Inadvertent life lessons

      My 10th grade Biology teacher, Mr. Ofsiani (more commonly called Mr. O), was one of those neat teachers that stick out in your memory. His entire classroom was covered in interesting things, from comics clipped from newspapers and hung on the walls to a skeleton hanging from the ceiling to the live iguana in the back of the room. He loved his subject and got excited about doing hands-on experiments instead of just going through the textbook and running tests. He was short, bearded, and completely bald, but he was also vibrantly engaged with life.

     The first quarter of his class was devoted to plant identification. Looking back, I'm not sure how he got this past the school board, but we essentially spent the first two and a half months of school filing into the classroom, taking roll, and then filing out again and going for walks in the woods next to the school. We did, technically, learn plant identification and I believe there was even a test at the end that gave you leaf shapes or bark pictures and had you give the name of the plant, but I learned more than just plants.

Classes and sketches

     Found a little specialization thing on Coursera, where I've done several French-language courses just for the fun of it, on cybersecurity. I knew next to nothing about it, and it seems to keep popping up in conversation, so I figured I'd learn a bit in all my spare time. Although it does require a fair bit of note-taking, there's also some time during the lectures where one's hands are unoccupied, a dangerous thing. Found a sketch pad and a pencil just hanging out near my desk and...

Work AND school AND hobbies?

     I was hoping this last class wouldn't be too time-consuming, but it still takes its toll. Despite that, however, I've found snippets of time here and there to keep working on sewing, since my gentleman and I are heading out to a convention the weekend after the class ends. It's taken a fair bit of time, but I finally finished his outfit, and we're heading up to an Amish fabric store tomorrow to get fabric for mine (no, it won't be purple):

Changes?

    The last semester of my Master's degree starts today, which means in 10 weeks - hopefully - I will be done with school. A couple people have asked if this means I'll be getting back to updating here and (more importantly) doing sketches again. Short answer: I don't know. I'm not sure where life will go from here, but I hope to have a slightly less hectic schedule that would allow me to start sketching again.

Good news/ bad news

     One of my friends wrote me an entire three-page letter like this once. It's since become a pattern in my brain, because it lets me work through what's going on in my life, it doesn't matter if there are lots of random tangents, and whichever one you end up with more of, usually gives you an idea of how well things are going.

Good news: I got a job!

Bad news: It's part-time.

Good news: It fits in well with my school schedule!

Bad news: It doesn't actually pay all my bills.

Priorities

     I am often amazed at what other people think is important. It doesn't bother me that our views (obviously) conflict rather frequently- some people pay attention to news, fashion, computer gadgets, celebrities, etc, and as long as they are happy with their lives and do their best to be decent people, then whatever. But now and then, something smacks me upside the head at how drastically different people's priorities can be.

     When I was in high school, the parking lot was pretty much chock full of crappy, old, used cars. You knew who the rich people were because they would have a shiny new car, with a good paint job, new tires, maybe even the sticker still in the window if they were real vain show-offs. For the most part, though, kids got either what they could afford, or that old junker car that the parents didn't want anymore, so it got passed down to the new driver while the adults got a shiny new toy. Rust, dented bumpers, and the occasional car that qualified as a classic, though in need of repair, were common. Sometimes you even got the pleasure of learning how to team up and push-start a car, or help push a friend's jalopy around to the nearest gas station if the fuel meter didn't work right.

My first car was this, but in an institution-puke-green color.

Job search, part 1

Recent checklist: 

     -Graduation? Done

     -Move? Done

     -Help out a friend (which I'd been promising for years)? Done

     -Settled into the new place? Done

     -Job? ....... well........

     There's something horribly depression about looking for a job, and it's not just that the current economy is pretty nasty. It seems like, no matter how many times you have to do it, and regardless of what new level of education/ experience/ skill set you have, job hunting is mentally and emotionally wearing. When I was younger, I figured that it was just due to lack of skills and experience, and it would get easier as I got older. Then before I went to college, I figured it was a lack of that pretty little paper saying you're horribly in debt (no, I'm not cynical at all), because the most random jobs were looking for it. Want to be an insurance agent? Need a diploma. Want to be a delivery person? Need a diploma. Want to wash elephant feet after parades? Need a diploma. Really? Wow.

Counting down: 4 days

     This past week has been a frenzy of packing, taking things to the thrift store, taking things to the dump, saying goodbye to people, and preparing for the move that will happen this Friday. My mind isn't doing much better than last Monday, which is not the greatest, because I have my last final exam today at 4pm. I think I know what is needed for it, but the way my brain is(n't) working lately, I'll be lucky to find the right language to work in when I get there.

Though my confusion is from mental exhaustion, not pot.

Counting down: 11 days

This is me today:

Because this was me all week/ weekend:

Moving prep

     Let the countdown begin! I just realized today that there are only 19 days left until I leave this place for good and start working again, hopefully with something relevant to my degrees. This past weekend was taken up with putting a trailer hitch on my car, and rewiring the back end to add a plug for trailer lights. It took a little bit longer than expected, but I had a huge amount of fun with my (awesome) aunt, uncle, and cousin. The trailer itself didn't show up, so I get to go back up there next weekend and spent more time with them, putting it together. I've been selling stuff on ebay and craigslist, and pretty much everything superfluous to daily life is either sold, boxed up, or waiting to be donated, which makes the place rather bare. No worries though, because I have an 8-page final paper (in Russian!) due in less than two weeks, and I expect that to take up most of my time and attention.

     I won't lie, it's all a little overwhelming, and both my attention span and sleeping patterns have taken a hit because of everything going on. I've got an impressive number of lists going, and if something isn't on my calendar, well, it basically doesn't get done. Not because I don't care about it, but just because I only remember about 6 hours too late to do anything about it. As someone who is usually quite orderly, this is more than a bit disturbing, but I'm trying not to let it get me down. Remember those positive websites I linked back here? They're getting heavily used, trust me.

Russian Fairy Tale

     So this week in the fairy tales class, our assignment is to write a Russian fairy tale of our own. Unfortunately, we were given a pretty strict set of guidelines to follow, and told we'd be marked down from either missing or adding components to it, so there's only so much originality that could be had. Regardless, here's my Russian fairy tale. Pardon the simplicity, and enjoy!

Ivan the Bold

            In a certain time and a certain kingdom, there lived a poor farmer who had three sons. When the time came for the farmer to die, he called together his three sons. To the oldest son, he gave his house. To the middle son, he gave his farmlands. But when his youngest son, Ivan the Bold, stepped forward, the farmer had nothing left to give. “You must go out into the world, my son, and make your own fortune,” he said, then turned his face to the wall and died.

            The older brothers were sorry to see Ivan go, because he was a very hard worker, but Ivan simply said, “Farewell, brothers. I will go out into the world to seek my fortune, and when I have found it, I will return home!” Without further ado, Ivan the Bold walked out into the forest.

Recognition

     The end of February was, in a word, awful. It was one of those times when all the little things go wrong, so there's no one thing to be mad at. Instead you're plagued with incidents like stubbing your toes, dropping papers, spilling food on yourself, inconvenient parking spaces, hitting every single red light possible, not sleeping well, being chronically late despite starting out early, all that sort of thing.

Yeah, one of THOSE times...

     The crowning point, for me, was the homework for my Russian Idioms class. On a rotating schedule, each student has to research that day's topic and give a powerpoint presentation on it. Usually, this consists of about half an hour of translating the appropriate section of the textbook, a bit of research online, and a quick construction of 5-6 slides that highlight the information and finish with a question or two. For some reason, I decided to check out my section earlier than usual, and was utterly baffled to realize that it consisted of a broad and extremely generalized overview of the European and Russian political, social, and philosophical arenas in the early 20th century, all of which culminated in three very expansive idioms. I emailed the prof, asking if he really wanted this entire overview, and he eventually replied with, "Yes, just give background for the idioms, you'll be fine."

Good days and bad days

Saturday:

• Did laundry (down 2 flights of stairs),
• Washed sheets (also 2 flights of stairs),
• Hand-washed my winter coat,
• Did the dishes,
• Cleaned out the fridge,
• Cleaned out the cabinets,
• Culled old clothes that no longer fit from the closet,
• Put stuff up on eBay,
• Wrote up a study guide for Russian Fairy Tales midterm,
• Watched Russian cartoons to expand vocab and listening comprehension,
• Read a (short) French book,

Fickle popularity

     When I was in ninth grade, I was part of an after-school program called Dow Explorers (hosted, obviously, by the local Dow Chemicals plant). Once a month or so, a group of us would get together and do simple experiments or projects that tied in to math and science, presumably as a way to see if we were interested in working for said company. I didn't really pay much attention to that side of it, because what we got to do was absolutely fascinating to someone with a sense of exploration. One month we had to bring in water samples from our homes or nearby lakes, and we did various tests to see how much of what additives were in them. Another time we got to learn how the company made Styrofoam and tour the production facility. And one time, we got to make boats...

     One of the nearby towns had a yearly regatta-type thing, being situated on a rather large and fairly calm river. A month or two before it, the people in charge of our program asked us to bring a willing parent/ guardian in, and we split up into teams (kids vs elders) in order to design and build a raft- using only x amount of styrofoam and other materials- that we would then test by participating in the regatta. Naturally, none of us were expected to actually win it, it was more just a "let's give 'em something to do, while showing how invested we are in the community" type thing.

FTP 40 - Russian idiom

     In light of the fact that I have an essay due today in my Russian Idioms class, and it is currently the night before and it's not finished, here is a story I have shamelessly lifted from Wikipedia about a Russian idiom, and the story behind it.

The Tale of Cross-Eyed Lefty and the Steel Flea

     Tsar Alexander I of Russia, while visiting England with his servant the Cossack Platov, is shown a variety of modern inventions. Platov keeps insisting that things in Russia are much better until they are shown a small mechanical flea. After his ascension the next tsar, Nicolas I, orders Platov (after he tries to hide the flea) to find someone to outperform the English who had created the clockwork steel flea, which is as small as a crumb, and the key to wind it up can only be seen through a microscope. Platov travels to Tula- a center for the armaments industry- to find someone to better the English invention. Three gunsmiths agree to do the work and barricade themselves in a workshop. Villagers try to get them to come out in various ways (for example by yelling "fire"), but no one can get them to come out. When Platov arrives to check on their progress, he has some Cossacks try to open the workshop. They succeed in getting the roof to come off, but the crowd is disgusted when the trapped smell of body odor and metal work comes out of the workshop. The gunsmiths hand Platov the same flea he gave them and he curses them, believing that they have done absolutely nothing. He ends up dragging Lefty with him in order to have someone to answer for the failure.

Thank you, brain

     I was putzing around the house this week, getting chores done, cleaning up, and generally minding my own business, when this happened:

For some reason, even though I do my best to keep a general schedule in mind to ensure I don't miss preparations for major events, my brain has a tendency to suddenly realize the immanency of random things. It doesn't even have to be something big- I'll occasionally have a moment where my brain forgets what day it is, and I'll be dead convinced that I'm late for work or class or something... only to realize that no, that's tomorrow, calm down and keep doing whatever it was I was doing.

FTP 36 - Ego vs learning

     Earlier this week, I finally finished my Russian paper. I was pretty proud of the fact hat I managed to get 5 pages of coherent Russian written, considering I've only been studying it for three years. Despite that sense of accomplishment, though, I knew that I should probably have a native speaker (or at least someone with more experience in the language) take a look at it before I turned it in. It's possible to make stupid mistakes in English when writing that much, and Word doesn't really have a good spellcheck for Russian, and zero grammar check.

     Feeling somewhat confident, I printed my paper out and took it in to dance class for Rita to look over. After class, she took out her glasses, sat down, and immediately said, "Hmmm, this first sentence isn't really how a Russian speaker would say it." Wow, ouch. Can't even get a first sentence right, and it didn't get any better after that. Over the course of the next hour and a half, during which we got thrown out so the teacher could shut the studio down, she proceeded to rip my poor little paper to shreds, most based on "that's not how a Russian speaker would say it."

FTP 35 - Word problems

     In an effort to retain some shreds of coherency, I'm taking today off of work and the one class that's right in the middle of the day. Instead of the usual chaos of this week, I instead finished a couple minor projects for French class, got caught up on homework for Russian, proofread the paper that's due tomorrow in lit/ culture class, cleaned the house, had a real meal, rescheduled everything for the next two weeks to make a little more sense, and generally got my affairs in order. Life is still chaotic, but at least it's controlled chaos at this point.

     In the midst of everything, however, life still goes on. Remember way back when, struggling with word problems in middle or high school? The most common question asked was "When will we ever use this in real life??" A little while ago, I got this from a friend:

So thank you, grade school math teachers. Believe it or not, you are appreciated, even if it's just by knitters and crocheters who don't want to throw away useful bits of yarn. Cheers!

The beginning of the end

     What? No, not the Mayan end of days thing. I'm still waiting patiently for my opportunity to be able to say I told you so on that one. The end I'm talking about is the semester. It's that time where that nice comfy schedule you've gotten used to blows up in your face. Teachers start asking for papers and projects, expecting you to remember stuff they told you 15 long weeks ago, and warning you about this massively weighted, three-hour test that's looming ahead in your schedule. Nights get longr, days get more hectic, you strt forgetting whats next in your dayy and your ealize that you're running on nothing but caffeinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

   
     Just kidding. I haven't yet pulled an all-nighter, and I refuse to. Procrastinator I may be, but I procrastinate to my 11th hour- that is, the last minute that I can do something and still get a good night's sleep afterwards. That said, this is a short post, because I've been working on memorizing lines for the musical this weekend, studying for a test on Tuesday, and trying desperately to keep some amount of fluency going in three different languages. Here's hoping the beginning of the end of the year is a good one for you. Only 27 days to go til 2013, and heavens knows I'm ready for 2012 to be over already. Cheers!

Crunch time

     Going back to reality after time off is always difficult, and this coming week is proving to be no different than usual. On the positive side, there are only three weeks left of classes before the end of the semester, so crunch time won't be too bad. On the well, not-so-positive side, these three weeks are going to be somewhat difficult.

     For starters, the French pronunciation through song class that I'm auditing/ helping out in is gearing up for it's version of a final, which is a week of 5-hour evening rehearsals and then two nights of performances. Unfortunately, the rehearsals start at the same time my Russian class does, so I either need to beg out of the first two hours (thank goodness I just have a bit part), or go to the earlier Russian classes... which would then cut into the time I am scheduled to work. So already, right off the bat, scheduling chaos.