Wednesday, April 16, 2008

A Few Crazy Happenings

There have been two things that have happened lately that i find shocking. The first and most obvious one is the fact that it has been SNOWING in Utah. Wait a minute, i thought it was the middle of april. What happened to spring blossoms and warmer temperatures? What about my visions of summer coming out of hibernation from the winter that seemed never ending? These dreams have been shattered this week. I can handle rain. April showers bring May flowers. This doesn't mean snow showers. Snow showers keep May flowers in the ground. Today i wore shorts and flip flops to class and i was having great thoughts of finally getting to experience one of the seasons that i love the most, Spring. I came home and took a long and much needed nap (I was up until about 2am doing homework.. see previous post). When i woke up i seemed to have traveled back in time. When i fell asleep it was April and when i woke up it was January. I felt like i was on a terrible episode of the Twilight Zone... it was SNOWING yet again the same day i had dusted off my flip flops. UGH!! Utah owes every person living here a really nice spring and summer that lasts for a very very very long time.
The second shocker of the semester is Aaron's law class up at the U. In order to major in Accounting you have to take a business law class. Aaron's class was extremely strange because he would work his butt off in the class and get about 30% of the points that the assignment was worth. The weirdest part though is that his groups 30% was the highest grade in the class and some people didn't even get points. All of his assignments turned out this way and Aaron would freak out because he had no idea if he was going to completely fail the class or get an A in the class. Plus, the teacher told the class that their grade is only slightly based off of their assignments and more heavily based off of how hard the teacher thought they were working. In essence the teacher would just pick what their grade should be. Poor Aaron was always so stressed out about this class. At one point someone in the class sent out an email saying that all the members of the class should go visit the Dean of the business school to complain about their class. Aaron and i thought that was a stupid idea because students can complain and complain about a class and the school normally never does anything about it. Two weeks ago aaron went to his law class. The night before he had stayed up to the wee hours of the morning compiling yet another assignment for this ridiculous class, 140 pages that probably would get him only a small percentage of the points. As he is sitting in class ready to turn in his homework, the teacher walks in and says "The class is canceled. We're not collecting anymore assignments, the class is officially over. Everyone gets a B but if you feel that you deserve an A you can come petition to me during my office hours." WHAT?!?! Aaron came home completely shocked and not quite sure what had happened. I have never in my life heard of a class being canceled in the middle of the semester. I also never thought that the school of business would side with the students rather than the teachers. That must have been some good complaining they were doing!! So Aaron's work load just got a lot lighter and he has one less final to take. Seriously though, how crazy is that?

School

Hey, do you remember me? I used to write posts on my blog all the time. The past month or so, not so much, but i hope that you will accept me once again onto your screens and into your hearts. Some of you have asked if i'm still alive, which would be yes i am, but there were days that i felt like i wouldn't survive. I never knew that four classes could get so busy so fast. The beginning of the semester was a freakin cake-walk compared to everything that has been going on lately. I remember reading books for fun because i had so much time on my hands. In March i devised the brilliant plan of scheduling assignments into my week that weren't due right then and there but would eventually be due. So everyday i had an assignment and this was supposed to keep the end of my semester pretty relaxed. Boy was i wrong. There are always little things that come up, and things that you thought would be easy to do but ended up being absolutely insane. This is why lately i have been feeling like this:Most of my time during the month of March and into April has been spent working on a research project for my Sociology of Work and Occupations class. It is a 10-15 page research paper that if you worked in a group you would have to make a study and actually do the research. I figured that since i hate reading research articles that i would prefer to work on the actual research itself, so while the rest of our group worked on the front half of our paper, Brad, my fellow researcher, and i worked on data collection. To make a long story short, i have never spent so much time in the sociology lab (it turned out to be about 30 hours total) and i have never felt so confused in my entire life. We had about a month to do the research and put it into our paper along with graphs etc so we could make a poster for the Mary Lou Fulton Conference on April 4th. After some serious computer issues our poster and research for the conference was submitted.

At the conference we had to stand by our poster and explain to the judges and random passersby what our study was all about. We got a few characters that asked questions, and a few people trying to challenge what our findings were saying, but it turned out just fine. We got to attend a free lunch (which is what i was most excited about), and they announced the winners. There were three winners for every discipline in the School of Family, Home, and Social Science (Economics, psychology, sociology etc). As they were saying the winners for Sociology they began saying the names of the members of our group. I almost fell over due to complete and utter shock. We won 3rd Place!!!!! I know that third place isn't as good as first place, but you have no idea how proud i am of myself. I never thought i was academic by any stretch of the imagination but because our study involved a regression analysis of the data that Brad and i compiled we stood out from other groups. I know that i'm totally bragging right now, but its only because i never thought i was very good at the whole school thing. Here i am standing next to our poster:Me and Ally by the poster looking sexy.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Book Tag


The instructions for this tag are as follows:

1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages)
2. Turn to page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog
5. Tag 5 people

Okay, the 5th sentence wasn't very good, so i'm going to steal Ashby's idea and include some of the surrounding sentences.

"Jop was supposed to be back by the 7:00pm curfew. Seven came and went. Perhaps he had been delayed and would return in the morning."

T
he Hiding Place is my new favorite book right now. The funny thing is that i usually don't like reading books that have been assigned in class (we were assigned to read it in my HFL class). I actually ended up reading it a month before we were even supposed to start it. Which is amazing in regards to my track record with school assigned reading. I HIGHLY recommend it. It really is one of the best books that i have ever read. Plus its a true story which makes it that much better. It starts a little slow for the first chapter but after that its fantastic!

Now I tag: Rachel, Tiffany, Jillian, Chelsea A, Leandra