And So It Begins
Let's go back to class tonight, or rather, just a little bit further, to a couple minutes before 6, where the teacher, one other person, and I were there. We were told that class would begin with us (the students) filling out surveys about the course in general, which I think went fine, but did lead to a thought that I'll write about in a moment. Following finishing those, which took a bit longer than expected, and me getting to go down to the Continuing Education office to drop them off, review of our midterm commenced. For the record, I got 60%. Still a passing grade, but poor, however, I did expect as much. Having gone through that tonight was kind of pointless, because as noted, there were only two of us there, when normally there are five, but we did anyway, so maybe the other three people won't have the benefit of knowing what the correct answers were. At any rate, after that, the actual lecture commenced, which was moderately different (at least for me) tonight, what with the small group. Before, I might have kept my mouth shut about any of the number of grammatical oddities or confusing phrasings in either the presentation, or teacher's dictation about the same, but tonight, I spoke up about a number of things. Her spelling and pronouncing it "Alztheimers", for example, or how about challenging her over explicitly saying that displacement is when one transfers frustrations and anger onto someone they deeply care for, instead of my rewriting of "when one transfers frustrations and anger onto another person, oftentimes someone they care deeply for". There was also her showing us a movie on Youtube of what was supposed to be an example of Obsessive-compulsive Personality Disorder (purely a coincidence), after which I pointed out that both the movie name and description referred to the depicted condition as "OCD", and not "OCPD", which she didn't seem angry at so much and kind of annoyed that I was missing the point, but while I don't want to keep going on about this, that is exactly how it is for me, and I hate the thought that it seems like I'm just trying to be a nuisance, when really I'm trying to say "This doesn't make sense to me, so I want to clarify". Meanwhile at the beginning of class she nearly came right out and asked us if we did poorly on the midterm because we didn't study enough, or because of something related to her teaching style. My response was the former, because I genuinely didn't, but that's where this observation that I mentioned back at the beginning of the paragraph comes in.
Toward asking why we didn't do well on the midterm, and also in regards to the questions on the survey we had to fill out about the instructor specifically, I didn't want to rate her negatively, for one because there was no need to, as aside from not having enough time to finish some in-class assignments, I'm happy with the way things have been going so far, and for two, something that I haven't written about in quite a while, having to do with trying to find some personal fault, and running with it. It's almost as if it is easier for me to reconcile those things in my mind if I can tell myself that the reason this or that didn't go wrong has to do with me. For example, that movie we watched the first time I went to Toronto, which I didn't like. While other people who didn't like it as well might get mad at the person who put it on and ask "What made you think I would like that?", I turn inward and ask myself "What part of me made it so that I didn't like that movie?" The reasoning is that regardless of external factors, there still has to be something inside my mind for the other person or event to trigger. I would even say it's like I've moved beyond the norm of wanting to assign blame, to wanting to understand why I feel the way I do (Structuralism, essentially), but without some way to dispense with the anxieties created by such introspection, I'll eventually trigger something that makes it worse, ultimately leading to the situation reverting to where it was before. In the case of the movie, after the first time I got over it, I was fine and well again, right up to when Brandon requested that I download it, eventually leading to me having to talk to Dan about it a second time, not in the same way as before, but from the point of view of "I'm still not over this, so it would appear that I had a point when I said that it bothered me beyond simple dislike before, even though you shrugged me off". As I see it, it's an interesting facet of my personality, because unlike insecurity, I can turn it off when required by the situation. If I take an order on somebody else's till at work, and at the end of the night it's short, I don't try to blame myself. Were that the case, I would surely be far more neurotic than I am now.
In other news though, assignment number two has been handed in. I pointed out the things I said I would to the teacher, so now... I am bored. The TV show I was watching throughout the past week? It seems dull and ponderous now. Furthermore, during class, I was quite looking forward to stopping at 7-11 and Tim Hortons on the way home, then playing Tales of the Abyss, but I just can't, and there's another very noticeable change as well. During writing the report, and before tonight came after it was finished, I just about couldn't stop eating. At home before work? Find something to snack on. At home after work? Find something to have as a meal, and make more than normal, because I have all of this food around, and can't let it go to waste. I absolutely have gained weight, and I'm really not pleased with myself, but now that I've handed my report in, I have nearly no interest in eating. I do feel slightly hungry, but as far as my body is concerned, it's like my mouth is only for breathing out of. One good thing though is that I had a very brief chat with Dan earlier (brief because there were pauses of nearly two hours between me saying something and him responding), to confirm something I was thinking about doing in Toronto in May: go up to one of the Real Canadian Superstores there, and buy a couple bags of cheese breadsticks for the furmeet. I just hope they don't affect the other people there the same way as they do me, but I think I might also not be physically well right now, as anything I eat seems to go right through me. Also with talking to Dan, he mentioned that somebody from a TV station there might be at the party, because they "just want to do a TV show about furries". Sounds interesting, but I also feel myself wanting to push away from it, because I'm not going there in hopes of being caught on somebody's camera. That did happen in March of last year, yes, but those movies of the interview that I said I was going to write an entry about, possibly including a transcript? Haven't watched them since, not because I don't want to, but because of the unbearable awkwardness of the idea. As for Dan, another thought crept to mind while I was writing this, which might get me yelled at or excommunicated or whatever if he should see it, but I feel generalization creeping in. From my point of view, he appears to be friends with everybody, which would include me as a part of "everybody", except I don't want that. I want to feel at least somewhat unique, which is probably, if not definitely where my touchiness over being called a furry comes from (among others), but to think about it, the same is true of Xion as well, even though he and I became friends in passing, instead of talking to each other first, and finding things in common to dicuss and such else, as has happened with nearly every other friend I've known since this phase of my life (post-2005, we'll say). The one exception, aside from people in Toronto? John, but there's also a certain amount of good in that we stopped talking, because without getting together offline to balance out chatting with MSN, I get in way over my head. Were I not so tired, I would try to elaborate on that, because I feel as if I could go a bit further than I was able to before, however, now is not the time.
As such, tonight's last topic will be hair. After looking at some pictures, I've found that what Manoah describes as "platinum blonde" is what I want, but might take anywhere from a week to a month to fully achieve, which is where I get concerned. If he only intends to give me a recommendation for where to go to have that done, then I'm fine with that, because it'll be up to me to coordinate schedules, but what about otherwise? Is it really practical for me to go over to his house, or have him come here, maybe more than once? The rule about potential complications increasing exponentially the more people are involved also applies, but for now, all I can do is figure out exactly what I would want tomorrow, and contact him to discuss it. Alternately, I could use the directions found online (corroborated by multiple sources offering the same general steps) to do it myself, but that would be a bit too risky, unless it's my only option, and I have real, pressing need to change the color of my hair. That's all I have the energy to write for tonight though, and OmmWriter is becoming disagreeable and lagged once again, so I'm off to bed, to sleep in. Circumstances permitting and all that, but at least I don't have an assignment and exam to worry about tonight~
Toward asking why we didn't do well on the midterm, and also in regards to the questions on the survey we had to fill out about the instructor specifically, I didn't want to rate her negatively, for one because there was no need to, as aside from not having enough time to finish some in-class assignments, I'm happy with the way things have been going so far, and for two, something that I haven't written about in quite a while, having to do with trying to find some personal fault, and running with it. It's almost as if it is easier for me to reconcile those things in my mind if I can tell myself that the reason this or that didn't go wrong has to do with me. For example, that movie we watched the first time I went to Toronto, which I didn't like. While other people who didn't like it as well might get mad at the person who put it on and ask "What made you think I would like that?", I turn inward and ask myself "What part of me made it so that I didn't like that movie?" The reasoning is that regardless of external factors, there still has to be something inside my mind for the other person or event to trigger. I would even say it's like I've moved beyond the norm of wanting to assign blame, to wanting to understand why I feel the way I do (Structuralism, essentially), but without some way to dispense with the anxieties created by such introspection, I'll eventually trigger something that makes it worse, ultimately leading to the situation reverting to where it was before. In the case of the movie, after the first time I got over it, I was fine and well again, right up to when Brandon requested that I download it, eventually leading to me having to talk to Dan about it a second time, not in the same way as before, but from the point of view of "I'm still not over this, so it would appear that I had a point when I said that it bothered me beyond simple dislike before, even though you shrugged me off". As I see it, it's an interesting facet of my personality, because unlike insecurity, I can turn it off when required by the situation. If I take an order on somebody else's till at work, and at the end of the night it's short, I don't try to blame myself. Were that the case, I would surely be far more neurotic than I am now.
In other news though, assignment number two has been handed in. I pointed out the things I said I would to the teacher, so now... I am bored. The TV show I was watching throughout the past week? It seems dull and ponderous now. Furthermore, during class, I was quite looking forward to stopping at 7-11 and Tim Hortons on the way home, then playing Tales of the Abyss, but I just can't, and there's another very noticeable change as well. During writing the report, and before tonight came after it was finished, I just about couldn't stop eating. At home before work? Find something to snack on. At home after work? Find something to have as a meal, and make more than normal, because I have all of this food around, and can't let it go to waste. I absolutely have gained weight, and I'm really not pleased with myself, but now that I've handed my report in, I have nearly no interest in eating. I do feel slightly hungry, but as far as my body is concerned, it's like my mouth is only for breathing out of. One good thing though is that I had a very brief chat with Dan earlier (brief because there were pauses of nearly two hours between me saying something and him responding), to confirm something I was thinking about doing in Toronto in May: go up to one of the Real Canadian Superstores there, and buy a couple bags of cheese breadsticks for the furmeet. I just hope they don't affect the other people there the same way as they do me, but I think I might also not be physically well right now, as anything I eat seems to go right through me. Also with talking to Dan, he mentioned that somebody from a TV station there might be at the party, because they "just want to do a TV show about furries". Sounds interesting, but I also feel myself wanting to push away from it, because I'm not going there in hopes of being caught on somebody's camera. That did happen in March of last year, yes, but those movies of the interview that I said I was going to write an entry about, possibly including a transcript? Haven't watched them since, not because I don't want to, but because of the unbearable awkwardness of the idea. As for Dan, another thought crept to mind while I was writing this, which might get me yelled at or excommunicated or whatever if he should see it, but I feel generalization creeping in. From my point of view, he appears to be friends with everybody, which would include me as a part of "everybody", except I don't want that. I want to feel at least somewhat unique, which is probably, if not definitely where my touchiness over being called a furry comes from (among others), but to think about it, the same is true of Xion as well, even though he and I became friends in passing, instead of talking to each other first, and finding things in common to dicuss and such else, as has happened with nearly every other friend I've known since this phase of my life (post-2005, we'll say). The one exception, aside from people in Toronto? John, but there's also a certain amount of good in that we stopped talking, because without getting together offline to balance out chatting with MSN, I get in way over my head. Were I not so tired, I would try to elaborate on that, because I feel as if I could go a bit further than I was able to before, however, now is not the time.
As such, tonight's last topic will be hair. After looking at some pictures, I've found that what Manoah describes as "platinum blonde" is what I want, but might take anywhere from a week to a month to fully achieve, which is where I get concerned. If he only intends to give me a recommendation for where to go to have that done, then I'm fine with that, because it'll be up to me to coordinate schedules, but what about otherwise? Is it really practical for me to go over to his house, or have him come here, maybe more than once? The rule about potential complications increasing exponentially the more people are involved also applies, but for now, all I can do is figure out exactly what I would want tomorrow, and contact him to discuss it. Alternately, I could use the directions found online (corroborated by multiple sources offering the same general steps) to do it myself, but that would be a bit too risky, unless it's my only option, and I have real, pressing need to change the color of my hair. That's all I have the energy to write for tonight though, and OmmWriter is becoming disagreeable and lagged once again, so I'm off to bed, to sleep in. Circumstances permitting and all that, but at least I don't have an assignment and exam to worry about tonight~
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