Lol exams

I think we all know by now that when I disappear it's because I've been taken in by exams, yes?  I had three midterms (bio, chem, and genetics), a short essay (philosophy) and two labs (bio and chem) in the past week.  Fun.  It's now reading week, so I fully intend to sleep all week.  On Monday I actually fell asleep in the hallway while I was waiting for my genetics tutorial to start. :/

Today's exam was genetics.  That course is easy as fuck.  We are doing Punnett squares.  That's how easy it is.   Hello, GPA-booster.

In contrast, we dissected fruit fly ovaries in the Bio lab yesterday.  Do you know how hard it is to tear a fruit fly in half when your tweezers don't touch closely enough to grip it?  After forty minutes, we (the four of us at our lab bench) only had six sets of ovaries extracted. We kept tearing the heads off instead of tearing the abdomen apart.  The dissecting microscope made it harder because it offered no depth perception and you couldn't focus on both tweezers and the fruit fly at the same time.

I'd been holding off on getting my hair cut because it was too expensive.  (My hair was ass-length, so I was going to be hit hard with the "long hair" surcharges--most of the places I called quoted me at around $100.)  It's been really windy around here lately, so my hair's been tangling horribly every time I so much as think of going outside.  It's been a pain to tie it up whenever I'm studying.  So last night, I chopped it to my shoulders.   I mean that literally. I went in the washroom, grabbed the scissors and started cutting.

I've cut plenty of wigs, so it's not like I had no idea what I was doing.  It came out nicely and only took about fifteen to twenty minutes.  Last time I had a professional haircut, it took two and a half hours and I ended up with a soccer mom bob. :/

Speaking of wigs, I cut my Franziska wig last week.  It looks good.  I ordered my FeMC wig, and I'm waiting for that to come in now.

KH:Coded has Castle Oblivion in it.  CoM was my favourite game so that makes me happy,  but after the end of BBS,  I don't want to see Castle Oblivion.

School

I like this term.  I have Fridays and alternate Wednesdays off.  The Wednesdays that I do go to school and all Tuesdays are half days.

I went to my mom's office on Thursday since I had a two hour break between classes and her office is about five minutes away.  One of her coworkers has a chihuahua puppy that's not yet old enough to stay home alone.  I like being able to play with a puppy between classes.  She's so cute.

We had a safety orientation for Chem on Thursday morning.  We used the same damn lab last year.  We know where to dispose of our chemicals and where the fire extinguishers are.  I did not want to wake up early for that.  When we were watching the safety video, out TA started giggling at one of the pictures of an explosion.  When we looked at him, he whispered "That was two floors up, over the Christmas break!"

Not much

I have officially dropped Physio for this term.  I'll be taking it in summer.  I've heard the summer course is much easier since Professor Monotone doesn't teach in it.  People are still BAWWing about the midterm and that prof in the school forums.  I don't mind taking the summer course.  Last summer, I turned into a hermit when I wasn't working.

I mainly blame a lot of closing shifts for that, though.  Coming home at 2-3am messed up my sleep cycle.

I placed my first TaoBao order last night.  One of the Fantasic Dolly replicas from DoL, a wig and two sets of fake lashes from Fantasy Sheep, and two pairs of shoes from Kiss Shoes.  I placed the first payment today.

The replica will be my first lolita item.  I'm still not sure if I want to build a lolita wardrobe or not.  The wig is for casual wear, since I'm getting bad hair insecurity again.  I have AGA, so I start freaking out when my hair looks thinner than normal.  One pair of shoes is actually a pair of boots for cosplay, but I intend to wear them with normal clothes, too.

I hate waiting.

Today's exam is from 7-9 pm.  It is in a gym building, which means we will be waiting outside until we're allowed in to write.  Waiting outside, at night, in a windy area (campus is near the lake), in winter.  Oh so much fun.  This is like a repeat of last year's Anthro midterm*.

To be honest, I'm more bothered by the 7pm thing.  I want to get this over with.  I don't want it hanging above me all day.  I don't even need all day to study.  This is Genetics, the easiest class.  Hell, the second half of the course (which is all we're being tested on as the exam's not cumulative) was a repeat of high school philosophy for the most part.  Half the exam is tutorial material, which was all pretty straightforward. Then again, the Human Bio office is a group of slackers and we haven't had our tutorial quizzes returned.  Those would be nice to study from.

My feelings about the Physio exam:  Prof 1 is an asshole. We've got lecture recordings to prove that you told us we didn't need to know the topic and it would not be on the exam.  Then you had multiple questions about it on the exam.  (This happened for a few topics, actually...)  At least they mark them quickly, and we have a different prof for the next half of the course.  This is my GPA-killing course.  Again, not because it's difficult, but because Prof 1 likes using cheap tricks on tests.

*Last year's Anthro midterms were screwed up in general. Midterm 2 was held after the final class, but before the final exam. I don't get it. Midterm 1 was held in the lecture hall for the class.  This lecture hall was originally meant for graduation ceremonies only, but as classes got larger they started holding lectures there.  This means there are no writing surfaces.  We bring clipboards to write on.  I pay thousands of dollars in tuition to write on a goddamn clipboard.

They had an army of TAs to ensure everyone was spaced apart properly and no one had any papers or markings on their clipboards.  Half of the class was to write from 6-7pm, the other half from 7-8pm.  I was in the second half, so I got to the location at about a quarter to seven.  We had to wait outside the building.  It was snowing a bit more heavily than usual.

Because this exam was a logistic clusterfuck, the second half didn't even ENTER THE BUILDING until 8:30pm.  They didn't tell us they were running behind. We just waited in the cold, all huddled together.  Someone did come out at around 7:30, but just to tell us we were waiting at the wrong door.

By the time we did get in, we all had numb hands and had to waste 15 mins of exam time defrosting enough to manipulate a pencil.

EDIT:  My Puffy 3tone blue lenses are in!  I'm organizing a time for a facetrade with the seller now.  I can't wait to see how they look!  I'll post pictures as a review once I have them.

More exam ranting

So to practice for my Biochem exam, I did last year's exam.  All the structures in the questions? Lewis diagrams.  Lewis diagrams of large organic molecules.  I'm crying right now.  Lewis structures all look the same. ;_; Also, we have a few questions where we have to discuss the nutritive values of certain foods.  When did this become a nutrition exam?  I didn't do horribly on the past exam, but I could stand to study more.  At least I know what to focus more on, now that I know the types of questions this prof asks. We have four profs in this course, so the midterms weren't written by the same profs (midterm one was written by Prof One, midterm two by Profs One and Two), and the final will be written by Three and Four, but mostly Four (I think Three only has like eight questions out of the sixty).

Someone in my Physio class posted their study notes to one of the course forums.   They're wonderful.  Diagrams are integrated nicely, there are tons of extra bits of information. I think I'm going to use them instead of my notes. --;

I actually went to the mailbox to get the mail today, since I found out that no one's been in a week.  My Persona 3 FeMC headphones came in.  They're a pair of $5 Sony knockoffs from eBay, nothing special.  I was surprised by the colour.  I was expecting a bright apple-red, but they're a deeper ruby red.  Really pretty.  The sound quality's good for a $5 pair of headphones, but I wasn't expecting much from a pair of $5 headphones.  I'm probably not going to use them, though, since I prefer earbuds.  And the 'arm' piece on these would catch my cartilage piercing if I take them off too quickly.  I can't wait 'til the break so that I can actually get to sewing progress on my cosplays.

I found out that Starry Sky~in spring~ had been translated, so I played that for a bit during study breaks.  I've cleared Suzuya's route so far.  Working on Yoh now.  Yoh's boring. I should have gone for Kanata this time.  The uniforms are gorgeous, but Suzuya's belt buckle confuses me.

Finals

My first final was today.  It was Molecular Biology, three hours, 65 MC questions.   I finished an hour into the exam and waited half an hour for someone else to hand it in first.  The first few questions were difficult, but the rest was really easy.

When I left the exam room, a girl from one of the other rooms stopped me to ask if I had been writing the same exam.  She was panicking because she'd finished so quickly.  I find that as long as you can read quickly, you can easily finish MC questions in less than half the time that the instructor allots.

Now I get to spend the weekend studying like mad for Biochem.  And by studying like mad, I mean memorizing structures.  All our other profs tell us not to bother memorizing them, since we'll always have a reference in the lab.  That's what makes it so troublesome when one prof does want them memorized.  I'm doing well in that course, but that's because I know the concepts and how to apply them.  Not because I know how to draw all the structures involved in every reaction as well as the structures of the enzymes that catalyze said reactions.

And then I have my Physio exam the day after.  Let's just not talk about Physio, okay? Well, at least Physio's multiple choice.  But I need to do really well on it to make up for the last exam. I've never been to the building that the Physio exam is in, though.  I need to go early so I can look for it.  They gave us a weird code for it, too.  Normally campus building codes are a two letter alpha code, but this wasn't.  I'm not 100% sure what the alpha code would be, so until I figure that out, I don't know where I'm writing. :/  I think I know what building it is, but I'd like to be 100% sure so I don't end up at the wrong place come exam time...

If you can't give us a proper code, you can at least give us an address. :(

My two exams next week are in one of the Kinesiology buildings.  So I'm writing the exams in a gym.  Feels like high school.  I hate writing in that building because there are no clocks. And we have to wait outside before the exam.  In the cold, Canadian winter.  At night, too, for one exam...

I can't wait for the 21st.  That will be my last final, and then I'll have about two and a half weeks off.

Weeabooing starts here:

I disappeared again...

I was studying for finals, but then I got sick.  So since then I've only been awake about eight hours a day, and haven't been doing much.  I watched a lot of anime, but mainly because that doesn't take effort at all.  I tried doing some summary notes to study from, but I could not spell at all.  Stupid cough syrup.

Speaking of cough syrup, I decided against buying the fever reducing kind since I rarely get fevers no matter how sick I am.  I may have had a fever seven years ago, but I never took my temperature at the time.  My last confirmed fever was about 13 years ago.  And of course, I started running a temperature about six hours after buying the normal cough syrup. :/

I've been moisturizing the shit out of my nose since I've rubbed it raw with tissues.  The skin's so dry that the cream stings. ;_;

 Today, I watched Tales of Vesperia - The First Strike.  Impressions: [some spoilers]

Bah, I disappeared again

I haven't posted in a week because once in a while I feel really fucking boring.  Nothing interesting has happened.

I finally got my OSAP cheques after needing to renew my ID, and then OSAP thinking I was no longer a student despite having communication with my school. Blah.  So later this week I'm printing my tuition invoice and bringing it to the bank to pay.  Probably on Wednesday since I've only got two hours of class.

Finished my New Game+ in P3P today to see the lover endings.  As a huge Shinji fangirl I must say...Akihiko's was the best. I was underwhelmed by them. :/  So, Atlus, I think you should make an otome game with random-ass characters from your games.  And by random-ass characters, I mean Shinjiro and Akihiko.  Dr. Stiles and Mitsuru are fine, too.

Tomorrow's day 2/2 of the Fall Study Break.  I wish we got the full week off. :(

Also, I love how LifeSci students bitch about any writing homework.  We have a 500 word writing assignment due Thursday for Genetics.  And half the people in my tutorial are bitching that it's too much! Bitchplz, we had to write double that (at the very least!) in high school, sometimes in-class!  And this one doesn't even involve research!  It's just writing about an article the prof wants us to read.  Count your blessings.  I admit, I'm still bitter about the eight page Anthro essay last year where one of my sources started to say (around page 300, so I'd already invested some time into it) that all anthropologists are going to burn in hell for disturbing human remains. WTF book, you made so much sense until then.  

Hell, it'll take my longer to write citations for a two-page essay than it will to write it.  But that's just because every fucking prof uses a different citation style and I never get the chance to get used to any of them.

FREEDOM

I have no exams or assignments due this week.  I am free. It's a nice feeling.  I also have no Genetics lecture this week.  Prof has a conference to go to.  Why am I happy about missing that class?  It's a two hour lecture with the most uncomfortable chairs on campus.

I got my mark for the first midterm I did this year: 80%.  I am quite happy with that, considering I'd been slacking a little in that class.   I've been checking Portal like a madwoman for my other marks.

I've been playing Project DIVA 2nd since yesterday.  I like it more than the first PD.  Better songs and costumes, and it's easier to unlock costumes.  My only issue is that some songs are the same as PD and I still try to enter the key sequence from the previous game. --;  I've been putting off finishing Roxas's Ven's route in BBS, since I don't want to see the bad end a third time.  That and I'm at Neverland, and I've always hated Peter Pan.

I got a lot of money for my birthday.  I was not expecting that.  I'm not too sure what to do with it.  I think I'm going to save some of it for a 3DS, get more sweaters, and buy figures with the rest.

I do need sweaters, though.  It's getting cold and my clothes keep disappearing.  I blame my mother, since they usually turn up in her closet and by that point, they've been stretched a bit so I can't really wear them out anymore.  I've got to go return a shirt at Forever 21 this week, so I'll buy some sweaters then.  My pants and skirts don't go missing since they don't fit my mother at all.  Just my shirts.

I get my new glasses next week.  Since I can't see shit with my current glasses (there's about two diopters difference between the old and new prescriptions), I'm very happy about that.  I still need to order new contacts, though.

My Persona 3 Gekkoukan patch came in the mail last week.  It's gorgeous.  I want to commission the same person to do the patch for my Miku costume, but I'll need to vector that first since the reference image is shitty.  I'm having issues with that because my image software is being a brat and failing if I try to crop images or use vectors.  Time to acquire some new software.