Waiting on the world to change

I was picking cherries in the tree in the backyard today and I was listening to the radio when "Waiting on the world to change" by John Mayer came on.

It instantly brought back memories from high school. The funny thing is I can't exactly pinpoint what memories; just a general vague feeling of having this tune playing in my life when I was 16 or so.

I don't think I really appreciated the song when it first came out. In my head, it was just another generic pop song, with a generic chord progression and a really memorable chorus. And John Mayer was just another pop star who won a grammy that year.

But being stuck in the tree and having to only focus on cherry picking and the music allowed me to really listen to the lyrics and I was really impressed. It really sums up the general apathy youth feel in the world today. And I found it neither condescending toward youth nor overly critical of the status quo. Just a "feel good" song.

Here's the Youtube video if you want to listen:

Waiting on the Canadian government to change, I'm probably gonna vote.

Kaleidoughscope

Speedin'

First half of summer semester 2015 done. It went by really quick; then again, that's the reason I choose to do summer courses. That, and I tend to do much better in summer courses than the other semesters.

So I'll finally have all my pre-requisites to get to the more detailed upper-year Anthropology courses. Although not all courses in the anthro department have Ant100 as their requirement, it's pretty much mandatory without saying it is.

There were a few hiccups in the early part of this class, though. For starters, I found that the organization of the course was poorly done. For the first tutorial, there were some articles to read and some questions to ponder while reading it. But, unbeknownst to me, the TA e-mailed actual questions that one had to answer to get full tutorial marks, outside the tutorial.

You're supposed to check your e-mail every day, so it's technically my fault for missing those questions when they were in my inbox before tutorial. But this is the only course in my UofT experience that:

a) Uses e-mail instead of blackboard to post tutorial content and
b) Has outside-of-tutorial work that counts toward your tutorial mark (i.e. participation grade based on outside work)

One guy spoke up about not having read his e-mail and thus missing the questions, and he made a huuuuge deal out of it with the TA. It was his second time missing the questions (the TA kept switching between blackboard and e-mail so it was actually really confusing).

Thing is, tutorials are worth 10% of your grade. At most, this guy was arguing for half a percent (he wanted a few hours after class to do the questions). I actually saw him walk out of the tutorial class after arguing for a bit, head down the stairs to get out the building but midway through CHANGED his mind and headed back to the TA to argue with her some more.

I could have argued as well, but it seemed petty and this is the TA marking my essays so I'd rather keep her on my good side. But I still felt a bit cheated because of the way the course was organized.

You know, this is the stuff that should probably go into the course reviews. I'll probably write it again to submit to them when they come around. I guess I wrote this so that when I look back at this when I'm older, I'll know what was going in May-June 2015.

Take care.