woah
So it's been a month since I last bothered to post here- there's a lot to talk about, I'd say.
The week before halloween contained something like three midterms, two quizzes, and a massive research paper. It was pretty annoying, especially because I could have done a lot better with only a little more time. Booooo. It ended on a good note, though-- the annual CSA halloween party, which was fairly awesome. I got a lot of compliments on my self-made (a sheet set, a seam ripper, a needle and thread, many pins, and about 6 hours total, not bad) Ceres costume. I somehow ended up losing literally 12 foosball games in a row, because my teammate was considerably inebriated, and one of our opponents actually owns a foosball table and plays all the time. It was pretty funny, decidedly a quality time. Sadly, the party continued a few hours later to where I couldn't follow-- the bar down the street. But the part I could go to was excellent. There's a little more choice gossip there, but I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, sooo on to the next thing!
My birthday, a week and a bit later, was probably one of my most memorable ever. My roommate decided to take me out to breakfast before class, so first we go to get coffee from her work and then the plan is to go to the awesome crepe place downtown. To make a long explanation short, her car's clutch pad is in a rapidly declining state of effectiveness, and decides that the time to die and become totally ineffective is the single most notoriously bad place in the entire city of Davis for traffic congestion.
The location can be described thusly: between the freeway and downtown, there are two main traffic lights, both of which are extra crazy busy because it's morning rush hour. we get stuck between these traffic lights. But don't be fooled, this isn't just some stretch of road: it's a tunnel. More specifically, a tunnel under railroad tracks. Now, I don't understand this, but apparently there's something historically significant about this particular design of underpass/tunnel, and they can't widen it from its original ridiculously narrow design. It's so narrow that a bus can't pass a big pickup or van going the other way. And, as an underpass/tunnel, it's well below ground level, because ground level is the train. If that doesn't give you a very clear picture of the situation, here's a link.
So anyway, we're clogging up the narrowest, most congested place in the whole city, cars are squeezing past us, everyone is glaring or gawking at us, AAA won't be there for "about half an hour" even though we've been bumped to the top of their list since they consider us in danger. After about ten minutes, this car pulls over in front of us after squeezing past us and this old man gets out. he comes over to us, and we tell him don't worry, AAA is on their way, blah blah blah. He's like, "ok, but hang on, I'll get you a rope." and heads back to his car. We're like, uhmmm, that's not only really dangerous to just tie a rope to our cars and hope it holds, but it's also massively illegal. So old guy comes back with the shittiest excuse for a rope ever, and we tell him thanks for the thought, but no thanks, we'll just wait for the tow, expecting him to be like, ok girls, hope everything works out, have a nice day. But no. He gets really really pissed off at us. He's basically standing there, telling us how we're ruining everyone's day, he's trying to rescue us from the goodness of his heart, but our generation is too afraid of litigation to do anything intelligent, young people don't understand the way the world works, he's not out to sue anybody, blah blah blah. He's getting really into it, there's even spit flying from his withered jowels, and we're starting to get kind of worried he's gonna give himself an aneurysm or something. Eventually we manage (all this discourse is shouting above traffic and the train) to mollify him enough that he stops yelling and gets back in his car. we're pretty relieved, and we wait around for about another ten or fifteen minutes, until....
This police car pulls up behind us. He gets on the loudspeaker, and says the following, "CHHH AAA GRMT AAAA KKKKRR!!!" So, there are pretty much two options here: 1) he's an alien policeman and telling us to take him to our leader or asking directions to pluto, or option 2) He's speaking English and wants us to do something, but loudspeakers don't mix well with tunnels or trains. We figure option two, but in any case, we signal that we can't hear, and he gets out of his car and comes over to us. We tell him it's the clutch pad, so even with a jump or something we're useless. He says,
"Put the car in neutral and take off the brake. I'll push you guys out"
Now, being law-abiding citizens, we do as we're told, but we have some doubts in our minds. I mean, yeah, the guy looks decently strong, but is he really, all by himself, going to push us and the car up a very steep hill? I find an Archimedes quote to be apt here, "Give me a long enough lever and I will move the world." Well, this officer did not have a lever, as far as we could tell. What he had, friends, was a police car.
Yes. That's right. You know that funny metal rack-looking thing on the front of police cars? It's not just for decoration. Apparently, it's very useful for pushing other cars out of underpass/tunnels. I really can't do this feeling justice in writing; it's truly something that has to be experienced to be understood. We were literally elevated out of dark scary danger to warm sunshiny safety. By way of police car to the rear. And not even a scratch on our bumper. I wonder if they have classes in this at the police academy?
Anyway, this super awesome and long-winded experience leads me into another no-so-fabulous one. So you already know that my roommate's car was dead, and if you have a car, you know that things that your car needs to function are generally super expensive to replace. Her bill was about a thousand dollars. Which is really about twice as much as she should have paid, but there's not much of a choice in Davis. So firstly she has no money, and the next day, she finds out she's kicked out of school.
Yep. My amazing, smart, talented roommate, kicked out of Davis. Not flunked out, no getting-caught-plagiarizing, just kicked out because of some ridiculous, very complicated to explain technicality about units of the right sort and order. In the middle of the quarter, nonetheless. After it's impossible to get back any of your student fees, after doing weeks and weeks of studying and papers and work, they just kick her out unceremoniously with a "see you next fall if you still want to go here". Yep, can't even get back in for winter quarter, or spring quarter, or either summer session, has to wait a whole year. Needless to say, she's completely crushed, a total wreck, drinking prolifically, having anxiety attacks, can't bring herself to tell her family yet (should be an interesting thanksgiving), and all sorts of fun stuff. But she's actually quite resilient. Only a few days into probably the biggest crisis of her life, she's already starting to look at things optimistically. I think she'll get through this well, and now at least, working full time, she'll get to enjoy a little more spending money.
As for myself, I've been doing mostly ok. Classes are generally enjoyable, but frustrating because I can't quite seem to get an A on anything that's not in Latin. It's looking like a lot of B's this quarter, which isn't bad, except Fall is always my best quarter, and I would rather not have anything much lower than B's, for the sake of getting into a law school with a decent reputation. (yes, I said reputation, not decent school, because all law schools teach exactly the same thing, when it comes down to it, so all that really makes a difference is the name of the school) Of course, there's the requisite waffling about do I actually want to go to law school or not, etc etc, but I'll save you from that tedium this time. mmmmmm, waffles. CSA has been awesome, I'm hosting a meeting/movie this friday, we'll see if I have the wherewithal to pull it off. I think I'll make cookies; cookies always make people more agreeable. I have to take a scary "senior seminar" in classics next quarter, because the department is so small they can only offer it every other year. I'm not too worried about the work, more the classmates, these are people taking their fourth or more year of latin and third or fourth of greek. scary scary scary. I'm also mad that Roman Art and Architecture, which is one of the topics I'm most interested in above all, conflicts with it. gaaaahhh!!! LAME!!!
So I was thinking about my poor roomie, and I sort of got to thinking. And I thought: what if that happened to me? Well, that was too easy, I'd go back as soon as I could. And that was interesting, because if all I want to do is go to school, how is it going to be when I can't anymore, when I'm a hundred grand in debt from all my schooling and faced with the inevitable prospect of employment? So here's an interesting question for all of you: if you got kicked out of school tomorrow, permanently and forever banned from all institutions of higher learning, and had to get a job (one for which you are, at this moment, qualified) what would you go into? Would you be drawn to something that you're studying now, or something that gave you enough free time to enjoy your youth, the one that would pay you the most, or maybe just job-hop for a while to try lots of different things? Would you stay in your college-town or move back home or move far far away? Would you be really sad or maybe happy that you don't have to get shuffled through a huge bureaucratic diploma-factory anymore? I think it's interesting to think about. And that's what I'm leaving you with.
Vale.
The week before halloween contained something like three midterms, two quizzes, and a massive research paper. It was pretty annoying, especially because I could have done a lot better with only a little more time. Booooo. It ended on a good note, though-- the annual CSA halloween party, which was fairly awesome. I got a lot of compliments on my self-made (a sheet set, a seam ripper, a needle and thread, many pins, and about 6 hours total, not bad) Ceres costume. I somehow ended up losing literally 12 foosball games in a row, because my teammate was considerably inebriated, and one of our opponents actually owns a foosball table and plays all the time. It was pretty funny, decidedly a quality time. Sadly, the party continued a few hours later to where I couldn't follow-- the bar down the street. But the part I could go to was excellent. There's a little more choice gossip there, but I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, sooo on to the next thing!
My birthday, a week and a bit later, was probably one of my most memorable ever. My roommate decided to take me out to breakfast before class, so first we go to get coffee from her work and then the plan is to go to the awesome crepe place downtown. To make a long explanation short, her car's clutch pad is in a rapidly declining state of effectiveness, and decides that the time to die and become totally ineffective is the single most notoriously bad place in the entire city of Davis for traffic congestion.
The location can be described thusly: between the freeway and downtown, there are two main traffic lights, both of which are extra crazy busy because it's morning rush hour. we get stuck between these traffic lights. But don't be fooled, this isn't just some stretch of road: it's a tunnel. More specifically, a tunnel under railroad tracks. Now, I don't understand this, but apparently there's something historically significant about this particular design of underpass/tunnel, and they can't widen it from its original ridiculously narrow design. It's so narrow that a bus can't pass a big pickup or van going the other way. And, as an underpass/tunnel, it's well below ground level, because ground level is the train. If that doesn't give you a very clear picture of the situation, here's a link.
So anyway, we're clogging up the narrowest, most congested place in the whole city, cars are squeezing past us, everyone is glaring or gawking at us, AAA won't be there for "about half an hour" even though we've been bumped to the top of their list since they consider us in danger. After about ten minutes, this car pulls over in front of us after squeezing past us and this old man gets out. he comes over to us, and we tell him don't worry, AAA is on their way, blah blah blah. He's like, "ok, but hang on, I'll get you a rope." and heads back to his car. We're like, uhmmm, that's not only really dangerous to just tie a rope to our cars and hope it holds, but it's also massively illegal. So old guy comes back with the shittiest excuse for a rope ever, and we tell him thanks for the thought, but no thanks, we'll just wait for the tow, expecting him to be like, ok girls, hope everything works out, have a nice day. But no. He gets really really pissed off at us. He's basically standing there, telling us how we're ruining everyone's day, he's trying to rescue us from the goodness of his heart, but our generation is too afraid of litigation to do anything intelligent, young people don't understand the way the world works, he's not out to sue anybody, blah blah blah. He's getting really into it, there's even spit flying from his withered jowels, and we're starting to get kind of worried he's gonna give himself an aneurysm or something. Eventually we manage (all this discourse is shouting above traffic and the train) to mollify him enough that he stops yelling and gets back in his car. we're pretty relieved, and we wait around for about another ten or fifteen minutes, until....
This police car pulls up behind us. He gets on the loudspeaker, and says the following, "CHHH AAA GRMT AAAA KKKKRR!!!" So, there are pretty much two options here: 1) he's an alien policeman and telling us to take him to our leader or asking directions to pluto, or option 2) He's speaking English and wants us to do something, but loudspeakers don't mix well with tunnels or trains. We figure option two, but in any case, we signal that we can't hear, and he gets out of his car and comes over to us. We tell him it's the clutch pad, so even with a jump or something we're useless. He says,
"Put the car in neutral and take off the brake. I'll push you guys out"
Now, being law-abiding citizens, we do as we're told, but we have some doubts in our minds. I mean, yeah, the guy looks decently strong, but is he really, all by himself, going to push us and the car up a very steep hill? I find an Archimedes quote to be apt here, "Give me a long enough lever and I will move the world." Well, this officer did not have a lever, as far as we could tell. What he had, friends, was a police car.
Yes. That's right. You know that funny metal rack-looking thing on the front of police cars? It's not just for decoration. Apparently, it's very useful for pushing other cars out of underpass/tunnels. I really can't do this feeling justice in writing; it's truly something that has to be experienced to be understood. We were literally elevated out of dark scary danger to warm sunshiny safety. By way of police car to the rear. And not even a scratch on our bumper. I wonder if they have classes in this at the police academy?
Anyway, this super awesome and long-winded experience leads me into another no-so-fabulous one. So you already know that my roommate's car was dead, and if you have a car, you know that things that your car needs to function are generally super expensive to replace. Her bill was about a thousand dollars. Which is really about twice as much as she should have paid, but there's not much of a choice in Davis. So firstly she has no money, and the next day, she finds out she's kicked out of school.
Yep. My amazing, smart, talented roommate, kicked out of Davis. Not flunked out, no getting-caught-plagiarizing, just kicked out because of some ridiculous, very complicated to explain technicality about units of the right sort and order. In the middle of the quarter, nonetheless. After it's impossible to get back any of your student fees, after doing weeks and weeks of studying and papers and work, they just kick her out unceremoniously with a "see you next fall if you still want to go here". Yep, can't even get back in for winter quarter, or spring quarter, or either summer session, has to wait a whole year. Needless to say, she's completely crushed, a total wreck, drinking prolifically, having anxiety attacks, can't bring herself to tell her family yet (should be an interesting thanksgiving), and all sorts of fun stuff. But she's actually quite resilient. Only a few days into probably the biggest crisis of her life, she's already starting to look at things optimistically. I think she'll get through this well, and now at least, working full time, she'll get to enjoy a little more spending money.
As for myself, I've been doing mostly ok. Classes are generally enjoyable, but frustrating because I can't quite seem to get an A on anything that's not in Latin. It's looking like a lot of B's this quarter, which isn't bad, except Fall is always my best quarter, and I would rather not have anything much lower than B's, for the sake of getting into a law school with a decent reputation. (yes, I said reputation, not decent school, because all law schools teach exactly the same thing, when it comes down to it, so all that really makes a difference is the name of the school) Of course, there's the requisite waffling about do I actually want to go to law school or not, etc etc, but I'll save you from that tedium this time. mmmmmm, waffles. CSA has been awesome, I'm hosting a meeting/movie this friday, we'll see if I have the wherewithal to pull it off. I think I'll make cookies; cookies always make people more agreeable. I have to take a scary "senior seminar" in classics next quarter, because the department is so small they can only offer it every other year. I'm not too worried about the work, more the classmates, these are people taking their fourth or more year of latin and third or fourth of greek. scary scary scary. I'm also mad that Roman Art and Architecture, which is one of the topics I'm most interested in above all, conflicts with it. gaaaahhh!!! LAME!!!
So I was thinking about my poor roomie, and I sort of got to thinking. And I thought: what if that happened to me? Well, that was too easy, I'd go back as soon as I could. And that was interesting, because if all I want to do is go to school, how is it going to be when I can't anymore, when I'm a hundred grand in debt from all my schooling and faced with the inevitable prospect of employment? So here's an interesting question for all of you: if you got kicked out of school tomorrow, permanently and forever banned from all institutions of higher learning, and had to get a job (one for which you are, at this moment, qualified) what would you go into? Would you be drawn to something that you're studying now, or something that gave you enough free time to enjoy your youth, the one that would pay you the most, or maybe just job-hop for a while to try lots of different things? Would you stay in your college-town or move back home or move far far away? Would you be really sad or maybe happy that you don't have to get shuffled through a huge bureaucratic diploma-factory anymore? I think it's interesting to think about. And that's what I'm leaving you with.
Vale.