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.

End of Term Update 2

Hey, for once I have something worth talking about. Unfortunately I have about half a dozen things due this week (half on Tuesday, the other half on Thursday) so the time it takes to write up about whats been going on is being spent working.

Yeah, more all nighters. I haven't even had time to publish comments yet (thanks to everyone who's been dropping by!) but I should be safe by Wednesday.

See everyone then.

Nothing Substantial

Yeah. Nothing interesting going on. Just more work and more studying.

A blog post will go up when something worth while happens that doesn't involve papers or other academic nonsense. My life gets pretty boring when school takes over.

Here's a picture of a corgi driving a car. I'll see you guys when I see you guys. Will try and visit everyone when I have a spare moment.

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.

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.

Well this isn't good.

I thought I'd be more on top of things but maybe I got a bit overconfident. This post is a day late, I haven't been doing my rounds and I need to get back to studying.

This is what I looked like yesterday before I passed out.

And no, I'm not kidding. My head tilted back and I was out cold in a chair with a textbook in my lap, laptop with blogger to my left, and my desktop with more work in front. Clearly I wasn't going to get much more work done so when I woke up I dragged my sorry butt to bed.

I might be getting sick. It also might be Theresa's fault but you didn't hear that from me.

Even when you're full of germs.

I have a midterm, an assignment, and another quiz due for Thursday. I need to get back to studying so proper post Friday and I'll hopefully visit everyone else's blogs by then.

Yay, University.

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.

New Year, New Term

I head back to class tomorrow. Really not looking forward to it. I didn't get to spend that much time with my girlfriend Theresa due to conflicting work shifts and other scheduling issues. My backlog of computer games is still massive and I don't like the idea of being unable to sleep in anymore.

This dog has no idea how lucky he is.

And how did I fare last term? Kind of odd actually. I found my Abnormal Psychology course to be interesting, the exams were picky but easy. My Developmental Psychology course I found was stupid and I messed up a lot of the earlier assignments due to careless errors.

So imagine my surprise when I did quite well in Developmental and completely screwed up Abnormal.

I don't even know what to say.

So this term I'm taking a course in Memory, another Developmental Psychology course, and more research. I'm really struggling with research as nothing I'm doing is working at the moment. The next stage of our experiment has been delayed for way too long but nothing I do seems to be working.

In the meantime I still need to send an appeal for that internship. Why is this internship so important to me? Several reasons. I want to get into grad school but thanks to a disastrous third year I'm not going anywhere fast.

There are two options for me: First would be to graduate and then do a 5th year to hopefully compensate for the third. This, isn't so great. I'm kind of tired of classes, losing money to tuition and studying for exams.

The second would be the internship. Work for a year, get money, experience, etc.. More importantly, there have been people in the past with much worse GPAs than me who got into grad school after they completed their respective internships. Coincidence? I think not.

Or it might be time for me to take off my tin foil hat.

Wish me luck, I don't think many people have read my first post and why I started this blog. But I think I know what I want to do now.

And getting this internship will make it that much easier for me.

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.

Financial Situation (Part 2)

Thank you for the suggestions for savings costs such as the online textbooks. I haven't had any luck with the sites I've used in the past but maybe this year will be different. And while the money earned by being a male escort would be great (as suggested by Mr. Soccer Picks with his awesome dino drawings) I don't think anyone likes borderline anorexic Asian males.

 Unless you're Korean. They can't get their men thin enough.

In the meantime, money for me will probably come from one of these sources:

• This blog

Google isn't afraid to use this. This section has been modified appropriately I believe.

EDIT: Mr. Islander (as well as many others) suggest completely removing this section just to be safe. It has been done.

EDIT: There have been suggestions of a donation button on this blog but that feels wrong, the fact that you guys are even reading this blog is enough and I don't think I should be asking for more.

•  Scholarships:

Unfortunately I messed up a year of University so that removes me from a lot of the prestigious scholarships that people put on their resumes and applications. But if you're me, you don't care, you just want the money.

Which is why I'm going to try and apply for scholarships that no one has ever heard about or even bother applying for. In fact, I'm going to try and do what a friend of a friend of mine did a few years back and apply for Aboriginal scholarships.

I could totally pass for a Native American.

What my friend's friend did was submit a fake application to one of these foundations as a joke. This guy is completely Caucasian and a month later he received a cheque for $5000. Why? Because the foundation hadn't had an applicant in over 5 years and they wanted to get rid of the money before they got taxed for it.

If I have any success with this, I'll let you guys know. Feel free to try it out yourself, what's the worst that can happen?

• Investing

I've read a lot of investing blogs lately such as Jammer's and I've actually always wanted to give it a try. You know, trading stocks and what not. Yes it's high risk, yes there is a chance I could make nothing from it but I've been doing some research and I've come to a few conclusions as to why people sometimes lose so much.

It appears to me that a lot of people don't do their research on stocks, instead, they rely on tips from friends or enthusiastic news reports and then dump a chunk of their money into a stock without a second thought. To makes things worse, they don't bother checking up on said stocks, reducing opportunities to make a profit or reduce losses.

Either that or they don't ever sell their stocks, becoming attached to them. The purposing of stocks is to sell them at a higher price than you bought them for. Other times people are too greedy and hold onto their stocks even after they could make a considerable profit.

So in theory, if I avoid these pitfalls I should do ok. I'm not here to become a day trader, if I make a few extra bucks a month that be great.

But if this happens I won't complain.

So that's my plan for now besides working part-time at a fast food restaurant. These ideas appeal to me because of the lack of time I have due to classes. You guys are more than welcome to offer your opinions as you probably have more experience than me. Most comments are quite helpful and very much appreciated. Except the spammers, I hate you guys.

Speaking of classes, I start tomorrow so off to be for me.

Financial Situation (Part 1)

Ok, classes resume on Wednesday for me. Fortunately I've been able to get my parents to cover for my tuition for this term because I've barely got a grand left in the bank. And the sad thing is that most of that grand will be spent on textbooks which CONVENIENTLY have had the prices raised. Again.

The used ones are probably outdated by now too.

I'll be working part-time at my fastfood job but due to time needed to study I'll only be making about $200 a month. But then I have expenses that need to be taken care of. I'm the kind of guy that likes to plan and ahead and prepare. I have blog posts stored in my head, half written (or actually half typed out in advance), I do things like buy presents way months early and store them in my closet, you get the idea. But due to having no money I can't exactly do that now can I?

 I'd starve if it weren't for my parents.

I have considered 3 other forms of potential income given my current situation, but I'll share those in my next blog post. I've gotten a mild cold in the summer of all times, I need to to try out a device to hopefully help with my sleeping (I'll post pictures later) and based on feedback on the last post I'll guess I'll keep doing what I'm doing. Thanks again, and feel free to suggest anything at anytime. I'm open to suggestions.

Why Medical School Might Not be the Best

I think almost everyone is aware of the stereotype that all Asians are forced to be become doctors or risk being shunned by their families forever. Fortunately, my parents aren't batshit crazy and actually respect what I want to go into (whatever that'll turn out to be). But for a while, I actually wanted to go into Medical school like most of my peers. But after a while, I wasn't so sure anymore.

Well the first problem was my grades. My GPA isn't exactly the most pristine thing anymore after a terrible 3rd year. I hear that I could get into a Medical school in the Caribbean but I can't stand heat or humidity and it be extremely expensive. Like tens of thousands of dollars a year. And I didn't get a job so either parents pay (which doesn't feel right) or I get a loan (which kills me later on).

Not so appealing now, are you?

But if I were to get into Med school here in Canada, the costs aren't much better. My friend Geoff who recently got in has to pay a confirmation fee of $1000. My confirmation fee was $175. He has to pay over ten thousand a year. And it would probably be double that if he was living by himself. And no one becomes a doctor in just one year. If I'm correct, 4 years to be a General Practitioner and ~5 years for most specializations? I heard it's even more expensive in the states though so I guess I can't complain.

And there's another thing, time. From Elementary to High School that's 13 years. If I were to enter Med School that's easily another 9 years on top of the 4 years of University I've completed to get my degree. I'd be in my 30's when I'd be done, using my 20's to do more studying. I don't think that's how I want to remember spending my young adult years.

Sadly enough, this is what I mostly remember doing as a child.

Fine, let's cut that down by half a decade and just become a General Practitioner instead. It wouldn't be so bad, recent study suggests that these guys have the most job satisfaction. But another study also reveals (in just my city) that over 90% of them encounter verbal and/or physical abuse from their clients. And the stress is also ridiculous. I remember my old family doctor actually was forced to take a 3 week vacation after he suffered a nervous breakdown.

But it be ok right? Doctors make a ton of money. Yes, yes they do. Except they're usually too busy to do anything with it until they're retired. I heard of a world-renown doctor who traveled all over the world to attend conferences and give speeches. Guess who spent his money? His wife, who traveled with him and would shop while he would give his seminars.

She was probably pretty happy.

One last thing would be corruption. Yes, it exists even within Medicine. I actually only have one clear example and to be honest, it's kind of scary. There was a head surgeon around here, 20 years at a hospital who spoke out against something.

They got rid of him immediately. 20 years at a hospital and without a second thought he was gone.

I remember the complaints and articles in the paper, people being confused but it caused me to wonder. What else is happening in our hospitals that is being repressed? I'm sure that newer doctors are seeing flaws and problems in the system but they're forced to stay quiet. I mean, if even a senior doctor can be sacked so easily I'm sure they'd have no problem with anyone else.

It's ok, there are plenty more where he came from.

But you know what? If for some unlikely, insane and miraculous reason I got accepted into Med school, I'd probably take it. I know about the problems and horrors and yet I'd still freely hurl myself into this. Why? Because at least it be something. I still don't know what I'm going to do with myself after I graduate.

And the thought of any secure job opportunities is enough for me to go through all that nonsense.

A Change of Plans

Well, I finally heard back from the job interview and as it turns out, I didn't get the job.

Oh well.

They were nice about it though, and even sent me an email apologizing for not accepting me but guess what they were looking for? Someone who already had a considerable amount of experience/education for the position.

And what was my reason for going after this job? To gain experience in an area in which I had none. So obviously I'm not going to have any experience to start with. I was kind of screwed before I even applied.

Herp derp.

So I'm a bit of a bind here, I'm heading off to another year of classes, with limited funds, limited work experience and then to graduate with barely any idea of what to do with my degree. The job was to delay all of the above for a year as well as alleviate some of them but we saw how well that went.

I'm currently trying to get into either an Organic Chem or Economics course to fill up my schedule and I don't care which one I get, I can always take the other one in the winter term. As embarrassing as it is I managed to get my parents to pay for my tuition this year because I wasn't able to find a stable summer job this year either.

It's hard being a student.

So this will be kind of exciting and hectic I guess. I have even less time to figure out what to do with myself on top of attending another year of classes. For the first time in years I have to restrict myself to a budget and watch every penny I spend (normally I have a decent surplus from a summer job to spend during the school year).

So I'm just going to charge in to the next school year and hopefully work something out. Again, not sure what I can really do with just a Science degree so maybe Grad School is a possible solution? Any suggestions are welcome, I'm really open to anything other than becoming a bum.

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.