an unproblematic or even fortunate outcome. But I digress.

The main point of this entry is to remind myself that Life is full of unexpected occurrences.

I so often and so easily become engrossed in a perception of reality that always assumes the worst in anything. People, places, events... you name it. Most troublesome of all is that I actually come to believe that this perception is incontrovertible. As my therapist often says upon hearing my views on life, if that’s the way you think, it is no wonder why you are always sad and anxious.

It takes an unusual day like today to shake my ‘core beliefs’ on life and crack the lens of pessimism that I use to view the world.

Just two days ago, I was sad as hell, angry, and worried about my student life. Early in the day, I regretfully thought to myself how I wish I had taken courses I enjoyed more this year. It was my last year after all, and I questioned why I had not simply taken courses that could make my everyday life more enjoyable. Why did I choose challenging courses from which I have barely learnt and for which I barely care?

The answer to that would be that I thought my transcript had to be adorned with “wow” courses with “wow” grades in order to optimize my chances at whatever indiscriminate ‘thing’ it is that I may attempt to do in the future that would require my transcript in a selection process.

Furthermore, I visited the office hours of one professor upon whom I had high hopes of making a good impression and whose course I really wanted to shine in.

The course is a special Capstone Seminar course offered at the prestigious Victoria University as the University of Toronto, taught by a former Canadian Ambassador.

He told me that, while my first assignment was one of the cleanest and well-written of the entire class, its content was in numerous ways subpar. It implied that in comparison to my sparkling peers, I was only dim. The grade I received on that assignment made that course become the one with my lowest grade of the entire semester. This course, I thought, would have to be the one I need to put the most time into remedying. I therefore also mentioned to the professor that I was absolutely inundated with assignments and feared that I would not be able to put maximal time and effort into producing quality work. My words did not affect him whatsoever, and he simply said some sentences to the effect of ‘just deal with it.’

So that entire meeting was a punch to the gut. I felt sad leaving his office, but the sadness turned to slight anger when I began to think, in a very competitive manner, about how I would show my professor and peers that I absolutely deserved to be in the class, and that I was on par with the best among them.

The mixture of sadness and anger then started to involve feelings of angst as I rhetorically questioned how the hell I was going to deal effectively with my numerous impending assignments and exams that were coincidentally all due at once. For the next two days I worked neurotically and non-stop on the two most pressing assignment I had. While not developing the assignments quite to the extent that I would have felt satisfied with, it still felt better to be working than idling.

Then came today. And my emotions have deeply swayed from what they were for the past two days.

Indeed, today was usual in a sense that things have gone swimmingly. In my opinion, things rarely ever do; and if they do, never so many times in a day, which is why I found today worth writing about. Allow me to elaborate:

My agenda today included - visit History of Hong Kong professor’s office hours - visit Politics of Southeast Asia professor’s office hours - visit New College Student Council

After my lecture on the History of Hong Kong I immediately headed to my professor’s office to discuss the 15-page paper that would be due in two weeks.

I had spent many days brainstorming ideas, but only to meagre avail. Given the amount of work I had ahead of me, I had given myself a deadline of one week in advance in order to have time to devote to my other assignments and exams. The pressure of time was on, and with every moment that went by where I did not get closer to creating a clear outline for my paper, the worst I felt.

I went in telling him, firstly, that I was very worried about not being able to fill 15 pages with the current topics that I had been researching. Through some discussion however, he was able to give me direction and structure for my thesis. He somewhat reassured me that there would be enough scholarly work out there to support my paper, however it would require lots of sifting through the available literature. On the topic of requiring a lot of time for this paper, I then brought up my second concern. I explained to him that i actually care about his course and that I rarely want to go above and beyond with research for courses as I do with his. Going above and beyond would require time, and I feared I wouldn’t have enough given my current assignment and exam schedule. All of my courses have consecutive due dates for final assignments and exams, leaving me with little time to devote to each. He responded with ‘There’s no problem. When the due date for this paper approaches, if you find that you need more time, send me an email and we can make arrangements.’

Alleluja. Not only had he helped me produce a structure of sorts for the paper (the biggest step in the direction of getting it done), but he had also given me the green light for an extension. Sigh of relief as I left his office.

I now had about one hour to kill before visiting my other professor’s office hours. I remembered that I intended on giving New College Student Council a visit. It turned out that their entire office was closed off due to construction, so I went to the New College Office for Student Life in hopes of getting information on how to see someone from student council. By chance, there happened to be one girl sitting at reception who was on the student council. I immediately welcomed the opportunity to talk with her. she heard my concerns out and said she would get in contact with people in order to rectify the situation. As we were in the middle of our conversation, another member of the student council walking into the office. The girl and I then stepped aside with the other council member to discuss the concern further. He mentioned something about there being a lack of graduate representatives, and I mentioned that I was wondering why no grad rep had contacted us about the photos. He then immediately asked me if I would consider taking on the position myself for the coming semester. Wow, did not expect that. I said I wasn't opposed to the idea but that I would have to know more about the responsibilities of the position. Then came in another student council member, the Vice President (also coincidentally someone with whom I had kind interactions earlier in the year), and both student council members I was with told my concerns to him and also said I might be the new Grad Rep. What an odd yet positive string of events, I thought.

Off I went to my other professor’s office hours. As I waited for the professor to arrive to the office, I attempted to prepare my speech which would essentially beg her for an extension on the paper that would be due in three weeks. It was the lowest-stakes assignments among the 4-5 others that I would be having that very week. If I could get that assignment extended merely by a week, I would be relieved of so much pressure it seemed. Finally, the professor arrived and I sat before her. I began with something close to “I am here to talk about the essay, but not about the topic per se, it’s about the timing of the essay.” I then showed her a document on my laptop that I had created for the very purpose of demonstrating to my professors my hectic schedule.

I had also shown this very document to the professor from two days ago, and it had no effect.

i showed it to her saying, ‘this is what I’m dealing with.’ And immediately--and I mean before I could even finish my sentence--she said “I have no problem whatsoever giving an extension on this assignment.” I was shocked at the rapidity and kindness of her response. I told her I felt badly about asking for things of this nature (i.e. extensions), but she was completely in favour of extending the deadline for me. She said that she saw how I performed on my midterm (she gave me a 91 or 92 per cent... ridiculous) and she knows that I am always in class -- all to say that she knows I am not asking for an extension because I am a bad student. I was very touched and relieved to hear her say that. And then she went even further with her kindness and said that I wouldn’t even have to give in the assignment until the beginning of next semester if that suited me best. THAT’S A 4-WEEK EXTENSION. UNHEARD OF. I was simply blindsided by her utterly unsolicited generosity. To close our conversation I repeated several times how thankful I was for her kindness. Unreal, unreal, unreal...

And now here I am writing this passage. What an afternoon it has been! I had felt quite low for weeks, dreading the inferno I believed awaited me in the remainder of this month, and I had felt especially low two days ago after receiving hefty criticism from my one professor. Yet now, the unexpected string of events that occurred today have completely change the way I think and feel about myself and the immediate future.

Times like these prompt me to reflect on the kind hearts that have touched my life throughout my time at the university. 王老师, Prof. Jurgensen, Mrs. Vandergberg, Miss Amanda Arulanandam, Miss Minh Do, Prof. Lim, Prof. Murali ... They have all acted as sources of light amidst darkness, gasps of air when I felt I was choking, hope when I felt only despair. Without their kind hearts, my university life would certainly have been worse off. I owe so much to those who have helped me along the way. In times like these I have to meditate on my benediction, and change my perspectives on life. The world cannot always be black grey and blue... To view the world this way even though I have seen the love from so many around me is to insult their actions. I must honour their acts of love I have received by both viewing the world with a more optimistic and loving lens and by modelling my actions on theirs.

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soworldisaleaf · 7 years

Text

I hate picking my courses this semester

i can’t tell if i need to take another EAS course besides the one i’m already enrolled in and that plus this social science requirement plus the fact that i’m trying to leave the better parts of my weekdays free to be at my jobs is ruining my life. i know im taking cultural property because it counts as a “non-language elective” for the eas major and because it’s the last seminar i’ll need for art history. it’s also taught by my advisor and she’s gonna advise my capstone this semester as well. i’m taking video art almost against my better judgment; it doesn’t fulfill any graduation requirements, but i think taking the time to engage with the theory we’ll read, to screen the artworks we’ll watch, and to practice writing about time-based works, is really going to pay off for me personally. i’m not even sure it makes that much sense to take chinese either since i’ve taken it every semester i’ve been in college and it feels redundant at this point, but i’m gonna have to use chinese language sources in my capstone and final Cultural Property papers, so it probably wouldn’t hurt to brush up. plus it’s a 4-credit class that meets for only one hour a week which is very appealing even though that one hour probably couldn’t have been scheduled at a worse time. what i’d really love to do for the remainder of my graduation requirements and required credit-hours is take intro to islamic art and then tack on that class about midwifery, which is a nighttime class, fulfills the social science bit, and doesn’t even begin meeting until late october. that would put me at 4.5 classes, which is more than the standard workload, but i think it would still be easier than taking four upper-level classes which might destroy me. the problem is that the class is full now and i tried emailing the instructor but i think she’s a local midwife and not a regular college faculty member so i doubt she’s going to respond bc it’s already been like five days and the email address assigned to her online wasn’t one with my school’s domain name. so do i take a huge leap of faith on the basis that i could probably talk someone into letting me into that class between now and late october, and just forget about the soc requirement for now, and stick with what i want to be doing and what’s working (chinese, cultural property, video art, islamic art)? or do i accept the fact that i should probably get out of islamic art (which would be a shame because the field of islamic art constitutes a huge gap in my training, and because we’ve never had a tenure-track islamic art historian before, and because the class seems low key) and replace it with a four-credit social science course to ensure that i can check that off the list? and if i do, what course? so far i’ve spoken with the professors of intro to africana studies, modern korean history, and modern japanese history, all of which fulfill the requirement, and they’ve all said they’ll accept me into their classes late if that’s what i want, but honesty a big lazy part of me just wants whatever course it is to have low coursework expectations because i feel like i have enough going on this semester just with Cultural Property, my capstone, and my two jobs alone. modern korean history is probably the most reasonable in terms of workload but it and africana studies both meet at an inconvenient time. modern japanese history meets at the best time (although i’d have to leave chinese a couple minutes early every week and the prof would hate that) but the workload seems like way too much to pile on top of everything else (which is a shame for me as an eas major bc i’ve never taken a course that dealt directly with Japanese history before). the way i see it there is one kind of crappy option left....a course called Chinese Civilization. i spent three weeks in china with the prof once and i can’t stand him lol but it checks my boxes in terms of meeting at a good time (9 am MWF, thus helping me keep Monday afternoons and all day tues and thurs open for being at work) and having a relatively light workload...although that feels like a major copout because i’ve learned most of what hes gonna cover in one context or another in my time learning mandarin and taking other eas classes. i took a look at the syllabus and i felt really guilty and academically lazy because of how redundant a lot of it is gonna be for me. but now that i’m processing it by writing it down it might actually make the most sense for me just in terms of not losing my mind over the course of the semester. and i can just audit islamic art instead of taking it for credit. ok i think this might actually work. ok. ok. whew!

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