Preperations

Summer has only begun and already I'm sitting around trying to figure out things for after summer has come to an end. Can't afford to dawdle, because it's too easy to sit back, relax, and boom! All the time you suddenly had is gone. Also, it's also common for unexpected events to occur that suddenly eat up all your free time.

I wouldn't be surprised if my family decided to take another month long trip to Asia again. This time my Dad has been hinting at going to Korea. Most of us are fairly hesitant because of North Korea being absolutely crazy. But that might change and we'll head somewhere else, who knows.

In the meantime, one of the best motivational messages I've taken to heart as of late is the following:

And so I'll begin my work today. Starting with planning for my academic future. At the moment I have 3 options I'm considering: Graduate studies in Psychology, Speech Pathology, or something in Business.

Unfortunately if I want to continue doing Psychology, I'll have to abandon my province, probably head to Saskatchewan. As I've mentioned before the budget cuts have NOT been kind to anyone. Psychology has lost several support staff and I highly doubt they can afford another graduate student.

Though we fared better than Sociology and Anthropology which had to fuse together to stay afloat.

Speech Pathology is another one in which I'll probably have to abandon my province for as well and also to Saskatchewan. Again, the program in my city is extremely competitive and I doubt my GPA can withstand the scrutiny. Seriously, the only benefit I have is that I'm male, and maybe they'll let me in because of how saturated the field is with women.

Or maybe they're all sexist and that's why there are so few men.

Though I'm not sure Speech Pathology is such a good option. It would require me to take more Linguistics and while it wasn't that bad, my friend's girlfriend is a Linguistics major and she had only one piece of advice for me:

"Linguistics is terrible. Look at these notes, look at them. Don't subject yourself to this.".

Ok, so what about Business? An MBA (Master's in Business Administration) requires that I write not only the GMAT but also have 2 years of experience working full-time. Unfortunately as much as I'd like a well-paying full-time job, I haven't been that lucky. But who knows, maybe I'll run into something so good that I won't want to head back to class in the Fall.

In the meantime, a BCOM (Bachelor's in Commerce) while only a second undergraduate degree, only needs me to take Econ 101 and 102. It's only 2 years long. AND that opens me up to all the beautiful internships in the field. And from what I've seen, the Business students have no end of awesome internships.

Something that Psychology failed me on.

 This is relevant to my interests.

So I guess I'll be aiming at taking Econ 101, Econ 102, maybe a higher level Linguistics course? Maybe another Psychology course for interests sake? I don't want to take more than 3 courses, but we'll see what happens.

But the course registration site is always really iffy on the weekends so I'll have to wait until Monday to try and sign up. In the meantime, I have my projects to work on. I know that I'm vague on the works in progress but it's because I don't enjoy talking about things that aren't completed or unsuccessful. It's a pride thing.

I know I keep saying things look like they're about to work (Project Derp is especially notorious for this) and it's true. They show promise, but they all still need a lot work still before I would consider it a success. I think the best analogy I can come up with is finally being able to properly boil a pot of pasta. Good for you! But you still have a ways to go until this becomes acceptable spaghetti carbenera.

So I'll keep working on my projects, online profiles, job hunts, and my two part-time jobs. Especially my projects. I want to have an update where I have more to talk about as opposed to "STILL WORKING ON IT".

Back to classes

Welp, the break could only last so long. And now we're back. Back to the school. Yay. No, really. I'm exploding with enthusiasm here. There's nothing I enjoy than pulling all-nighters and then falling asleep at the front of the class and then drooling on myself.

Not exactly my finest moment.

If you were Asian and male maybe you could be me.

I'm technically done. You know, now that I've got my degree and everything. Unfortunately, these days an undergraduate degree doesn't get you anywhere because nearly everyone has one. So that means we have to upgrade to a graduate degree.

And to do that, I need to do various per-requisite courses to even qualify for some of them. I need at least 4 more courses for Speech and Language Pathology. But taking into consideration what my prof said, maybe I should start looking into Marketing as well.

Which means taking some Economics courses.

This is my understanding of Economics.

I've also been looking into jumping provinces for grad school. But because my grades hover around the B level (as opposed to people with As who can go anywhere) I might have to go to Saskatchewan. For people who don't know the run-downs of the provinces of Canada, it's basically this:

British Columbia: Asians and the ocean.

Alberta: Oil and Canada's rednecks.

Saskatchewan: Flat lands and Native Americans.

Manitoba: Lakes or something?

Ontario: Capital of Canada and Niagra falls.

Quebec: Crazy French people.

Nova Scotia: Fish.

Prince Edward Island: Funny accents and potatoes.

Newfoundland: Fish and funny accents.

New Brunswick: More funny accents.

Yukon/Northwest Territories/Nunavut: Native Americans and cold.

Fellow Canadians may have deduced my home province based on these partially incorrect stereotypes.

In the meantime, I'll be taking Linguistics courses and a friend of mine looped me into a MWF Sociology course which killed my 4 day weekend. I don't even need this course, I really wanted a lax term but my parents kept hounding me claiming that unless my schedule was fuller I'd be wasting my time and my life. And so I caved in and added another course to my schedule.

Ian, this course better be the GPA booster you claim it is. I gave up my 4-day weekend for this.

Speech and Language Pathology

I've alluded to the Master's program that I've been eying for a while, and now that I've done a bit of looking into it, I think I can talk about it with a bit of confidence. I'm going to be trying to get into Speech and Language Pathology (as if the title of this post wasn't a dead giveaway).

It's a type of medical therapy and I basically help people with speaking problems. This can range from kids with mental or medical problems, or people who have suffered brain injuries in accidents.

I'm a type of doctor right?

To be honest, I'm really not too picky with what I do. As long as I'm helping someone and it's somehow related to Psychology. I originally got the suggestion from a fellow Psych classmate to enter the field and decided to go to a recent conference held by the department to get a better idea of what it was like.

First thing I notice, there is A LOT of women in Speech Pathology. I mean, there are a lot of women in Psychology to begin with, but it's even disproportionate there. Also, very few Asians. Though it could possibly be because maybe male/Asian speech pathologists don't like conferences? Either way, there was about 100 people there, a dozen males and a dozen Asians.

And only one Asian male, yours truly.

I was there mostly to figure out what I needed to have done in order to get into the program next Fall. First off, I need to do the GRE or Graduate Record Examination. It's a standard test for anyone wanting to get into Graduate studies in many English speaking areas. I'm only required to do the standard one but I've heard a lot of horror stories about the exam in general so not looking forward to that.

I'm also going to need to take Linguistics in the Winter, also haven't heard that many great stories about Linguistics. So fun times with that as well. I didn't think I'd have to keep taking courses after I had gotten my degree but what do I know?

Time to buy more of these.

That is assuming that I get in of course. There were a lot of people at that conference and it's hard to say how many were people trying to get into the program. I'd estimate maybe half of them? There are only 40 spots open a term and it's fairly competitive.

Apparently the minimum GPA requirement changes each year (depending on the students that apply and what not) but last year the minimum was 3.7. I'm sitting at a 3.3, maybe a 3.4? I'm hoping to use the grades from the next two terms to bump it up.

Or maybe they'll let me in because I'm technically a minority in this program. Yay for being the rare Asian male.

If anyone has any suggestions or helpful tips that be great. I think TriGirl is also a Speech Pathologist? And I am vaguely aware of other Bloggers off getting their Masters.

I hope I get in, it be nice having some form of direction once again.

One Month of Classes

So I've been back to University for a month now and I think I have a pretty good run-down of each of my Psychology courses. I'm actually taking nothing but Psychology which is nice even if it is 4 classes crammed onto a single day.

Let's take a look shall we? In alphabetical order:

Aging Psychology

This class, is easy. A lot of it is disorders or events that happen to people as they grow older and how they're affected. Maybe it's just because the class has just started but I find it kind of obvious that if a person has arthritis/incontinence/cataracts, they become more dependent on others and can become depressed by this.

Really, the only thing I've learned from this course so far is that people in nursing homes are often unintentionally jerks, and glare is scary to patients with Alzheimer's. Apparently it looks like water or something to them.

I mean, I finished the midterm in 15 minutes, and then stayed an extra 15 minutes just to be certain of everything. I hope the class stays this easy, and I hope she continues to bake us food for each class.

No problem.

Cognitive Psychology

The exact opposite of Aging Psychology. This course is possibly one of the most dense Psych courses I've ever taken. Every week we are given a quiz on one concept from one the chapters of the textbook.

That's not so bad, except when the text is 50 pages of stuff like this:

The arbitrariness of symbols, and the multiple realization of universal machines, is rooted in the relative notion of universal machine. By definition, a machine is universal if it can simulate any other universal machine (Newell, 1980).

Or:

The phrase marker for a sentence can be illustrated as an upside-down tree whose structure is grown from the root node S (for sentence). The application of the rewrite rule S → NP VP produces the first layer of the Figure 3-6 phrase marker, showing how the nodes NP (noun phrase) and VP (verb phrase) are grown from S.

Or:

In a dissociation, an injury to one region of the brain disrupts one kind of processing, but leaves another unaffected, suggesting that the two kinds of processing are separate, and are associated with different brain areas.

Keep in mind that all of those excerpts were from the same chapter. Cognitive psychology claims it's an interdisciplinary science, so that means that in any given chapter I'm faced with Computing Science, Philosophy, Neuroscience, English grammar, and a sprinkling of Psychology.

Oh and those quizzes I mentioned? Yeah, one random question every week on any one of those concepts. Lots of fun this course.

Conservation Psychology

I'm convinced now that we as a species are doomed. I mean, I knew that there were a lot of problems with how we treated the planet but just seeing how much damage has been done (and how little is being fixed and rectified) is really frightening. I'd need to dedicate an entire blog post to cover everything.

It boils down to humanity is consuming too much, and there are hidden environmental costs to everything we consume. I honestly don't think we can change our mentalities anytime soon but I still have the rest of the course to decide on that.

We're doomed.

Social Influences

Yeah, I don't really have much to say about this class. I also fall asleep the most in this class. I'm not sure if that's more indicative of me or the class itself. Nothing really new has been discussed that hasn't been discussed in my previous classes.

I remain hopeful.

Oops.

And from the looks of things I'll be taking a few more courses in the Winter term. I'm missing a few per-requisites for the Master's program I want to get into so, wish me luck with that as well.

It never ends.

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.

The First Week of Classes

So the first week of classes has begun much to my dismay. No more sitting around and relaxing, nope, it's back to being crammed in a room and time to learn.

It's not all that bad. I'm mostly interested in my classes and they don't seem to strenuous at the moment, all Psychology related. 3 classes on Tuesday and Thursday and 1 class on Wednesday evening. Not bad. Especially considering that Wednesday's class is a lower level Abnormal Psychology course. I took a higher level one a few terms ago so I expected this one to be a breeze.

Maybe I'll just skip class and reuse my old notes.

And then I'm told I shouldn't have been allowed to register for said class.

Yep, turns out that I only got into the course due to some computer glitch. The two courses are essentially the same or something. I'll go talk to someone about this but in the meantime I better find a different course.

I decide to try and fit into another Tuesday/Thursday Psychology course. It didn't seem that amazing or all that special. It's currently full but I'm hoping someone will drop it and I can claim their spot.

And then the prof. mentions that all exams (including the final) are going to be take home.

Yeah, so now I REALLY want to get into this class but who's going to drop it now? It is possible to ask professors to let you into their course and generally they accept.

Unfortunately our class is in this dinky classroom and you're legally not allowed to exceed the max capacity. Fire safety issues and what not. All I can do is hope someone is crazy enough to drop the course so I can steal it.

So I've been brooding over my laptop all week. Constantly checking my email for an opening.

Basically.

I mean, yeah, I could just take any other course BUT I am determined to maintain my 4 day weekend.
And if I get into this class, it means I get Wednesday off too. So it's almost like a 5 day weekend.

I am more than ok with that. 9AM to 6PM twice a week. Feels pretty good.

So wish me luck. One of my Psych buddies Don is thinking of possibly dropping the course and if he does, I'll be on it like a hawk.

The Last Week before Classes

It's hard to believe 4 months of freedom have gone by so quickly. But with just one more week before classes resume I can't say I feel excited.

Theresa already starts on Monday. She has orientation sessions to go to now that she's in Med school. So it's not like I can spend this week with her. It was unfortunate that she spent so much of her summer working but hey, medical school debts aren't going to pay themselves.

Basically.

So I have a week left to myself. And I have a fair idea of what I want to accomplish with the last of my time. I have a project or two I need to finish. Such as the hollow book. Yeah, this one has been on the backburner for a long time. It's almost done but I'm picky and trying to get some of part to look a bit nicer.

There is also a little kit that I got in Hong Kong that I found that I want to get around to doing as well. I'm hoping to get started on it and maybe post my progress on that too. Can't exactly outright say what it is though. It's a little something for Theresa.

What's inside? Only I know!

Speaking of Theresa I wanted to bake her something this week as well. She's fond of red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese. So I'm going to try my hand at those hopefully on Tuesday. Pictures of that potential disaster will be posted.

And I also wanted to take her out for dinner as well. Thing is, I'm not sure whether to take her to a restaurant we've been to before. OR I could risk taking her to some really high-end French restaurant. I never really did do something to congratulate her getting into med school. Though, she kind of dislikes high-end dining because she thinks it's overpriced.

She might kill me but it be worth it.

Lastly, I still have a lot of games to finish. Unfortunately most of them are not going to be beaten in a week. Therefore, a review of Dear Esther, the acclaimed Half Life 2 mod, will be up sometime in the near future.

I've also been reading The Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. They're great books and I'm contemplating giving them a review. However, they're extremely popular and I'm guessing many people have already read and/or watched the series. And I don't generally enjoy talking about things that people already know about, feels kind of redundent.

I am at a part where lots of people are dropping like flies though.

Last thing to note, due to schedule changes I no longer have a 5 day weekend but a 4 day one. It's still pretty good, I can't complain.

Leaves me plenty of time to blog during the term.

A Chain Reaction of Problems

I return for the final term of my Psychology degree in the fall. Then I can finally get a piece of paper and be about 10 grand in debt. Lots of fun to be had. Especially considering I still have no idea what I want to do once I've gotten said degree.

I registered for my courses way back in June before I left for vacation to China. So, imagine my surprise when I returned home and found out that I had been kicked out of all of my courses.

And my program.

Pretty much my expression.

And a few phone calls later, I finally get my answer and the problem.

Anyone who has followed my blog for a few months will remember the problem I had last year. What happened was I didn't have enough courses to stay within my Psychology program. To solve this, several coordinators managed to shove me into 2 courses halfway through the term.

Why did I not have enough courses? Well, I was over the course limit for an Internship program I was trying to get into again. So I reduced my course load to try and get in. But as some of you may know, I didn't get in, and only put my degree at risk.

The reasoning was that if the person in charge let someone into the program that was over the course limit, it challenged the integrity of the program. Some nonsense like that.

Unrelated note, it's also sort of due to that same person that 1/5th of us didn't get an internship the first time around because she took more students than internships.

I imagine I've confused a lot of you right now.

Anyways, it turns out when they were adding my two extra courses, one of them never actually got added. In other words, I was doing all the work for a course I wasn't even registered in. And without that course, I didn't qualify for my program. They kicked me out and that was that.

Good thing I caught it in time. More phone calls later and things are all good. But seriously, it's ridiculous how many problems have been caused all because I wasn't able to get into that Internship program back in 2010.

Enough is enough.

But there is a silver lining to all of this. Due to me having to recreate my schedule, I now now have a 5 day weekend. That's right, a combination of late afternoon/evening courses on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday gives me a very nice schedule.

And I prefer to be able to sleep in, take courses at night. Everything worked out in my favor. So there's that.

The building that Theresa will be taking classes in has a kitchen. Maybe I can drop down one day and cook her lunch.

Or burn the building down.