The Final Week

I'm still alive. By some stroke of luck I haven't collapsed or gone insane like some of my fellow peers but more on that later.

So, from these two posts you can tell I've had my work cut out for me. Well as I mentioned before my workload had suddenly tripled. Some of you may remember my research problems, numerous technical errors and other small problems impeding the project. Good news is that I finally fixed everything and was able to start running people through it.

The bad news was I had 4 days left until the end of the term and I still needed 15 hours worth of data to go through. This required me to stay on Campus until 8PM several times. Plus there was the day that I forgot my key, and the day that the printer stopped working. Tons of fun little disruptions.

This also stole time away from the rest of my work. And if you know anything about me, I compensate for less time, by not resting.

And babies and dead people.

But that's not all! I realized that on the same Wednesday my papers were due I had not only a presentation to prepare for, but I was also expected to lead a discussion on a paper for a seminar. Things were not looking good for me.

I am pretty good at BS'ing my way through things. It's one of my few talents. But there's a limit to how much I can pull off. And on that cold Wednesday morning, April 11th, I was staring at a computer screen and realizing I had hit that limit. There was no way I could prepare for both presentations and papers even if I pulled another all-nighter. Scrambling for a solution I began reading through syllabi, hoping for some of salvation.

And then I saw it.

Developmental Paper Due Friday April 13.

Friday 13.

Friday. 

 

This was pretty much my expression.

I had got the due date wrong, I had more time than I anticipated. And with this new information I focused on my other work. It gave me enough time to focus on my other paper and the two presentations. All in all, I thought that Wednesday went fairly well. Well, as well as a day can go when you have that many things to do and turn in.

At the moment I'm finishing up my last paper. I have everything planned out it's just a matter of putting it altogether in a coherent fashion. If I'm lucky, I might be able to go to bed soon and sneak in 2 hours of sleep before class.

But another unexpected problem popped up. Who remembers the friend that I had that probably had some form of mental problem? The guy who was possibly doing and saying a lot of things for attention seeking purposes? Well he's back and crazier than ever. And not in a good way.

Seriously dude, go back to your therapist. There's nothing I can do for you anymore.

So I walk into class, Yu comes to sit beside me and goes "Hey man, Damian look at this."

He rolls up his sleeves and all over his arms are these cuts and slashes. He's written words like FOCUS and A++++ all over his forearms. And I'm sitting there in disbelief, I mean, this is what Junior High kids do to themselves, not 4th year University students ready to graduate.

And when I ask how he's doing it, he reaches into his bag and pulls out... 

A scalpel. Like, the kind of scalpel that a surgeon would use.

And then here's where it gets even better. He starts cutting himself. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LECTURE. 

Just. Why.

So I'm sitting there, trying to concentrate on what the prof is saying while Yu is sitting beside me, wincing in pain as he's slicing his arms up. At one point he even goes "Hey man, here you go." And dumps a chunk of skin in front of my laptop.

I tried my best to ignore him but inside I'm starting to panic a bit. I half expected him to go feral and start stabbing me. And I hope no one dares ask why I didn't try to take the scalpel away from him (which he claims came from his Anatomy class). Would you want to try and wrestle a sharp object from a potentially deranged person? No? Neither would I.

For whatever reason, he also decided to make a Facebook status update inbetween his cutting sessions. Something along the lines of "SOS, someone on campus help me please!". And well, he got his help. Some people responded and due to mutual friends I managed to get a group of people to escort Yu to some mental health clinic. I couldn't go with him, I had research stuff to do.

But what really caused me to shake my head was as Yu left, he turned to me and said:

"Yo Damian, my arms really hurt.".

GEE. I WONDER WHY.

(I cannot wait for this term to end.)

Another Improper Post.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure most of you know about the papers I have due at the moment. Turns out I underestimated how much work I need to do because my workload literally just tripled.

And for whatever reason, almost EVERYTHING is due on Wednesday. If I can survive past Wednesday the rest of this term is a cakewalk for me.

I'll let you guys know if I survived on Thursday. See you then.

Final Papers Post

Yeah, normally around the end of April I start to panic because of finals. This is normal, fairly standard student behavior.

This year is different. This year, I get to start panicking at the beginning of April and not because of exams but because of papers.

Tons upon tons upon tons of papers.

And they're all due soon.

The sad thing is that this is probably pretty close to how much I have to read and write combined.

I know I've mentioned the paper Hell that I've been in but I've never gone into too much depth as to what I'm writing. Well, I actually have papers due for all of my courses. They are as follows:

Research paper for my research project.
Research paper for a small study we did in another class.
Paper about theories on memory.
Paper about what I did for a research class.
3 bonus mark research papers.

The worst part is searching up things to talk about and discuss.

The two big ones are due next week and the rest are due at the end of the term. But those two papers are both really big ones that I have to write, probably at least 10 pages of dense numbers, charts, graphs and data analysis. And that's not including looking up other research papers to quote and back up what I'm saying. I'm really not looking forward to writing these especially since I've barely started.

And just because the others are due later shouldn't be reason for me to relax. Those are due roughly when I have my final exams. So the sooner I get those out of the way, the better. You know, so I have more time to study.

Seriously, that might be the only good thing. If I can get these papers out of the way quickly, my workload is significantly reduced at the end. I only have 2 finals this term, everything else is papers.

Sort of a silver lining I guess.

So that's how I'll be spending my Easter weekend. Not relaxing but doing papers. I'm already spending half of it on campus working on my research projects. It sucks, it really does. Having to wake up early to do more work.

There better be a ton of discount Easter chocolate after this chaos is over. I might be male, but that doesn't mean I don't like gorging myself on sugar and fat.

I could go for a box of these right now...

Too Tired to Think

Computer issues are solved temporarily (a.k.a. reduce overheating by turning it on its side) but I think it's best that I take my laptop in for repairs or something after the term. I don't think computers are supposed to shut down due to being too hot.

Nah, I just worry too much.

But lately I haven't been sleeping. No, not just to sleep apnea but thanks to school work. Due to technical issues with my research project I've had to redo various things over and over and over. I've probably wasted over 20 hours with just one portion of it. It doesn't help that I suck at Photoshop.

Oh, and there are still other parts of the experiment that I need to get done that have only been further delayed by these problems. The end of the term is coming and I've barely made any progress at all. It's infuriating and I'm wasting my nights redoing things.

KILL ME NOW.

And then we have the endless reading, writing, editing and presenting of papers. I've been staying up all night doing these things as well. I'd like to think that my writing ability improves as I become more sleep-deprived but that's probably the crazy part of my brain doing the talking.

The sad thing is that my body is reaching it's limits. I can't recall the last time I was fully rested and I'm forcing myself to stay up even later. I've been trying to get by with powernaps but even with those I'm still passing out, essays half-written and papers barely skimmed.

I use way too many of these images.

A plus side to staying up all-night? I actually wake up in time for breakfast. Ok, technically I didn't "wake up" but now I'm able to make myself something respectable for a meal. You know, instead of eating nothing like I usually do.

I'm not sure if anyone else notices but toast in diners and restaurants always taste different. It tastes better than using the toaster at home. And for years I couldn't figure out why but apparently what they do is they fry it in a pan instead of using a toaster. And when I tried this for myself at home it tasted just like I ordered it at some place.

Now I refuse to eat toast at home in any other way. Butter in the pan, fry for a minute on both sides, butter the toast, and eat. I don't care that it's way more effort to do it this way, the buttery goodness is worth it.

Damian, 10 years from now.

Tonight, I've had enough. I'm going to sleep after this post. And I'm going to try and enjoy it before the next wave of school related crap comes to try and kill me.

Also, this post wasn't written in advance. So I'm hoping that everything I just typed was coherent and grammatically correct.

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.

Holiday Aftermath

If you've read the comments I've left on most of your blogs you probably know by now that my Christmas weekend was pretty uneventful. No really, all I did was spend a few quiet days with family and many hours with my computer.

Come towards the light Damian...

Theresa was busy all weekend so I wasn't able to see her. Luckily I anticipated this and gave her her gifts early which included a hoodie, some TF2 cellphone charms, various games from the Steam Holiday sale and the third volume of popular webcomic.

Myself? I don't expect to receive anything big. Friends got me a lot of games and a foam Minecraft pickaxe, I don't expect anything from my siblings until February (April if I'm unlucky), parents gave me cash and I treated myself to more games.

Thank you Dear for this one.

So, what am I going to do for the rest of the break? Hopefully see as many old friends as possible and take Theresa out on as many dates as I possibly can. Let's hope her boss doesn't keep scheduling her to work for ENTIRE WEEKS. Seriously, she's busy all the time during the school year, give her a break when she has a break.

In the meantime I have more research stuff to do. That paper isn't going to edit itself and neither is that experiment. Gah, I'm so sick of technical errors at this point. Hopefully I'll get things figured out before the term starts again.

Really want to do this to some of the computers at the lab.

I know the rest of you had a relatively more exciting Christmas holiday than me. If all goes well maybe I can get to work on some other things this break and not be a complete waste of waste. There are some recipes I need to try as well as a DIY project I've been eying.

But the computer games, they beckon.

Probably what I'll end up doing.

End of Term!

It's a bit hard to believe but the end of the Fall semester is finally coming to an end as of tomorrow. Are you excited? I'm excited. Remember when I said I could be a massive waste of space? Well what better way to accomplish that then during the Christmas break.

Video games forever!

But we still have a few obstacles to overcome before that can happen. First, we have research related things. I've got two papers to finish up. One is simply a review of everything that I've done this term. Nothing too difficult. It's half typed up, just needs some cleaning and I think I'll be good.

The other paper is much more important. My prof believes that we have enough data and believable results so we can publish. My name will be on that paper and that would go a long ways in impressing people in the future I think. Not something a lot of undergrads can say they have.

And now she won't be the only one!

I also need to finalize some details on the next experiment that we'll be running next term. Unfortunately I've been running into a lot of technical problems so wish me luck as I work on that.

And then we have the finals for my Psychology courses. They're spread pretty far apart so I think I'll be ok. It'll give me plenty of time to study and review. And best of all, I don't have multiple exams on the same day.

I'm going to keep this post short, I really should get started with studying. I don't know what to think of this video. It's not animal abuse but I'm not sure why the cat likes it so much.

Where I'm at Now

Long time readers will know I started this blog way back in August because I had no idea what I was doing with myself or my degree. And to be honest, I still don't really have a clear idea of what I'm going to do.

Remember when I tried to get a job? Yeah, that didn't work out too well. So much for delaying things for another year to buy me more time to figure out what to do. So, clearly the smart thing to do would be to try and find another job right away at the first opportunity.

What?

Hear me out. See, there's a Psychology Internship program that my University offers that would be awesome if I could get in. For one year, you'd work with other psychologists, get valuable field experience AND get paid at the same time.

Plus it be a really good break after so many non-stop years of classes. Jobs range anywhere from research to medical to judicial. Each year the co-coordinator contacts a ton of interested organizations and then students contact them and arrange for interviews.

What could possibly go wrong?

Brilliant.

Well for starters, I'm a 4th year student, this is a program for 3rd year people. No problem, no problem, they make exceptions.

To people who have not exceeded the course credit limit.

I exceeded that limit last term.

BUT if you can make a compelling case they sometimes will even make an exception for people in this category as well. I talked to a few people and thanks to my multiple interview failures I am now "more experienced in interviews" and I've done more research so more "research experience" is also a good thing to tell them.

If only it were like this.

Sadly, I won't be able to know the department will make an exception for me or not until January. Also, if I decide to do the internship I can't graduate in April. Also, also, I need to start talking with other co-coordinators to figure out my Winter schedule to improve my chances.

If I can get this internship I have a chance at getting a job somewhere that I've always dreamed of. But no comment on that yet, don't want to jinx myself. Let's see if I can even get accepted for the internship program to start with.

Research Symposiums are Time Consuming

Some of you may have noticed my lack of comments this week and I apologize for that. I've been busy preparing for a research symposium that was held today. Basically, I had to polish and refine a poster that boils down all the research I've done and present it to anyone interested.

And pray I won't be like this the entire time.

I won't go into the details of my research. It's not the most amazing or interesting stuff in the world. Just investigation into how a particular memory technique might work. What is more interesting (in my mind) is the work that went into the poster.

I ran into a few complications such as graphs that didn't work properly, Powerpoint being a pain in the butt and not working properly, being tired and my brain not working properly, you get the idea. All this leads to me being forced to submit my poster for printing on the night before and then having to run out in freezing weather to pick it up.

Had I sent the poster even one day earlier, I could have saved my hands and face from our harsh Canadian winters.

Forgive me exposed flesh.

And then when I get around to setting up my poster, there are a few graphical errors. Not sure how my prof, supervisors and myself missed that, I suspect it may have been due to a cropping issue when they printed my poster but no time to fix it.

Did I mention that there would be judges? Yeah, judges came around to talk to you about your posters, assign you a grade so hopefully you'd win an award later that afternoon. 15 minutes after I notice the poster errors I get my first judge.

And already I'm stuttering and explaining things in a confusing manner.

Seriously, this isn't the first time I've discussed this material, it shouldn't be this difficult. Fortunately, things get better and I'm somewhat more coherent with my other two judges.

Unfortunately however, I didn't win anything (I blame this on the first judge). My friend Adrian however got $250 for having the best poster in physics for his work on string theory. Ah well, at least I presented something. These types of events are always good to tack onto a resume.