start of something new...

After 8 days off, school is back in session. Compared to last semester, there is almost no one on campus. It's a little bit weird...oh, and most of the enrolled students that I've seen are men. My classes have a guy-girl ratio that's insane. Like my first class today: 15 people, 4 girls, 9 guys. I haven't had a class that small since AP US History my junior year of high school. I don't remember what the ratio was for that class, though. I think there were 5 boys...I only remember 3 of them for sure because they were annoying. Always jabbering about something, or starting gender wars based on ability to wrestle or chop wood or something.

High school. So glad that's over.

My English Theory (yikes) class is going to be interesting...my professor is funny and seems pretty chill, but he's all about class participation. This will definitely push me out of my comfort zone. I hardly ever make comments in class because I'm of the opinion that most of the things I say cause people to question my acceptance into the university. But whatever. I'm here, and so are they, and "we're AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLL in THIIIIISSS toGEEEEEther," and yes I did just bust out a mid-sentence High School Musical. Which I've never actually seen, by the way.

British Literature 1 is going to be an adventure as well. I knew it the second the professor walked into the room: white and blue checkered button up shirt, lime green tie with light green polka dots, forest green dress pants with a brown belt and gold buckle, gray high top Converse, and when he put his foot on the chair his pants pulled up to reveal red and white striped socks. Add to it the small, pince-nez like glasses and presto! Doctor Hilariously Interesting has arrived.

The people in my class don't know what to do with me. They think I'm weird. I don't know what to do with the people in my class. If they think I'm weird, I think they're all crazy. Seriously...English majors are weird. Not in a bad way, just in a way I've never experienced before. This is a whole new sort of person for me to get used to...they don't get my humor at all, they've never seen any of the movies I quoted. Except for Lord of the Rings, which I mentioned as a joke when the teacher read us "The Finnesburg Fragment," but that turned into a whole class discussion on how Tolkien used his study of the English language to create a world similar to that of the Celts, Saxons, Angles, Jutes. I wasn't being serious. Turns out I hit the nail on the theoretical English head! It's going to be a fun class.

Then there's the internship. I'm thanking my lucky stars that the class has been scheduled for Mondays. It'll totally free up time for me to get hours at work. This internship will be work, too -- much like a part-time job, but I pay to do the work. 10 hours a week, 2 of which are class meetings and 8 of which are learning how to do the actual tutorials in the writing lab. Yay for grants to pay tuition for the credit hours.

PartyLand is still keeping me busy, too. I seriously like that job. Granted, I don't like helping with rentals because there are so many little things that have to be written down and taken care of, and rentals are a huge part of spring/summer business, but other than that it's great. Tracy just hired three new girls, so everything will run super smooth now. PartyLand...completely the opposite of enrollment on campus. While BYU has a prominent amount of testosterone, PartyLand is lacking in everything male. It'll be weird with no guys. Although...maybe we need to recover from Parker...ha, just kidding!

Any dang way, I'm looking forward to being busy. In all seriousness, I'd rather be busy than bored. As long as I can keep my head above water for the next 7-ish weeks, it'll all be just dandy. Bring on the madness! Even though I'm feeling tired just looking at my syllabi. So. Much. Reading.

And honestly, English theory is ridiculous. I'd rather take another stats class. But that's a post for another day when I'm really frustrated instead of just extremely mildly irritated.

PS I got an A- in stats, I'm reasonably sure that I got an A in Religion and an A in Choir, and I have no idea about English or Humanities. Stats grade = I'm buying myself Cafe Rio. Anyone want to go with me?

baby, you've got this...

It's been an interesting Friday-Saturday transition. Yesterday and last night were a bit stressful, but super great. Good friends, good food, good amount of productivity, and good results from said productivity.

Around 3:30 am I woke up with the most awful, awful pain inside that I have ever felt in my life. I haven't cried because of pain for a long time. It was scary to feel so absolutely helpless; I couldn't walk, could barely move! Nothing's wrong according to the medical definition of wrong though, so don't worry.

This morning the pain had mostly faded to a constant, dull throbbing, like when you pull a muscle in your shoulder or neck. It's not too bad, so long as you don't move too fast. So I got up, skipped breakfast because looking at mom's toast made me feel nauseous, grabbed two sharpened pencils, three pieces of paper, my ID card, and prayed that I'd make it through the Stats final without passing out/throwing up.

It sounds dramatic. It kind of was. Meh.

At 11:15 am, the most dreaded exam of my life began. The hall itself was terrifying: that room could probably fit close to (or more than) 600 people. Now I know why people dread having American Heritage in JSB 140 -- you almost get swallowed up in the hugeness of it. Fewer people attended my high school football games!

Luckily it was quieter than a high school football game, and I was happy to find a seat on the end of a row. Immediately I tried to figure out a strategy to not drop all of my stuff (exam packet, bubble sheet, scratch paper, calculator, and pencils) because there truly was no place to put it. The auditorium desks are about two inches longer than an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper and maybe an inch wider. Not the best desk to take any sort of exam on. Strategy finalized (haha), I sat down to take the odious Departmental Statistics final.

But I didn't dread it so much after I finished the first page and realized there was no way I could have missed any of those questions. Despite the awkward, abyss-like feeling of the auditorium, the constant whispering shuffle of hundreds of exam papers, the cramped confines of my paper size desk, the dull pain in my body, and the ache in my head from a sleepless night, I knew that stuff. At 12:30 pm I walked out of the auditorium, trying to be afraid of my score, but I just knew I'd done better than what I was hoping for (a C). And guess what?

I ACED that sucker.
90%, my friends. Nine-zero, a straight up A- on the exam I have heard nothing but horror stories about. I could barely (still can barely) fathom the fact that I didn't fail that final. When I saw my ID number next to the 90%, I actually started laughing. The girl who'd scanned in my test smiled and said, "It's a good feeling, isn't it?"

It is indeed a good feeling. So is going home and sleeping from 1 pm to 5 pm without waking up once.

2 finals down, 2 to go. After that, three days in St. George with two of my favorite girls in the world. Bring on English and Humanities!

PS Prayer WORKS, people. If you've done all you can do, and worked as hard as you can despite your limitations, the Lord WILL help you. Give him a shot. He'll give you a miracle.

your null hypothesis is no good...

My English teacher gave us an assignment to create an annotated bibliography and literary review of our sources for our research papers that are due near the end of March. We were (are) to
1. find 15 sources, 5 background and 10 contemporary
2. perfectly cite all sources in MLA format
3. add an annotation to each source explaining why it provides evidence for our thesis statement/argument
4. write a literary review explaining how our sources "talk to each other" in the scholarly conversation that we are entering with our topic

Estimated time of completion: 6-8 hours, to be handed in one week from the date assignment was given

15 hours of studying later, I'm thinking that my professor's hypothesis of 6-8 hours of work on this assignment is, in fact, off.

Yes, I did put it off until the last three days (I have good reasons...they're just kind of personal and stupid). However, it's taking me a lot longer than I feel like it should.

Based on what I've learned this semester, my professor's Ho, or null hypothesis of Ho: mu = 8hrs can be countered with an alternative hypothesis, Ha: mu > 8hrs.

Do I want to talk to all of my classmates and find out the mean of our research and preparation time? Yes, in fact, I do. Do I actually have time to do it? H-freakin' no. I still have to write the literary review and read for Stats and read for Humanities and write in the solfege on my music for choir (I'm still the only one in that class who can't sight read solfege and it makes me feel ridiculously stupid awesome. Personally I think solfege is ridiculous. There are words for a reason. All I ever needed to know about "do, re, mi" I learned from The Sound of Music).

Oh, b the dub: hazelnut hot chocolate is good. Really good. I already knew that, but after today, it's been reaffirmed. That's a null hypothesis I can believe! Not that the equation actually applies here but...whatever.