Refraction

So lately I’ve been having second thoughts about choosing a Chemistry major. Or Honours. Whatever. In any case, it’s once again the time of year that I consider running to Arts. (Read: was completely pwned in the lab.)

Ultimately, I spend waaay too much time on French. I spent several hours on my first composition, and several more on les travaux pratiques that we had to do; in fact, that one was turning around in my head so much, I dreamt about finding a passive verb :blush: (Which wasn’t there in the end. My dreams never work out.)

And for Chem I cram two days in advance.

Don’t get me wrong. Chemistry is fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. I have wonderful professors who are geniunely interested in the subject. I have TAs who, by and large, do their best to help muddled students. Everything is going in my favour, in short.

Except me.

I procrastinate writing my Chem labs until the night before. I don’t review material daily as I should if I want to keep up and maintain an A average. I get so worked up in labs that I somehow make stupid mistakes. In short: school is becoming somewhat of a chore.

And the only thing that’s keeping me going is French.

Anyway, this insipid post inspired by one of those quick online quizzes:

You Should Get a MD (Doctor of Medicine)

You’re both compassionate and brilliant – a rare combination. You were born to be a doctor.

Now, to be very honest, I’ve never wanted to be a doctor. Ever. And I wouldn’t make a very good doctor. Even when I wanted to be a psychologist, it was always in some kind of research capacity. I didn’t like the idea of being a therapist or a counsellor. Now, the impersonal face of research? That seemed fun. (Although ultimately not as much fun as blowing things up. Seriously.)

Stupid online quizzes.

One of my co-workers has just been terminated. Why? The managers aren’t allowed to talk about it. So what are we going to do besides speculate?

1) Insubordination. A legitimate reason for termination. I can’t imagine that she’s be this stupid though; she might have been unsatisfied with the way things were, but she was always willing to help out. She was far from brainless, and a hard worker.

2) Theft. Also unlikely, because she really wasn’t that kind of person. Plus, it’d be all too easy for her to steal things unnoticed (I kid you not; she always closed.)

3) Disregarding till procedure. We’re only supposed to have x amount of money in the till at any one time. The theory goes that she had too much when the head honcho was visiting and was terminated on the spot. Before you laugh, let me point out that I was quizzed on said procedural standards today. So was my (other) co-worker. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that it has something to do with this. Then again, it is a fairly large amount of money, and since we’re not supposed to be keep any 20s in the till, I don’t see how this could have been violated…

I’m really going to miss her though 🙁 Like I said, she was a hard worker, always ready to help or give you a push in the right direction, and nearly always cheerful, even when work was hard. Since she wasn’t a manager, she didn’t feel compelled to nag, but I think she really did have the best interests of the store at heart.

And no, I don’t think she just up and walked away from the store. She was in the middle of moving. Besides, it said “terminated” on her timesheet.

I wish she were still here, because (quite sadly) this means that I am slowly becoming one of the more senior members on staff >_< Which means I'll probably be given more responsibilities. Which means more stress. x_X

I hate being sick. I really, really hate it, especially since I’m not sick often…

I also felt bad since I had to call in sick today. There’s nothing wrong with me except some hoarseness; but it makes my voice unpredictable, and seeing as how I answer phones routinely (it’s what they keep me around for) I didn’t think going in would be exactly helpful.

I have no idea where I caught this, either. I woke up Tuesday morning with a terrible headache that persists until Wednesday evening (when I am working, strangely enough.) Thursday is fine except for some coughing fits, and then I wake up this morning (Friday!) and I find I’ve completely lost my voice. Arrrrrrgh. Drinking all the honeyed tea in the world isn’t going to help now.

*goes and gets a good night’s sleep before working 11 hours the next day*

Okay, seriously, if you expect any kind of structure from my blog, you’re looking in the wrong place.

On the job front: I make pizzas now. XD How do I like it? Well, it’s a job. And in some ways it’s nicer than Subway because there is literally no prep work to do. Everything comes pre-cut. As I keep mentioning to people, though, all the drivers but two speak a Eastern European language (I don’t know if it’s likely that a Serbian will speak Russian :blush:) so I think we were invaded by the Russian mafia. They are all quite nice, though. Not friendly, maybe, but they don’t snap at me when I’ve done something stupid. I’m starting to remember why I don’t like food service much, though. :tongue:

On the school front: Did fine in Math 200. And now I’m freeeee! Freeeee!! Except I have to do course planning. I HATE course planning. I wish I could just take the courses I want and forget about the rest of them. (Like Math 221. Who knew you had to know matrix algebra to be a chemist?) I also still can’t decide if doing Honours and a minor in an unrelated subject will be too stressful.

On the sewing front: I made myself another bag, this time out of a huge tank top my cousin bestowed upon me (it had cute things on it.) It doesn’t fit, so naturally I cut it up and made it into a totebag which is just large enough for a (hardcover) book, a clunky cellphone, wallet, keys, and emergency umbrella. The only problem is with one of the straps, which I didn’t sew properly. I’ll probably handstitch that.

On the crafty front: Last week, the B&C execs held a mini beading party–four of us were there–so that we could make things for our fundraiser. Let’s just say that needle and thread is a lot better than fishing line. I ended up making a pair of earrings and an anklet. It was supposed to be a bracelet, but I ran out of time. We’ll probably have another one soon, as we don’t have nearly enough items. I also want to make a Raven plushie, and a few things from a Japanese craft book.

On the reading front: Just finished The Code Book (Simon Singh), a very interesting history of codes, ciphers, and concealment in general. I’d forgotten how much I loved this stuff when I was younger. I admit that some of the intricacies of Enigma still escape me, but … I sure admire cryptanalysts more than ever. Too bad you have to be a math genius to really get a handle on encryption these days. I’m also halfway through Le coeur est un muscle involontaire. I’m getting there! Even if the only times I read it are while I’m waiting for or on the bus. I’m also randomly flipping through Conway’s On Numbers and Games. I can’t sit down and read the thing from beginning to end. It would hurt my head.

On the language front: Closed captioning is the best thing ever invented. I can finally keep pace with the French channel now :tongue: Although I do sometimes notice that they skip a few words or sentences. I also need to learn Russian so that I can keep up with the mafia.

On the website front: I have PHP & MySQL for Dummies on hold from the library, because I will seriously get that CORE OF SOUL fansite up this summer. Hopefully in no more than two weeks. I’m working with someone else, so I’d better have it done. (I’m the techie. :cheerful:)

On the customer service front: Apparently I have also single-handedly brought customer service back from the dead. :biggrin: Now if only I could get that lady to write me a reference letter.

On the pseudo-celebrity-gossip front: A customer who ordered a pizza today looked exactly like Keanu Reeves. Okay, well, I thought so.

On the fangirl front: HBP! HBP! HBP! HBP! HBP! HBP!

I just thought it’d be fun to change the header for my birthday ^^ Which is not actually until tomorrow, but I thought I’d get something done on time for once. Raven (on the right) is evidently not too happy about this surprise party.

I have recently started watching Teen Titans… and wow. That show is addictive :tongue: I think I like it because everything is so bizarre in that world. The characters aren’t realistic but they aren’t meant to be. And the show has me chortling half the time because it’s simply amusing on a juvenile level.

Besides, it’s nice to have something to look forward to after school–er, math class.

Ergh, maybe I won’t be going back to Subway.

I talked to the manager today and he said the only shift he could offer me was “six o’clock to midnight.” 😮 MIDNIGHT?! Luckily, there is a nightbus which runs every half-hour, but if I don’t get out of there in time, I might be better off just walking home. Even though this place is only seven blocks from my house, and I can walk there in fifteen or twenty minutes—but walking by myself, at midnight, is a prospect I really don’t look forward to.

Arrgh. Oh, and it’s on the weekends, which is something I wouldn’t be able to keep up during the school year, and my major goal is to find a job not just for the summer, but throughout the year as well.

Complicating the problem is that no one else has called back yet. Well, it’s more and more applying, I guess, a bit of calling, and–if I’m desperate–I guess I could take the job. :tensed: (Despite all I say, he did seem keen on hiring someone for that position.) I would really rather not, though, for more reasons than one.

The manager/owner has a very heavy East Indian accent. Or maybe my hearing’s just bad; in either case, I have a tough time understanding him sometimes.

There are washrooms, even though this Subway is even smaller than the last one I worked at. I kid you not. What you see is what you get in that place. Washrooms = me washing them. 😥

On the other hand, my memory is fairly good; I could rattle off (with hesitation) the formulas for several sandwiches. Unfortunately, when I made a sandwich (he wanted to see how much training I’d need) I forgot it was Tuesday and that there was a special. 🙁

He kept reiterating how “nothing much had changed.” I’ll say. Same touchscreen, same formulas… only one new bread, but they got rid of my favourite. Alas!

I have my first final on Saturday, and I still haven’t started studying yet. Hm. This could be a problem. Oh well, it’s only Tuesday, so I do have a bit of time. And msot problems in organic chemistry can be solved with the use of a handy-dandy model kit. I love my model kit. :love:

On the weekend, I re-discovered a hobby I’d abandoned as soon as I entered high school: Magic: The Gathering. (I’m such a dork. :weird:) I actually still have a surprisingly good grasp of the game, although there were a couple of things my brother and I had to look up on the Internet. How the times have changed. They have a new card design and everything! I feel so… old-school. I don’t think I’ll dive too deeply into it this time, either–I simply haven’t the passion nor the money to construct decks. Besides, the only person I ever play against is my brother. For some reason I get the distinct impression that anyone who plays Magic at my age would be really enthusiastic and have decks composed of expensive and rare cards. Like my brother said, “Building your own deck on a budget is really hard.”

I just noticed that the borders of the WordPress interface have rounded corners. Cool.

Oh, by the way, I found a really cool flash game! ^^ In HK Cafe, you’re a cook at a cafe, where apparently you serve nothing but breakfasty-type items. And apparently you’re too lazy to actually cook proper noodles, so you just use the instant kind. It’s still randomly fun, though. And addictive.

Speaking of randomly fun and addictive games, if working in a restaurant’s not your thing and you’d really rather go back and read some Shakespeare before you start cramming for exams, Tara posted a link to a super-awesome (:star:) Hamlet text-adventure. This thing is lovely, and you’ll never get stuck, because if you do, there are hints! :biggrin: Granted, it might be easy to get lost (I always get lost in text adventure games) but generally, you can find the places you need to go and the things you need to pick up. Talk to people–sometimes you’ll get a funny response. (Ask Ophelia about her lisp :dorkygrin:)

Normally, I’d write this entry in French but I’ve got an in-class essay tomorrow, so I’ll do it in English to save time 😀

I just found out that the author of the novel we’re reading died a month ago. Hmm. Cheerful thought. >_>;;

I also had my last Physics lab EVER today! SCORE! :star: And only five more Physics lectures and a final to go! Woo-hoo! You know, actually, Physics isn’t that bad qualititatively, but once you dump all those equations in there it starts to make no sense.

And I keep using the right-hand rule with my left hand. Do you still wonder why I do poorly?

I have a headache. I think it was induced by my math midterm this morning. GAR.

The solutions are online, of course. There’s nothing quite as discouraging as discovering that you’ve done the very first question wrong. Oh well. I don’t know how they’re marking, but hopefully I get enough part marks to still do well. I’m really quite annoyed at the fact that my prof decided not to simplify in a lot of questions where simplification could occur–it means, of course, that I wasted my time simplifying when I could have… done something else. Like puzzle out the answers to the rest of the midterm.

I got my Physics midterm back, too. Annoyingly, I “lost” two marks on a question which was marked right. I also had the same answer as all my friends (who got the marks.) So, I have to make an appointment to talk to the professor about my midterm next week… She’s letting us earn 5 extra marks by writing out how and where we messed up on the midterm and how we can improve next time. Like I said, she wants us to do well.

As for me… time to start hitting the books. Seriously. I’m not doing as well as I’d like in most of my classes. I even forgot to hand in my French composition today. :tensed: ARRRGH. I left it with the woman who shares my prof’s office. I hope she gets it. If not, I suppose I’ll have to drop it off next week, too. -_-;;;;

French and Chem midterms after the break. Hopefully those will go better than math and physics.

Just over halfway through the school week from hell :notsure: I don’t think I’ve been this stressed out since some stressful time in IB, and that really says a lot… (Notably that I didn’t think first semester was too bad.)

Monday: realization that this is the week from hell. Panicking about online pre-lab exercise to be completed before 8:00am Tuesday.

Tuesday: Physics lab. Actually, this one wasn’t all that bad, and I actually prefer the lab to the tutorial this term. It was pretty straightforward. Then, French discussion class, during which I kept my mouth shut for the whole hour. (We had a presentation on the decline of Francophones in Canada. “Should all government employees speak French?” Not if it means that an otherwise qualified person is denied a position which is filled by a less-than-compotent person. And let’s be honest here, the only people I have heard speak French here outside of a classroom are tourists and a woman who takes the bus with me in the morning–no, we don’t talk to each other.)

Wednesday: Physics midterm. That was the most difficult physics midterm I’ve ever written. Our prof told us that Gauss’s Law would be a key aspect of the midterm. Naturally, there isn’t a single question about Gauss’s Law on the midterm. I thinks she really wants us to do well–she said as much before the midterm–but feeding us the wrong information is not really the way to do it. I came very close to pulling an all-nighter; I went to bed at 2am. (When you wake up at 6am, that’s cutting it close.) Not only did I have to prep a Chem lab for today, I also had to write the report from two weeks ago. Oops. And I got 6/10 on my quiz.

Thursday: Chem lab. The lab was a partner lab, which only made it more annoying, as I demand exactitude in my Chem labs; my partner, on the other hand, didn’t seem too concerned about contaminating a standard solution by sticking a pipet straight into the volumetric flask. Our equipment was faulty, we broke a graduated cylinder, I printed 40 pages of useless data, we overshot our standard solution AND the pH of the buffer, and we killed out patient by inducing alkalosis instead of curing his acidosis. (pH of blood is about ~7.35 – 7.45, right? We started out with 7.07 and shot to 7.56. Unluckily for us, this was 0.01 outside the acceptable range [7.35-7.55], so we didn’t get the bonus mark either.)

Friday: Math midterm. Can you say SCREWED?! French composition due today about the novel we’re reading. Well, I finished it, but I can’t really say I understand the finer points. And it’s really quite boring! (As one Google search revealed, one review of this book basically said: “This novel can be summed up very succinctly. I woke up, I went to work, I went to the bar, I saw Rose, I went to sleep. Repeat.”)

Oh well, and now I’m waiting for those practice midterms to finish printing. 😥