Song of the Moment

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Showing posts with label terrible ideas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terrible ideas. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Epic fail

'Tis a sad story indeed that I share with you tonight.  Our first exam was last Friday, and it went well for many people.  Alas, I am not included in the privileged group of "many people."  That's right, I have failed my first test ever.  While I'm not proud of the fact, I am glad that it was only by 4 point (got 66%), and I can't say that it was totally unexpected.

My study habits were not up to snuff--in fact, I hardly studied at all during my first two weeks of class.  This resulted in four days of crazy cramming, which (obviously) did not do the job.  So I had to meet with an academic advisor today and we made a game plan (or rather, she wrote down the plan that I had already formulated before I knew about said meeting).  I have already been doing much better this week with the new unit, and will continue to implement my improved study skills and discipline for next week and onwards.  I also plan to spend about half an hour per day studying stuff from that first unit so that I'll be ready for the remediation after Thanksgiving weekend.

So, word to the wise: give your course material the time that it needs, even if you don't think it needs it.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

The Little Walk That Turned Into a Big Walk

So tonight we decided to take a little walk to the nearest branch of our public library.  This is the approximate route we planned to take (approximate because the starting point isn't actually our home address, but it gives a good enough idea of routes and distances):


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So yeah, 1.7 miles and half an hour each way.  However, it turns out that we don't know those neighborhoods very well (especially on foot), and we didn't have a GPS with us, nor did we print out a map or write out any sort of directions.  So this is the the route we actually took to get there (scroll up a little so that the whole blue line is visible--it's not wanting to default to a good view):


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Yup, 3.9 miles and almost an hour and a half.  After we had walked so far south, we called the library to ask for directions.  And then turned around and walked the other way for a while.  We finally made it to the library with the DVDs we had checked out last week.  We had 15 minutes until the library closed to browse the shelves for more stuff to watch, and then began our trek home.  Rather than taking the direct route (whoops), this is how we came home:


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Yup, 2.2 miles.  And that was .5 miles more than it would have been if we had followed Jess' suggestion to turn left on Greensview instead of right.  Alas, my directional sense failed me tonight (where are you, mountains?) and I lengthened our expedition.  In order to pass the time, Jess had me tell her scary stories (because we were walking through dark neighborhoods without streetlights--what??).  The first was about large amounts of student loan debt.  The second was based on a story told around the campfire at scout camp by a good buddy of mine.  It was about a creepy dude named Stubbs, who lost his limbs from being run over by a train, then grew extremely long nails / claws out of those stubs.  He runs around on all fours and is just in general a scary character.

So our trip that was supposed to be about 3.4 miles total and a little over an hour and a half turned into a 6 mile journey that took three and a half hours.  Yikes.