(no subject)
Bowling Green is eating my soul.
Seriously, grad school is really draining. I can't sleep, even though I covered my window with a really dark curtain to block out the light from the streetlight outside my window. I still take about two hours to fall asleep each night... it's such a waste of time. I'm apparently an awful teacher. I spend so much time being an awful teacher that I'm having a hard time keeping up with reading and such. My apartment is kinda a mess no matter how much I clean it. There's only so much space for things when your room is only *measures real quick* about 10' x 11'. I don't really know how to cook, so I eat a lot of microwave meals. Which is not healthy. At least I've been drinking juice and eating veggie chips thanks to Joe. (Seriously, go check out Flat Earth veggie chips, they're amazing. Do it now...) At least my crappy roommate has moved out and left me with just the two nice roommates.
When I first moved in a month ago, there was a girl from China who lived here, she was quiet and kept mostly to herself (like me), and also a girl with a five-month old child, henceforth known as babygirl. Obviously, she didn't make a good impression on me, since she doesn't even get a capitalized nickname. Baby was actually ok, I felt sorry for the little bugger, since her mom was so crazy. This girl would keep talking even after I walked away and shut the door to my teeny room. About nothing. All the freakin' time. Gah. babygirl (can't even bring myself to capitalize that at the beginning of a sentence...) some days left the baby on the couch sleeping. Not cool. Anyways, the baby was taken away from her (no big surprise) and she moved out finally last Friday, not before complaining loudly about how her rights had been violated when they took away the baby. Girl from China moved out this week, leaving me and Josephine (who is from Nigeria and reminds me of my first roommate ever, Rachel) and Alanna (who is a painting major, kinda hippie-ish, but super nice). So at least the apartment thing is looking up.
I am taking four classes this semester, plus piano lessons and two classes that I teach for my assistantship. I didn't pass any of my placement tests, so I have to take remedial Music Theory and History classes. Kinda sucks, because I know I learned all this stuff before, I just didn't get a chance to study for the placement tests since I was busy working and such all summer... Or something like that... So in addition to those two classes, I have a Chamber Music Literature class and one in Research Methods. Chamber Music Lit. and my History review class are both taught by this really nice lady from Greece, Dr. Papanikolau (sp. not 100%?). My theory class, lol, is taught by a guy that I'm pretty sure was either a used car salesman or a revivalist preacher in some former life. Seriously. That's just what Dr. T reminds me of. And yes, we do call him Dr. T, all of my Edinboro-ites, that's a theory prof. named Dr. T... I take piano lessons with Not-yet-a-doctor Winston Choi. Who is nice so far, he's having me practice major scales (for technique), a Bach three-part invention (sinfonia) and a pretty famous Brahms piece. I'm apparently not allowed to touch any of the grand pianos upstairs in the music building since I am not a piano major. Piano majors get keys to the grand practice rooms, I am left searching for a piano that doesn't rattle, isn't too loud or too soft and actually has pedals that I can control in some usable fashion. As a side note, have I mentioned how much I love Firefox's spell check function. It's so nice to have my mistakes underlined in little red dots so that I'll fix them in my blog.
The two classes I teach are... interesting. I teach just on Thursdays, my supervisor is in charge of the Tuesday lectures. He came to observe my class last Thursday and basically told me that I am a sucky teacher. Which was not surprising to me, since this is the first time I've ever taught EVER, and I don't really feel like I'm getting a lot of help with what exactly I'm supposed to be doing in class. I suppose I've really been making a lot of presentations for the last three weeks of lectures. Presentations =/= teaching apparently. -_- I just wish he would be more supportive and actually give me some sort of direction as to how to teach this material. Gah.
So I guess the best thing about BG is...?
I enjoy working, sort of. I had my Cinemark job transferred to the teeny Woodland Mall Cinemas here in BG. Five screens, one box office/concession stand, a staff of... 10? Definitely a lot different from Erie, lol. Everyone I work with is pretty nice so far, I wouldn't consider them friends, but they are friendly co-workers, so that's really a big plus. I was kinda worried they wouldn't schedule me very much, but I got two days this weekend, so I'm happy. Sometimes it seems like the movie theater thing is the only thing I'm good at, though I'm not even great at that, since I really only had experience in box or usher at home and out here we do everything. The 'mall' the theater is in is kind of a joke. The locals call it the 's'mall,' and it only has like 10 stores... a shoe store, an Elder Beerman, a Steve and Barry's, a Sears that only sells appliances, a teeny food court... It's even smaller than the Ashtabula Mall.
My office is interesting too. I share it with nine other grad students, though we only really see six of them, three not counting myself actually do a lot of work/sitting in the office. There are five tables and ten chairs in the office, one phone line, and up until the beginning of this week, only one port for internet. Thank goodness someone had the sense to buy a switch so we can all connect now. Makes things a little better. I only have to hang out in the office for two 'office hours' a week, which I use for homework and reading, since no students actually come to office hours. I did have one call the office this week, which was kind of a surprise. I spend a fair amount of time there between classes though, since it's a good place to keep things and to do homework. I have made friends with John, a horn player from LA, and Janet, a violist from Hong Kong. I'm not really close enough with anyone in the music department to consider them friends yet, but those I've spent the most time in the company of those two sheerly by being in the office at the same time.
I went home last weekend. Had a fantastic time visiting with friends in the 'Boro, spent much of Saturday with Zara (yay!), saw my boyfriend (lots of yay!), spent Sunday with my family, and even went to lunch with my fam. and Matt before coming back here on Monday afternoon. Really didn't want to come back out here, when I pulled off of I-75 at the Bowling Green exit, I just had this pit of anxiety in my stomach. I seriously thought I was going to throw up. Could have been hunger since I hadn't eaten really anything but pretzels and Coke for the four hour drive from home, but I really felt a sense of foreboding about this week. This place just really makes me feel like I'm not good enough to be here. And that is terrifying...
Stupid SkyBank still hasn't sent me my debit card for my account with them.
Seriously, grad school is really draining. I can't sleep, even though I covered my window with a really dark curtain to block out the light from the streetlight outside my window. I still take about two hours to fall asleep each night... it's such a waste of time. I'm apparently an awful teacher. I spend so much time being an awful teacher that I'm having a hard time keeping up with reading and such. My apartment is kinda a mess no matter how much I clean it. There's only so much space for things when your room is only *measures real quick* about 10' x 11'. I don't really know how to cook, so I eat a lot of microwave meals. Which is not healthy. At least I've been drinking juice and eating veggie chips thanks to Joe. (Seriously, go check out Flat Earth veggie chips, they're amazing. Do it now...) At least my crappy roommate has moved out and left me with just the two nice roommates.
When I first moved in a month ago, there was a girl from China who lived here, she was quiet and kept mostly to herself (like me), and also a girl with a five-month old child, henceforth known as babygirl. Obviously, she didn't make a good impression on me, since she doesn't even get a capitalized nickname. Baby was actually ok, I felt sorry for the little bugger, since her mom was so crazy. This girl would keep talking even after I walked away and shut the door to my teeny room. About nothing. All the freakin' time. Gah. babygirl (can't even bring myself to capitalize that at the beginning of a sentence...) some days left the baby on the couch sleeping. Not cool. Anyways, the baby was taken away from her (no big surprise) and she moved out finally last Friday, not before complaining loudly about how her rights had been violated when they took away the baby. Girl from China moved out this week, leaving me and Josephine (who is from Nigeria and reminds me of my first roommate ever, Rachel) and Alanna (who is a painting major, kinda hippie-ish, but super nice). So at least the apartment thing is looking up.
I am taking four classes this semester, plus piano lessons and two classes that I teach for my assistantship. I didn't pass any of my placement tests, so I have to take remedial Music Theory and History classes. Kinda sucks, because I know I learned all this stuff before, I just didn't get a chance to study for the placement tests since I was busy working and such all summer... Or something like that... So in addition to those two classes, I have a Chamber Music Literature class and one in Research Methods. Chamber Music Lit. and my History review class are both taught by this really nice lady from Greece, Dr. Papanikolau (sp. not 100%?). My theory class, lol, is taught by a guy that I'm pretty sure was either a used car salesman or a revivalist preacher in some former life. Seriously. That's just what Dr. T reminds me of. And yes, we do call him Dr. T, all of my Edinboro-ites, that's a theory prof. named Dr. T... I take piano lessons with Not-yet-a-doctor Winston Choi. Who is nice so far, he's having me practice major scales (for technique), a Bach three-part invention (sinfonia) and a pretty famous Brahms piece. I'm apparently not allowed to touch any of the grand pianos upstairs in the music building since I am not a piano major. Piano majors get keys to the grand practice rooms, I am left searching for a piano that doesn't rattle, isn't too loud or too soft and actually has pedals that I can control in some usable fashion. As a side note, have I mentioned how much I love Firefox's spell check function. It's so nice to have my mistakes underlined in little red dots so that I'll fix them in my blog.
The two classes I teach are... interesting. I teach just on Thursdays, my supervisor is in charge of the Tuesday lectures. He came to observe my class last Thursday and basically told me that I am a sucky teacher. Which was not surprising to me, since this is the first time I've ever taught EVER, and I don't really feel like I'm getting a lot of help with what exactly I'm supposed to be doing in class. I suppose I've really been making a lot of presentations for the last three weeks of lectures. Presentations =/= teaching apparently. -_- I just wish he would be more supportive and actually give me some sort of direction as to how to teach this material. Gah.
So I guess the best thing about BG is...?
I enjoy working, sort of. I had my Cinemark job transferred to the teeny Woodland Mall Cinemas here in BG. Five screens, one box office/concession stand, a staff of... 10? Definitely a lot different from Erie, lol. Everyone I work with is pretty nice so far, I wouldn't consider them friends, but they are friendly co-workers, so that's really a big plus. I was kinda worried they wouldn't schedule me very much, but I got two days this weekend, so I'm happy. Sometimes it seems like the movie theater thing is the only thing I'm good at, though I'm not even great at that, since I really only had experience in box or usher at home and out here we do everything. The 'mall' the theater is in is kind of a joke. The locals call it the 's'mall,' and it only has like 10 stores... a shoe store, an Elder Beerman, a Steve and Barry's, a Sears that only sells appliances, a teeny food court... It's even smaller than the Ashtabula Mall.
My office is interesting too. I share it with nine other grad students, though we only really see six of them, three not counting myself actually do a lot of work/sitting in the office. There are five tables and ten chairs in the office, one phone line, and up until the beginning of this week, only one port for internet. Thank goodness someone had the sense to buy a switch so we can all connect now. Makes things a little better. I only have to hang out in the office for two 'office hours' a week, which I use for homework and reading, since no students actually come to office hours. I did have one call the office this week, which was kind of a surprise. I spend a fair amount of time there between classes though, since it's a good place to keep things and to do homework. I have made friends with John, a horn player from LA, and Janet, a violist from Hong Kong. I'm not really close enough with anyone in the music department to consider them friends yet, but those I've spent the most time in the company of those two sheerly by being in the office at the same time.
I went home last weekend. Had a fantastic time visiting with friends in the 'Boro, spent much of Saturday with Zara (yay!), saw my boyfriend (lots of yay!), spent Sunday with my family, and even went to lunch with my fam. and Matt before coming back here on Monday afternoon. Really didn't want to come back out here, when I pulled off of I-75 at the Bowling Green exit, I just had this pit of anxiety in my stomach. I seriously thought I was going to throw up. Could have been hunger since I hadn't eaten really anything but pretzels and Coke for the four hour drive from home, but I really felt a sense of foreboding about this week. This place just really makes me feel like I'm not good enough to be here. And that is terrifying...
Stupid SkyBank still hasn't sent me my debit card for my account with them.