Refraction

I went for my eye exam yeserday and was once again told that I had made the wrong decision by choosing not to wear contacts. As a result, instead of staying relatively constant, my presciption has doubled in 9 years. (I have a feeling we’re looking at something like… from -3.75 to -7.50. He always gives me my prescription in terms of hundreds, so I’m not sure if there’s some kind of converstion going on there.) Yeah, so I’m basically blind without my glasses, and I guess it’s my own stubbornness that’s at fault.

He didn’t try to give me a hard sell on contacts, this time, although he did hint that I needn’t wear contacts all the time and that they now have daily disposable contacts which I could wear when I chose and then go back to my glasses if I so desired.

When I was trying on new frames (because that’s always fun, whee! :tongue:) he offered me a pair of lenses so that I could actually see what I’d look like with the frames. I said, “Sure, why not?”

And let me tell you, it was so ODD to take glasses off and still be able to see. It didn’t feel right. I haven’t been able to see at a distance for a very, very, long time (and since my prescription was already moderately high when I got glasses, maybe I never had 20/20 vision) and it reminded me of the first time I got glasses–“WAAAA!!!!! I CAN SEEEEE!”

That being said, putting them in and taking them out is hard >_O They must have irritated my eyes or something, since I was walking around with bloodshot eyes for about 2 hours afterwards.

You know how those lemming surveys that get propogated around blogs (and email and xangas and LJs) usually include a question asking “If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?” I usually don’t write much for those questions because there’re too many things about myself that I find unsatisfactory. Indecision comes into play and I don’t know what to pick!

Well, now I do. I’d get rid of my cursed absentmindedness which causes me to lose books, keys, lunchbags, umbrellas, and other such vital items. In fact, by now, I’ve probably forgotten that I’ve lost some of these things. Hrm. I have a good memory for absolutely random things–I can tell you that when I got my first pair of glasses, the frames were tinged with pink and fuschia and I was wearing a pink sweater that day (the opticican commented on it); I can tell you that for every lepton, there is both a corresponding neutrino and anti-neutrino (muon, tau, and electron, if I’m not mistaken); I can even tell you that the man who drove the last spike in the CPR was Donald A. Smith.

Probably it has something to do with my always being in a rush, but that’s not really a habit that’s going to go away anytime soon.

Don’t you love it when stuff works in your favour?

I got into the Biology class I wanted!! :star::star::star::star::star::star: And I can drop the class I’m not really all that keen on and… yeah! :biggrin:

Ah, maybe that was a bit too enthusiastic.

Anyway. I will still have to talk to Science Advising, I think. I’m not sure that I will actually be permitted to pursue a Biochem minor if I’m majoring in Chem (something about the fields being too closely related). Ah, perhaps a French minor is in order? English? Philosophy? :tongue: (I am not doing a History minor, don’t even START.) Hum, I’d still like to take a Biochem course eventually, though. Hey, maybe I WON’T have to take a course in the summer! *_*

The first day back. Usually when I go back to a place after a long break, it feels really foreign. That’s how it felt. Despite all these familiar faces, I still felt jaded. I didn’t care. I ran into a friend after Bio, and we chatted for a while about how we felt that we’d never quite feel at home at the universtiy–I suppose it’s just too large for that kind of feeling. Maybe things will change. In all likelihood, it’s just a first-year thing.

*happy mood carrying over from actually getting into BIOL 121* :cheerful:

Exams are here done with. (This is what happens when you leave a draft lying around for way too long.)

I wrote my English exam first; and well, it could have been worse. Ah well, that’s done with, and I won’t be taking English for another couple of months at least. >_O Pity, I would have liked to take the complement to this course, or maybe that rhetoric course…

Physics next. Let me just say that negative signs are the devil (:devil:) and that … yeah. I’m pinning my hopes on part marks. PART MARKS!

Chem on Saturday. It didn’t seem that bad, but you know, Physics didn’t seem that bad when I was studying… :tensed:

Bio on Friday. I think it went okay. That was the only exam that I left early. In all honesty, it was a fairly straightforward exam. As usual, my only complaints are to do with plants. The cell questions were easy, and the animal ones weren’t that bad. The ecology questions were almost common sense…

Finally, Math last. Remind me never to take the bus to an exam again. I was scared I was going to be late, since the bus was ten minutes late -_-; As for the exam itself… well, it certainly could have been worse. As I handed it in, my prof asked me how I found it, and I kind of shrugged. There were some seriously MESSED UP questions on that exam. Keep reading for subject related quizzes XD

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You know, sometimes I really worry that university has turned me into some kind of freak.

1) I actually chatted to my math TA about polar curves today.
2) I looked up said mathematical curves on Wikipedia.
3) All those hours spent in Math HL came flooding back.
4) I looked at limaA~��ons, conchoids, and spirals.
5) I happened across a mathematical dragon curve.
6) I decided it was pretty and started wondering if I could make a layout from it.
7) I then discovered that mathematicians had a mice problem.
8) I wondered when I started harbouring a distaste for mathematics.
9) I remembered that I had wanted to become a mathematician when I was 7.

On second thought, I must have been a freak all along.

I don’t have a Physics lab every week, although my schedule indicates that.

Every other week I have a tutorial instead, where we solve problems in groups. The tutorial is run by two TAs (teaching assistants.) One of them has a British accent and er… I don’t talk to him much. He’s rather intimidating. The other does not have a British accent. I like him better. He’s not as cold and actually engages us in conversation about stuff not related to Physics. :dorkygrin:

Without fail, the latter TA will find something interesting in or near my pencil box every two weeks.

Week #1: A set of gel pens marketed as “Smellies.” Despite the name, they actually have a pleasant odor when you write with them. When you sniff them directly, as my TA did, they smell like “ink. Now I understand. Gullible first-years buy these and spend class sniffing them, reducing their performance in Physics.”

Week #2: My English text. “You know, I got through English by never reading the book. I’d listen to what others had to say about a character, and then I’d argue the exact opposite. Finally, the teacher asked me what I thought of so-and-so, and I replied, ‘Well, I thought he didn’t really belong.’ Then he said, ‘That’s not even a character in the novel.’ ‘See?’ I said. ‘He didn’t belong!'”

Week #3: My gel pens, again. “Don’t you find that they run out really quickly? I went through a pen in two classes. I bought a set of gel pens once… accidentally. Yeah, imagine doing quantum physics in sparkly gel pen.”

Week #4: Two things this week, actually. First, my clicker. He was incredulous that these things were actually used in Physics classes. “… Physics isn’t multiple choice, pick the best answer, you know. There are many different approaches to a problem but only one right answer.” It turned out that a buddy of his had to try to write scripts to accomodate the possibility of two correct answers. *shudder* Secondly, I was cramming for a Chemistry midterm last week, and I’d scribbled all the equations I needed to know on a Post-it note. “This is chemistry? These are phyiscs equations!” “Oh, that’s because chemistry is physics and it’s all really really mixed up…” I explained, rather unhelpfully. “See, everything comes from physics. Except biology. That’s an observational science… if physicists had stumbled upon Galapagos, they would have chucked the finches into a closed system and figured out the collision rate.”

Argh, I think I’m really starting to get annoyed with these braces.

They only hurt my teeth when some kind of outside pressure is being applied to them, which makes chewing nearly impossible. Brushing my teeth feels weird, too, since I’m scared I’m going to apply enough force to brush the stupid things off. I guess it’s just a matter of adjusting, which is going to take at least another couple of days. I’ve hardly been eating at all lately, since the pain is so bad and since it takes so long to eat anything that’s not liquid. Plus, the hassle of brushing teeth after eating anything (partly because I’ve been told to, and partly because I’m paranoid) makes eating things a lot less attractive. All things considered, braces are a sure-fire way to go on a diet. :tensed: Cut down on sugar and starch, they say. Since I can’t chew right now, I might as well cut out vegetables, fruit, and meat. That leaves… milk, juice, and water. Oh, and tofu.

Worst of all is, I won’t even have a single piece of Hallowe’en candy 😥

Headed downtown (again) to check out the library’s book sale.

Notes for next time: steal a box or bring a bigger bag.

The first book I seized upon was Elementary Cantonese. Okay, so when I took it home I realized it was a bit too elementary. But they have the Chinese characters (some of which are specific to Cantonese), I’m quite glad I bought it.

Continuing to prowl through the stacks, I then snatched a copy of Teach Yourself German as well as The Penguin Russian Course. I’ll probably never read them, but that’s beyond the point. There was a Russian-English dictionary and a Greek-English dictionary as well, but the former was really ratty and the latter… well, as I can’t even read Greek I thought it’d be best to leave it alone.

I hopped over to the multilingual pile in hopes of finding a good French novel or some Asian comics. I picked up random French books, but sadly, none of them appealed to me (mais il y avait un roman intitulA~(c) Le petit prince cannibale… malheureusement, la personnage principale n’A~(c)tait pas le petit prince de Saint-Exupery mais un garA~��on autiste. Je ne l’ai achetA~(c) pas car je pensais que ce roman serait un peu difficile A~ lire…) I did happen upon an ancient issue of Nakayoshi, which I bought because it had the Sailormoon all-character poster in it (I cannot tell you how long I have been trying to find one of those at the library’s book sale.)

Finally, I decided to have a go at the paperback novels. I found a copy of Fugitive Pieces: it was the same edition that we’d used for our IB English class and well….. for 25 cents it was a very, very good deal. I bet someone from our class decided to donate it to the book sale, since it wasn’t even part of the library’s collection. I also happened across a copy of July’s People (which had been part of the library’s collection). To cap off the round of random books from IB English I saw, I caught a glimpse of Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits (I borrowed it for my presentation on magic realism) and a National Geographic magazine with a picture of a bog person.

I saw a copy of Translated Accounts by James Kelman sitting around and after reading the synopsis (military state in the future, seemingly hastily translated first-hand accounts), I had to buy it. Playing with language and a dystopic future? Geez, that sounds kind of familiar. You’d think I’d be sick of it, wouldn’t you?

Had to put down a few things that I decided I could do without, though: a Pinter play and Hayakawa’s Language in Thought and Action. If I see those again, I’m definitely going to get them. You see, the girl at the checkout decided that the French textbook I wanted counted as a multilingual book, so I saved a dollar or so. :cheerful:

Wah, and keep reading for signs of lemming behaviour.

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More school stuff! Yay! :dorkygrin:

Yesterday, we got back our math midterms. :tensed: When our instructor went over it, you could tell she was really disappointed with how her class had performed… “And this is a high-school level question. You don’t even need to know any calculus to do it! But some people still didn’t get it.” Sixty-seven people wrote the exam. Forty-four failed. Twenty-three passed. The average mark was 40%. Yikes. Despite all that, however, she’s not scaling the marks. I was quite satisfied with my own performance, since I was given close to full marks for a question which I answered incorrectly.

This morning, Bio midterms were waiting for us. “I think for some of you, this–writing a biology midterm–was a new experience.” Well, thank you for stating the obvious. This remark made me extremely nervous about my mark, so I got my friend to look at it in Chem. I did much better than I thought :tongue: Then again, I had knowledge from my grade ten Science class to back me up, so… how could I ever doubt Dr. G?

Right after Chem, I had to write a Physics midterm. I was panicking about this last night–the questions from the textbook wre extremely difficult and I couldn’t get through half of them. I planned to study in the morning/on the bus/during my other classes. Needless to say, this never happened. Luckily for me, the questions on the midterm were not as difficult as those in the textbook 😯

Finally, I also got my English midterm back today. I did better than I expected but not as well as I could have done (does that even make any sense?) I suppose I’m not really satisfied with my mark, especially considering the fact that I really feel my first response was much stronger than my second and yet I scored higher on the second, which was, for lack of a better term, “rambly.” And for heaven’s sake, who gives out marks in increments of 0.25?! Oh well. Time to actually read Paradise Lost.

Look, it’s an in-your-face pun! XD

Today just seemed like an endless string of failures.

So I walk out the door this morning and the bus is 15 minutes late. Oh, and it’s raining.

I mean, I start with Bio… which only reminded me of the midterm, which I don’t feel I did particularly well on. Besides, I’d completely forgotten everything I ever learned about glycolysis and sat there in the class, yawning my face off. That was bad. Oh, did I mention it was raining and that there are HUGE puddles around the Ag Sci building? No?

Okay, off to Chem, which was pretty bleh, but in any case, I remembered that I probably only marginally passed the last pre-reading quiz.

In Physics, the review session never quite materialized, and our prof just gave up and said, “Enjoy your Thanksgiving.” Thank you, I think I will. Or I’ll try, since I have a midterm next Wednesday….

Math. AHHHHHH MATH. 😡 Of course, I had my midterm today. My ultra-horrible midterm. Five questions doesn’t sound that hard, right…? In theory, no. In practice? YES. I barely had enough time to finish; mostly this was due to some stupidity on my part (unable to get over a mental block of not differentiating anything with two variables), but…. ARRRRGHHHHHHHHHH. It was very, very frustrating.

And then I finished off with English, and I am now absolutely convinced that I failed the quiz. Absolutely convinced. :depressed:

After school, I headed downtown to try and find Utada’s album. I went through three stores. Finally, I discovered that what is probably the largest CD store in the city was sold out. “Oh, everyone’s asking about Utada!” I can’t believe this. The album came out on Tuesday and it’s already sold out? Granted, they only had 90 copies, but…. still…. she can’t be that popular here, can she? “I had never heard of her before and then on Tuesday I rang up eight of them in a row.” Arrrgh. Obviously I hadn’t counted on what I assume is the relatively high concentration of Japanese people downtown. The good news is, he said I should check back Tuesday, as that’s when their next shipment comes in; the bad news is, I have my Physics midterm on Wednesday. Maybe I’ll go next Thursday.

Then, when I tried to take public transit home… I walked down to the station and I saw a huge line of people at the escalator. I assumed this meant the escalator was broken and people were just walking down really slowly. I hate broken escalators, so I headed back outside to catch a bus. My bus never came. It’s supposed to be on “frequent service”–that is, every ten minutes or less. In fact, at that time of day, it should have been coming every five minutes or so. I waited twenty minutes, and saw several buses that should have been less frequent than mine drive by. Once, I thought I saw my bus, but when it reached the stop the sign had changed. That was weird. I decided instead to head back down to the station and head down that escalator. It turned out that the escalator was working just fine; the reason no one was on it was because there was a bomb threat at some station down the line. I suppose this had the effect of screwing up my bus’ route. I walked a couple of blocks to another stop where I could take one of three buses. ARGGGGGHHHHHHHH.

:devil: