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.

Another semester starting again

Wow, that year flew by fast. I had my last final exam at the end of April and while I still don't know the mark, I am satisfied with what I wrote.

So now I'm taking summer ANT100Y. Again. I took Intro to Anthro my very first year, but ultimately dropped it after a whopping 8+ page essay was due. Yeah, I didn't get ahead on that.

Funnily, I have the same prof I did for the first quarter of the year (there were four profs, two for the summer session) and he's actually a really good prof. A primatologist with experience in the jungle and with many funny tales to tell. And sad ones.

Man, he got pessimistic over two years. I mean yeah, humans are kinda destroying the planet and ultimately ourselves, but we can still change things around, right? Probably not. This time around, he mentioned the rampant antibiotic use as a very real problem. Essentially, super-bacteria are adapting much faster than we can keep up. So that's a bummer.

So I actually have all my course notes from that year, so that's a plus. And when I took the test, I got an A, so that's also great. Looking forward to getting this big fat first year credit out of the way.

Other than that, life continues as normal.

It's only the real world

It's 2 am after a Saturday night spend celebrating my buddy E's birthday. I am tired, exhausted, ever-so-slightly-drunk and pretty happy.

I spent most of the day inside, and did some yard work later in the afternoon out front and eventually found my way to E's house at around 9. Guests had spent their afternoon playing ultimate frisbee; a fact that I was aware of and yet I chose not to go play because I was embarrassed about being the stockiest guy there. I can't run for shit right now I'm so out of shape.

Unfortunately, I missed out on the BBQ but I got to drink for a couple hours before we headed downtown to a bar in Kensington call Supermarket. There were quite a few people and the dance floor was packed, but that didn't stop me from dancing. You know, I don't really care how I look when I dance. I mean, I make a bit of an effort to look cool but ultimately it doesn't matter. White boiz are made fun of for being terrible at dancing (the stereotype is probably true) but I still think attempting to dance is better than standing awkwardly on the dance floor hoping a lady will be interested in something other than your non-existent dance moves.

So I danced, and it was nice. And eventually we sat at the table till the night wrapped up and Ev was nice enough to me and E a ride home, which rocked because taking the TTC home at 2 am is a pain in the ass.

So I finally spent a Saturday night somewhere exciting instead of at home on my computer again, like every other night for weeks and weeks now. It's not healthy to stay isolated and never meet anyone new like I've been doing for a while now. I mean, I didn't really get to know anyone, but at least there was some chatter. I guess alcohol helps. I had some apple cider and some bourbon. Probably gross, but oh well.

Open your eyes
Like I opened mine
It's only the real world.

I need to go to bed it's late.

B+

Broken barriers bounded by the bomb beat
Buildings are broken, basically I'm bombarding
Casually create catastrophes, casualties
Canceling cats got their canopies collapsing
Detonate a dime of dank daily doing dough
Demonstrations done dada on the down low.

So that's where I'm at... uh... I was supposed to learn a new letter each day but I got really lazy. Okay. I will learn E and F tomorrow.

Life is going alright! Finals in two weeks, other than that I'm freeeee.

Alphabet project

Since I lack content but I want to keep writing I thought up of an idea of something I can do while I was listening to Daniel Radcliffe rap Alphabet Aerobics.

So the idea is I want to be able to do what Radcliffe did there in a month.

In a month's time, I want to be able to recite Alphabet Aerobics from A to Z. So to do this, every day (or almost every day, depending), I will learn a new letter in the song. And every day, I will repeat all the previous days until I have them memorized.

So ready? B...b...b..b..begin!

Artificial amateurs aren't at all amazing
Analytically, I assault animate things

I'm not dead

I feel really sad. It's been months and months since I've published anything. It's really depressing looking back at 2014 and seeing so few blog posts compared to all my other years, even my hell year in 2010. So this is a small effort to keep the flame alive.

Blah blah blah I could start writing about what I've been up to but it's really boring. Honestly, not that much. Yes, I am still in school and while I'm not taking a heavy course load, I am trudging along.

I talked to my neighbour today for the first time in a while. He's been carting stuff back in forth between the houses so I asked him what he was up to. Turns out he redid the floor in the basement of his house and replaced the ugly 35+ year old ceramic tiles with hardwood flooring. So now he's just moving junk out of the house into a big dump bin on his front yard.

Spring has arrived!

The winter really wasn't that bad at all.

Take care. I might post more. No promises. Thanks for reading.

I'm sick of writing my signature every damn time.

Signed,

Gabriel