Projects Galore

The great thing about this term is the general lack of final exams I have. Technically, I only have 1 but one of my classes has an unofficial final so I have only 2 finals to write in total.

The catch? I have a ton of papers and projects that have deadlines that are slowing approaching. And I've barely started on any of them. Which is not good, but I'll survive.

I hope.

Aging Psych:

I mentioned in a previous post how I was doing volunteer work instead of a paper. It involved helping out with some online stuff, writing things up. No problem there, I thrive online and I own a blog.

But it took until mid October for me to get in touch with the coordinators running the thing and I didn't start any work until early November. That, is a problem.

So now I'm kind of rushing here to get enough things done so I can get a decent grade. I think I'm going to need roughly 3 more blog posts for them before the end of the month. They're only 300-400 word posts each so I should be safe. That'll take an hour each to write.

Total time = 3 Hours.

Conservation Psych:

Got a paper here, 2500 words. Not too heavy though I really should get started on it. Probably take me a solid 5 hours to get this done. Basically, take an issue in the world related to conservation, suggest a way that would fix it but then outline all the issues that would prevent this solution from being implemented.

The biggest problem I find is not say overpopulation, but rather over-consumption. What if half the population of the world was wiped out but the remaining populous started using/wasting materials at double the rate? We haven't solved anything have we.

I've actually been meaning to have a post dedicated to this class. It's an interesting course.

Total time = 3 +5 = 8 Hours.

Social Influences:

Here's where things messy. We got two projects here that are due. 1 is a group project that has not been started but (hopefully) on Sunday my group can finally meet. I have no idea how long this is going to take. We're filming something that doesn't have a script written yet.

Second project is basically a massive paper. I need to research and create a hypothetical textbook chapter. This includes graphs, pictures, researching the topic and seeing as a textbook chapter for this class is roughly 30 pages long, this will not be a walk in the park.

Total time = 8 + ???? + ???? = ????

BONUS:

I still have the GRE exam to write at the end of the month. I haven't started studying yet. Yes, this is the 4 hour long exam I have to write to apply to for Grad school next year.

No I have not started studying.

If it's any consolation it's supposed to be easy. Interpreting chunks of text, impromptu papers, that sort of thing.

Still, I should probably try and take a look at what's to come. I didn't bother buying the help guides. Not when there are free ones available and what not.

Total time = ???? + ????

Better get started.

So if you rarely hear from me in the next few weeks. These are the reasons why.

I am not looking forward to this.

Status Report

Hello hello. Again, I apologize because I think this is the longest I've gone without commenting on another blog. And at this rate I'm going to continue breaking records until midterms are done. Actually, because of one midterm but we'll get to that in a moment.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me so far. Much appreciated.

Online friends are the best. I love you all.

In good news, my lung has (mostly) recovered I think. Just a brief case of things being worse than normal. I honestly can't tell if poor sleeping causes my lung to collapse or the collapsing of my lung taxes my body so much that I'm more tired than usual. Or maybe it's sudden waves of stress. That can causes both so let's just blame University.

Speaking of University. Midterms are slowly being written. Social Influences and Aging psychology has been done. I'm not sure if it's me but the midterms feel harder. I'm doing alright in them but I really want to be hitting A's and A-'s to increase my chances of getting into Speech Pathology. Conservation psychology DOES NOT have a midterm which I am so grateful for.

And then.

And then we have Cognitive psychology.

Yeah... I really, really, really wish I could have crammed a different Science course into my schedule because I am getting torn apart in this class. It's not that the prof is bad, he's enthusiastic, knows the material, he even wrote the textbook and gave it to us free online. Anyone who saves me a few hundred dollars is a friend of mine.

That being said, the material is still very dense, very hard to get through, and the weekly quizzes are kicking my butt. Let alone what the midterm will do to it. It's all written, no multiple choice. The last time I was required to write anything for an exam was years ago. All that training from High School is gone. I am not looking forward to writing a short essay on comparing the theories of how the brain may comprehend and understand the world.

I guess I shouldn't have assumed that a higher level Cognitive psychology course would be similar to the lower level ones. Or maybe I've been studying for this class all wrong. I know a girl in my class who is getting by quite well just by reading the notes. I've been doing the equivalent of slamming the textbook PDFs into my eyes until something breaks.

I still have a day to try and save myself. Wish me luck, I'll see everyone Friday.

Midterms Round #2

You'd think that having all your courses crammed on two days would also mean a lot of overlapping exams and assignments. So imagine my surprise when everything is nicely spread out for me to do. It's pretty great, I really wasn't expecting this.

It means that this term is a lot of relaxing than the last one. And for all my regular readers who remember, it was kind of a nightmare near the end.

This term should hopefully be a piece of cake in comparison.

My assignments for Conservation and Social Influences psychology have been done in advance so no need to worry about those. There are papers for both of them however and I really should start working on them as soon as possible. They don't seem hard at all which is great, I'll just need to take a weekend off and power through them.

Social Influences is even nicer in that that paper is basically the final. And I am more than happy with writing one less final in December. The midterm for this class is this Thursday though, and I haven't touched my notes yet.

I'll read them later.

In the meantime, another Aging Psychology midterm is next week as well as a Cognitive Psychology one. I still haven't got the hang of the Cognitive Psych quizzes yet, but I think I'm finally noticing a trend. Hopefully I can start doing well on these things.

I also opted to do volunteer service for my Aging psych course instead of writing a paper. Investing 20 hours in community service seemed a lot better than writing. I ended up getting placed with a caregiver's society and what they want to do is expand their online influence. So I'll basically be helping them with blog posts.

Blogging as school work, who would have expected that?

I'm working, I promise.

Lastly, I've finally registered for the GRE. I'll be taking it at the end of November and it's a 4.5 hour long exam broken into multiple segments. It's just the general one which is good, I really don't want to relearn Physics, Chemistry, Biology, or Calculus. I'll begin hunting for study guides and what not after this last wave of midterms are done.

Oh, and some people were interested in where I got the My Little Pony figurines for Theresa. I originally wasn't going to share it (because I don't want her knowing how much they cost) but then I remembered she's too busy to read my blog anymore.

The person is called Krowzivitch and she does some very nice work. She has exploded in popularity however and if you don't grab a commission slot within the minute it opens you won't get in. Here's a sample of her work:

Alright, back to work. See you guys on Wednesday.

My Final Schedule

So my schedule has been finalized for this term. Which is good. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get into that one class that I wanted. And talking to the Administration revealed that there were over a hundred people on the wait list and it was a first come first serve basis.

One spot opened up after about half a week and it was gone within 15 minutes, maybe less. With these kinds of odds, I decided I was better off trying to get into another class.

But I refused to give up my 4 day weekend. Thus I am now taking another course in Cognitive psychology. It's not so bad so far, nothing too interesting.

My other 3 Psychology courses are Aging psychology, Social influences, and Conservation psychology. Aging psychology is pretty self-explanatory. Exact opposite of Child psychology, we are now looking at how people age and the changes that occur. Social influences is going to have us looking at how other people try to convince and sway us into doing various things.

It's amazing how people can be manipulated.

The last one is a bit weird and is kind of a new course. My professor believes that the heart of any conservation effort needs to take a look at humans and how we think in regards to conservation. Think about it, bluefin tuna aren't jumping onto our plates to be eaten nor are whale hunting themselves to death. They're dying because they're a "commodity". Rainforests and marshes aren't clearing themselves away either.

No matter what angle you look at it, our attitudes towards nature is what has caused so much destruction. You don't need a biologist to tell you that all is not well with our environment. And my professor wants to see if we even have the capacity to change the way people see conservation, because clearly what we're doing isn't near enough.

Eeyup.

Last thing before I close this post up. I think I may have finally figured out what I want to do with this Psychology degree. There's some sort of career conference in the upcoming weeks and if I like what I see, I'll go right into it if possible. I have most of the course requirements already but if I do decide to enroll in this Master's program I'll need to take a few more courses in the following term.

Best of luck to me.