Back to Classes

Anyone who has followed my blog for the last few months know I've been trying to figure out whether to go back to classes in the Fall or search for work. While I had applied for the Business After-Degree program, my friends warned me that it would take until mid-August until I would get accepted or rejected. It could be wise to job hunt in the scenario where I wouldn't be going back to school.

But while I was in Vancouver, I woke up to an email on my phone, an acceptance email. Huh, while I had no idea why they had sent this to me so early I wasn't complaining.

And then I rewarded myself by sleeping in way into the afternoon.

What's nice about the After-Degree is that all my courses are laid out. Take this, take this, shove this here, no thinking needed on my part. But I'm only able to take 4 courses. A majority of the courses I need to take have this one prerequisite, that's only offered in the fall.So that's just great.

So in standard Damian fashion I arranged my schedule haphazardly and came out fine otherwise on the other end. No classes before 11, and I never stay any later than 4PM.  It'll do. I mean, I'm used to having 4 day weekends from my previous terms but it's time to stop being so spoiled.

A big reason why I wanted to get into Business was because of the Co-op program. I wasn't able to get a Psychology internship due to a certain administrator and I'm still very bitter about it. I contacted the Business people and learned that I would only have one chance to apply because I was an After-Degree student due to my credit limits, my old nemesis.

Not a problem, let's get this done, I mean when is this thing due?

Oh crap the deadline is next week.

My resume hadn't been updated in months, I wasn't confident in the structure of my cover letter, and who could I find in time to look these over to make sure things were ok? I scrambled, deleting and rewriting entire chunks. I managed to get a friend to look things over the day before I had to submit but I wasn't confident in most of it.

Fast forward two weeks, and I get another email.

Another acceptance.

Man, everything is rolling my favour this summer.

Bella, I owe you another drink, you're a life saver.

Oh and while I'm at it, I'd like to leave a few words for that Psych admin that screwed me over many years ago.

HA.

TAKE THAT.

I GOT ACCEPTED INTO AN INTERNSHIP PROGRAM ELSEWHERE WITHOUT YOU OR YOUR HELP.

JASON WAS OVER BY 15 CREDITS AND YOU STILL LET HIM IN. I WAS ONLY OVER BY 3. I HOPE YOU CHOKE TO DEATH ON YOUR OWN TONGUE.

WHOOOOOOO!

Well, I haven't quite gotten an internship yet, but a series of orientations, seminars, and workshops being held in the next two weeks should help me prepare. The soonest I can get a placement is January. And one thing that they stress is that you may not get a placement within the city, I could end up going anywhere in the province.

Hence, it may be time for Damian to (temporarily) move out. Wouldn't that be nice? I mean, my sister Bree has moved out for the next 4 years. Surely as the older brother I should make an effort to leave the nest as well, even if it would only be for a year.

I have a clean slate, my old grades don't matter, it's a new year, full of opportunities, new people, and for the first time for as long as I can remember I'm looking forward to the future.

Come at me.

Max Productivity

As January comes to a close I want to see if I've worked as much as could have. Honestly, I think I have. At the moment my schedule consists on nothing but afternoon classes. And on most weekday evenings I'm working at my fast food job. With a schedule like this, I would have taken the mornings off, and just slept in. Maybe stay up later in the night to goof off.

Not anymore.

Ever since I've started seriously working on my projects I've been devoting as much time as possible on them. And that's where my mornings have been spent. Slaving away at a computer.

Unfortunately I can't be trusted alone at home. Knowing me, I'll end up going back to sleep in my nice warm bed. The University is not a good work environment either. Honestly, you can work somewhere comfortable and loud OR uncomfortable and quiet. Or even better, uncomfortable and loud.

But, thanks to a questionable handy coupon code I found, I've managed to snag some office space in the downtown area. Ok, it's not really my own private office, I can't afford that. I only have lounge and communal cubicle access. But there's a secretary who knows me by name and I have free unlimited complementary coffee, tea, and wifi.

Meanwhile, as I'm working on Projects Pitch and Derp there are two men in suits who have traveled from across the country. And they're standing maybe 3 meters from my cubicle discussing business deals.

Needless to say, I feel very out of place as I type on my laptop.

But that's good! It motivates me to stay on task and not run off to Reddit or take a nap. It feels like a busy office nearly all the time with people coming and going. Entering and leaving meetings. I'm chugging as much complementary caffeine as I can to stay focused. I'm in a professional work area, I need to maintain some semblance of productivity.

Then around noon I head back to Campus for whatever classes I have. Then it's off to work at my fast food job. Then I head back home to force myself to keep working on whatever it is I have left to do before I pass out.

Rinse and repeat.

Or morning or whatever.

It took a while to get into the groove of things but this week I've been churning out over thousand words per day, my most productive week yet. 500+ in the morning at the office, 500+ in the evening when I get back home.

It's been snowing really badly over here and that's driven away most of our customers at work. So to be more efficient, I've been typing up things between customers. I sometimes can get half an hour of nothing that I can use for myself. I might not have internet, but since when do word processors require that?

The reason why I'm pushing to get these projects rolling so badly is because I don't want to get distracted or demotivated again and have them stagnant. Plus, midterms will be starting soon and I'll have to start allocating even more time for my studies.

And replace my computers with a textbook.

I've also picked up another project which I'm dubbing Project Cold 2.0. It'll serve the same purpose as the older version but it's actually feasible and more ethical. Unfortunately, I'll be dealing with real people and I have to leave my room.

I've broken it down to two phases. I'll give more details about it later when I give an update on my projects. I start on Saturday so that'll be fun. I hope the snow melts by then.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have more work to do.

500 Followers!

Short post today. I'm only into my second week of classes and already I'm getting <5 hours a sleep a night. You'd think that I'd be able to sleep in on my days off but I've taken extra working shifts at my part time job instead so I think this means I'm busier than normal.

Anyways, details about that in future post. Recently I somehow reached the 500 follower mark. That's like half a thousand which is pretty awesome. I don't have much else to say other than if you have things you want me to do a post on, feel free to suggest it. I could always use some new ideas.

500 followers!

I usually share a few videos with these kinds of posts so to start, here's an amazing painter:

Anyone fond of MAD, The Avengers, and Adventure time?

And last, this one is only for people who play Starcraft. Otherwise it won't make much sense:

I'll have a proper post up on Sunday. See you then.

I suck at Scheduling

Due to my inability to find a job I figured I might as well enter a fourth year of University and graduate with a degree. I think I know what I'm doing, I mean I've signed up for classes for 3 years already, how hard can a 4th be? But just to be safe, I go to talk to a co-coordinator.

She takes one look at my Fall term, and her eyes just widen.

"Uh Damian, we got a problem here".

Crap.

Turns out I've already hit my cap for the number of Junior/100 level courses I can take. In other words, the course in Java and Economics that I was taking wasn't doing anything towards my degree. I was paying for deadweight courses.

Luckily, I managed to work some things out and I've dropped both courses. I'm hoping that I have enough credits for graduation and if not, the Winter term will fix that. This leaves me with a ton of psychology courses. Research psychology is research, there's not much to say about it. I enjoy it.

The other courses, I am having issues with.

For starters, my Abnormal psychology class while interesting has a DVD lecture available for purchase. The prof strongly suggested that we buy and use it. A quick listen reveals that it's basically 4 DVDs that cost $100 for the exact same lectures we hear in class.

I'm serious, the things are word for word, I'm guessing he hasn't changed his lectures in a while because I hear that this guy has been doing this for a number of years. We also think he has several DVDs that he rotates through because the DVDs from just last year are somehow obsolete.

As if I wasn't poor enough already.

And then Developmental Psych is uh... different. Lectures consist of her standing in from of a classroom asking the class for their opinions of various concepts or groups of people gathered together to "discuss" a random concept. Half the class doesn't show up anymore and I sit around, vaguely paying attention.

Or catch up on some much needed rest.

Round #2 of midterms are soon so hopefully I do well on those. Maybe I should start studying now...

A change in Posting

Regular followers to my blog may have noticed that I have maintained an every other day posting schedule.

This was before University courses came in and started kicking me in the teeth and I started looking like this from lack of sleep.

Image courtesy of Brandon and Bryan. (Can be removed if you guys want, it just fit me so well).

So I'm switching to posting on every third day. This allows me more breathing room to make posts, get back to everyone else's blogs, sleep better and get work done. I'm already behind on reviewing notes for my courses and midterms begin in just a few weeks.

As a friend of mine used to say, "Real life before virtual life" and I think it's a statement more people should take to heart. This being a very short post here are two videos I enjoyed a bit too much.

And this is a video only fellow gamers will appreciate, sorry. :(

The next post will be a legitimate post, I promise. Thanks for the continued support and reading of this blog.

Registering for fall courses

Wow, the comments I've been getting have been so supportive and helpful. The internet is supposed to be filled with rude individuals and yet, here you guys are, defying the norm. (With the exception of a few spambots). Thank you to everyone who has commented, I don't mind if they're long I still read them, don't worry. Good luck to the fellow job hunters, we need it.

<3 you guys.

But, I have to face to possibility of not being able to find a job. Which means I'll be heading back to classes in the fall and I should probably finish registering for my courses as soon as possible.

Part of the problem is that I'm running out of courses to take. Or rather, courses that still interest me and are still open. I'm mostly interested in Psychology so I'm taking a course in Research, Abnormal and maybe Developmental or Cultural Psychology. I'm also taking a Computing Science class with a friend and I'm considering retaking that Organic Chemistry course I dropped. Still got one spot open and I'm considering filling it with a course in Economics.

Look at me! Trying to be all smart and educated and stuff.

And now the problems that have arisen.

First, I can't seem to register for any of the Developmental Psychology courses. I'm not sure if it's because I've reached the limit of how many I can take or maybe my limit on Psychology courses because I don't think any Developmental Psych classes are "restricted" or "special" courses. Especially when my other Science major friends have been able to take it. It also wouldn't explain why I was able to sign up for Abnormal Psychology. The Cultural psych and Economics course is also full so I'll be watching them like a hawk for an opening.

There is an opening for the Organic Chemistry course BUT it's with the shitty prof. Obviously the good prof is taken by this point. Honestly though, I'm not too excited at the prospect of retaking that class, there was a reason why I dropped it. (I'm really stupid at chemistry).

Hurr durr atoms and molecules.

I could take other things I guess? Except I've taken a lot of sciences already, not too keen on taking more Sociology or Philosophy. My friend was also complaining about the Math and Physics department screwing up his schedule, not allowing him to sign up for open classes either. Maybe the Psychology department is having similar problems?

I'll take a look at it later. I've already paid the fee that confirms that I'll be attending the University in the fall. But if I manage to get either of those jobs I'll cancel all my courses and go work for a year.

And I would be more than happy with that. I won't have any of these stupid scheduling problems and issues.