Retold

I am so freaking pissed off right now!!

I’ve had a very long day.  VERY FREAKING LONG!  Hell, I’ve had a very freaking long week!!  Matt and I went to the eye doctor today, which was an ordeal for him because they did a bunch of extra crap.  We dished out $630 between the two of us so we can see; my god I hate paying for glasses!  We got him new shoes so I doesn’t die of a foot ache and got some odds and ends we needed from Wal-Mart.  I cooked dinner and finally managed to get to my studying for my Geology test at like 9:30pm tonight.  The stupid test is in the morning (like 10 hours from now).

Anyway, I’m done with the studying now, so I logged into Blackboard to check on my film studies class to find that my professor has returned the two weekly assignments from last week.  The weekly assignment’s have been a constant problem for me all semester.  They’re each worth 4% of my overall class grade and have an available score between 1 and 4.  Get it, 1 = 1%, while 4 = 4%.  Anyway, I keep getting 3′s, which aggravates me because I feel like my work is good.

So last week I emailed him a letter, expressing my concerns that I was being graded on stylistic choices, that is the structure of my sentences, rather than the content of the work.  It took him almost a week to email me back, but when he did, he basically said it was my fault that I was doing less than stellar work and that I should try to adhere to the assignment guidelines a little better.  What?!  Is he freaking serious?  I have been doing EXACTLY what the assignment guidelines tell me to do, to the letter.  We recently had an assignment that said, “chose one ideology and write about it.”  When I got the paper back, his comments said, “I expected you to write about more than one ideology.”  Huh?  The damn assignment said ONE!  I asked him about that specific incident in the letter I sent, but he said I took it too literally, that that wasn’t all the assignment said to do.  Well no shit, but I did the other things the assignment said to do.  Oh, and to make matters worse, he said the stupid assignment had to be 600 words or less.  Do you know what 600 freaking words is?  I wrote about ONE DAMN IDEOLOGY and went right up to 600 words on the dot.  If I’d done more, it’d have gone over, which is something he bitched at me about before, going over the stupid word limit.

Absolutely nothing makes this guy happy.  I’m a senior, about to graduate, and he’s treating me like a novice.  What’s worse, I’m starting to feel like one.  I mean, I thought I wrote just find and  I’ve written a hell of a lot of papers since coming to the University.  I’ve been able to make all my professors happy with my work.  Not a single one of them have said my work is confusing.  They’ve had other little problems here and there, but never a single one of them said my papers were “awkward” or “confusing.”  Even Dr. Q, who’s a total freaking dictator about headers, thought the body of my work was good overall.  Now, every single time I get a paper back from this guy, they say he’s confused about what I’m getting at, or that my points are awkward.  I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous.  The harder I strive for clarity, the more he slaps me down.

So anyway, I opened my graded work that he emailed back to me and on the first one I got another fucking 3.  I swear to god, if I wrote the work in my own blood it wouldn’t make this guy happy.  Then, I opened the other one to find that… he’d given me a 2! That’s the equivalent of a 50% or an F.  I have never, ever, ever made a 50% on an English assignment at the university!  I might have cried if I wasn’t so pissed off.  I did what the assignment said to do.  One of his comments said “I should know which element you chose to write about within the first two sentences…”  The first sentence says what the element is.  The words “Costume and Make-up” are the first 3 fucking words of the paper!  How is that not clear?!  He gave me a 2 for Christ sake!  This is the first time I’ve made a 2 all semester, there’s no way that’s a coincidence the week after I sent him a letter suggesting I was having issues.  That’ll teach me to rock the boat.

Thank goodness this class only has two more weeks.  Still, in that two weeks, I have discussion board to answer, 2 more weekly reading quizzes, 4 more weekly assignments, and a 10 page paper due.   Almost 40% of my overall grade is due in the last 2 weeks of the class.  I will never take another class with this professor and regret, deeply, the day I signed up for this one.  If I had gone to the Central TX campus, rather than the one in Stephenville, I’d never have made it through school.  This prof is the head of English over there and teaches a lot of their classes.  Just two more weeks, I just keep telling myself that.

Oh, and as if that weren’t bad enough, I also have 3 more Geology class tests, 2 lab tests and 3 more labs.  I have a whole hell of a lot to do in the next two weeks and have no idea when or how I’m going to get it all done.  Right now, my biggest problem is that I’m terrified about the long paper.  It’s worth 20% of my overall grade and I’m scared he’s going to give me a bad grade.  I’ve not even started to write it yet.  My only consolation is that even if he gives me a 50% on the long paper, I’ll still probably make a C in the class, as long as I don’t get anymore damn 2′s.  Not that I want to make a C, mind you, I’d really like to make an A or a B, but there’s absolutely zero way I’ll be making an A.  I’m going to try to do the work the best I can and hope he sees that I did what I could, not that I’m holding my breath.

Anyway, I think I’m going to go try to sleep off my anger at having gotten a 2.  Oh, but I guess it’s my own fault, maybe I should have paid more attention and been more clear. Ugh!!!

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

School’s back in tomorrow; not that there was really a break to begin with.  Summer session II goes from July 13th – August 14th.  I’m taking Geology, which I might have said before, but am not really looking forward to it.  I like to take online classes over the summer, because I can stay in my nice cool house and because it saves on gas.  Unfortunately, science isn’t taught online and I don’t know that I’d do well with it even if it was.  So, off to campus I go, every day from 10:30am-12:20 pm.  On Monday & Wednesday afternoons I have a lab from 1pm-5pm.  Oh joy.

This means that I get to do the running around I would have done during the week today.  Mostly, I just need to get groceries.  There’s zero food in my house… none, zilch, zero.  I mean, we’re even out of dog food.  It’s time to go to Wal-Mart, though I’ve been thinking about getting groceries at HEB this time.  It’s a tad bit closer, but it’s also a bit more expensive.  Ugh… to Wal-Mart, after all.  I always say I’m going to stop shopping there, but it’s so cheap!  I’m so cheap!  It works out.

Maybe I should check my mail when I’m out, too?  I don’t know when the last time I got it was.  Being sick and being in school over the summer has put a serious dent in everything.  I’m behind on some of my blogs, on my PBeM, on my reading and my writing.  I feel like a serious slacker, even though I know that I’m not slacking, I’m just busy.  The last time I got the mail, I got a ton of bills and a statement of benefits for Matt’s life insurance… which reminds me, when the hell did Matt get life insurance?  I mean, his dad had gotten an ROP life insurance quote a while back, but the deal fell through.  Long story, let’s just say it did.  I had no idea that his dad had gone ahead with the whole thing, but for less benefits.  Apparently, trying to apply for amounts above $100,000 is a total nightmare.  They make you jump through fiery hoops. It’s a pain in the ass.  So, apparently he’s covered, just slightly less than intended.  It’s good, I think, but sort of makes me uncomfortable.  I mean, isn’t life insurance benefits supposed to make you feel better?  I guess I don’t like it because it makes me feel like we’re getting old… which we are, but I still don’t like to have it staring me in the face.  Yes, I work hard at denying reality.

My birthday is next week, speaking of denying reality.  I’ll be 31 years old on July 23rd.  What’s weird is, I don’t feel like it’s that much a big deal.  I guess we all get older, it’s inevitable.  I’ve never been one to freak out about getting older, though Matt certainly is.  The man is absolutely aggravating about it, me, not so much.  I don’t feel like 31 is that old, really.  I just don’t want to have to go to school on my birthday.  Sadly, that’s inevitable.

Okay, enough rambling for me, I’ve gotten in a lot more than I intended to say.  Welcome to my mixed up brain, please stay a while.  One more thing before I go.  I had mentioned before that I missed the Writing Proficency exam.  I found out that I can take it at the end of September.  I was hoping it would be sooner, but alas, not.  As soon as I get the results back (no idea how long it takes), I’ll be able to apply for grad school!  Wish me luck remembering, this is my last chance to take it and grad in December.

I really am going now… really.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

It’s early summer, though you would think it was August already by the heat here, and everywhere I turn someone’s talking about camping.  Why do people do this?  I mean, sleeping in a tent on the ground doesn’t sound like much fun to me.  Even if you have an air mattress, it still seems like you could just stay home, make s’mores in the microwave, not get eaten alive by bugs, and have air conditioning!  Now that sounds like an awesome night to me.

I know a lot of my friends are campers, but I’ve never seen the appeal.  Maybe I should try it again, there has to be something good about it, but I can’t help thinking I’d go nuts without the Internet.  Since I don’t have a cell phone, and even if I did camp grounds seem to be strategically placed where cell phone service is low, like it’s some evil plot to force you to have fun, I couldn’t tweet or check my email.  I’m sorry but that is not my idea of fun.  You wouldn’t catch me dead in a bathing suit in public, so swimming in a river or lake is definitely out, not to mention what you could catch or be bitten by swimming in a lake.  Still water is the devils tool… or is that idle hands?  Either way, lakes are out.

Tell you what kind of camping I do like, RV camping!  RV camping is nice. You sleep in a bed, cook on a stove, have plumbing and air conditioning.  When I was a little girl my family had a membership with Coast to Coast.  Coast to Coast, in case you don’t know, is a camping membership where you can use campgrounds across the country.  Sometimes that means tent camping, sometimes RV camping, other times little log cabins.  We use to go to a place in California called Oak Glen and we had a good time!  They had a clubhouse that showed movies at night, had video games and pool tables.  They had a mini-golf course.  They had two, yes two, swimming pools.  They had a play ground with swings and slides.  They had shopping and caramel apples and a petting zoo.  I loved going to Oak Glen!  We also went to Fisherman’s retreat, which was fun, but not as fun as Oak Glen.

Oak Glen is famous for it’s apples. You could get hard apple cider, candied apples, carmel apples.  They have an apple festival and all the while, RV camping, baby!  Man, I use to love it!

But sleeping in a tent? No.

Camping in a little log cabin in Sedona, AZ?  Yes.  Just for the record, I love Sedona in a way I cannot express to you.  If Matt would consent to living in Arizona, I would move there in a heart beat.  When we stayed in a little cabin by a river, it was raining, everything was so green against the grey backdrop above the clay vistas.  It was beautiful.  I want to go there again!

But sleeping in a tent?  No.

Starting to get the picture?  RV Camping, in; tent camping, out.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

I can’t believe it’s Monday again already.  I really want the weekend back!!  This week is going to be a long and painful and if I make it through it’ll be a miracle.  I have an absolute ton of school work to do and I have to take the stupid writing proficiency exam on Thursday.  Honestly, that test is the least of my worries because there is zero way I can fail it, but it’s one more thing I’m going to have to add to an already hectic schedule.  Matt’s going to want my attention, when I really need to spend the week (yes, the whole week) reading like crazy because I have a two part midterm worth like 40% of my grade due at the end of the week — I have 6 chapters to read for that midterm.  Never mind the outline for my speech which is due later in the week and all the bulletin board response work I have to do for both my speech class and my film studies course.  Online classes are a pain in the ass.  I revel in the knowledge that this is my LAST summer as an undergrad!  From here on out, the only summer classes I’ll be taking are graduate level!  I cannot wait for this summer to end, I don’t know that I’ve ever wanted anything so badly… except maybe graduation!  December needs to get it’s ass here!

Anyway, it’s 6:50am and I can’t seem to stay focused on anything.  Instead, I’m here, talking to you, complaining about all the stuff I have to do this week (rather than doing it).  Not just talking, I have a picture to share .  I took it this morning at about 6:30.  It was much more pink about ten minutes before, but I wasted that time stealing the batteries out of one of the remotes for my camera. Like the other pics from last week, it was taken in the back, behind the house, along the fence that separates us from Lonestar Arena and the angle is weird because I was trying to catch the whole gradient sky, orange to blue.  Click it if you want to see it bigger.

It’s so unusual but I find, as Matt’s working nights and I’m awake when the sun both goes down and comes up, I really prefer dawn to dusk.  It’s still cool at dawn, the air’s crisp and fresh after a long still night.  Yes, I like the night, too.  Dusk, on the other hand, is usually still hot and by the time the sun’s going down, the air has a stale quality.  I don’t like it, other than to say that anything which rends the sun from the sky is fine by me.  So, all that said, you’re liable to see a lot of pictures of sunrises as I get the inspiration to take them.  I really wish I had a better camera!  My sad little thing is 3.1 mega pixels, which is why the pictures always look a little grainy.

Anyway, I’m off to make a pot of coffee so Matt has fresh java when he comes in.  Then, I should probably start reading those 6 chapters for my midterms.  I hope you had a good weekend!!

God, I hate Mondays.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn