Paperwork: My greatest nemesis

Recently I've been looking into rentals for the summer and next year. It's been stressful. So stressful that I feel like it's already exam season or something...

I'm going to go all spazztastic now.

So two friends and I were planning on leasing a place for a year starting this summer. After many weeks of searching, we finally found a place. Then a whole bunch of paperwork flooded me and I feel like my intense "do things on time" nature kicked into place. Mostly it's the fact that I feel like this stuff is serious now; not just school stuff. It kind of hit me that this is what "adults" deal with.

Money, and paperwork and all sorts of fun. I feel like I might be taking this too seriously, but then I tend to do that for most things I feel are important. I should really take things more easily.

But at the same time I feel like my seriousness is the key to all the good things that have happened in my life.

-Update-

Stress somewhat gone now. Now to de-stress and study

Things I want

Sitting here trying to write a chemistry lab discussion. I don't want to do it. But I do want to:

• Make a list
• Distract myself
• Think about happy thoughts
• Eat chocolate
• Explore my room
• Put my head at eye-level with my desk and see it from a different angle
• There's a lot of dust... I should do something about that
• Swifer the floor 
• Light the scented oil burner
• Hold a mirror next to my beta fish and watch it be mad
• Go to a place with flowing water and take pictures
• Go to a place with a gentle stream and walk in barefoot
• Be living in the summer
• Without the bugs
• Jump out my bedroom window and float for a moment
• Create a glider
• Glide down through the downtown core from the CN tower
• Repeat on the Empire State building, Tower of London and Mount Everest 
• Climb a tree
• Sit in a tree-house
• Go camping
• And snuggle up with someone special in a sleeping bag
• With mosquito repellent candles burning
• Go fishing
• Live a day knowing that tomorrow, no one will remember what I did today
• Stop time
• Be able to make firm decisions
• Be a teacher
• Focus
• On this discussion I should be writing

Where'd all my ideas go?

Start rant:

• Feeling extremely uninspired these days
• Can't come up with new ideas
• Unmotivated
• Completely lost own opinion on life
• Life is bland
• Feels like the future's about to hit me in the face but I still can't see it very clearly

End rant.

Annoying drama aside, I actually do feel quite vague. Yes, I feel vague. There's no other word that seems to accurately describe it.

I just feel like there's nothing new in life. 

Obvious solution is to go do something new, but I have absolutely no motivation to do so. I feel like I'm just sitting around doing nothing of importance and yet perfectly fine with that. And the fact that I'm fine with it is what I'm not fine with. Did that even make sense? 

Point is, I'm uninspired and have no motivation to seek inspiration. And although it's quite clear that inspiration isn't going to go out its way to find me, I can't muster up the motivation to be the seeker. I guess I feel like everything that I want to do, I can't do. And to a point it reminds me of the Alchemist (Paulo Coelho), am I going to be one of the many people who'll never find my "personal legend"? 

So I've decided that no matter what happens, when I have a child, I'll support him/her to whatever his/her choice is... but as I made this decision I'd also rather not be blamed for not providing good guidance. It's quite annoying to try to do what you want in life when we live in a world where it seems like everything's against you rather than with you. And life just continues on without any mind to you. 

At the end of the day, it still feels like nothing you do matters while everything you don't does. I feel like society has become too rigid, making demands of us and forcing us into our assigned roles then trapping us there. I want to be able to explore the world without worries. I want to be able to make it through life piece by piece, working up to the end rather than throwing my youth away for the end result. I want to stop and smell the flowers, hell even make a basket of them along the way, but instead I find my eyes always looking down the road searching for... something spectacular. But by the time I reach it, I'm already looking on ahead for something else. 

But even though I know this, I can't listen to it. I'm not stubborn enough to believe in myself to the point where I'll allow myself to slow down. To a point I'm almost scared of believing that I can do whatever I want, simply because I'll have no excuse to not follow my heart. 

Key to Productivity?

I just deactivated my facebook.

Why you might ask? I think you know why, it's because of this: http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline
Am I being paranoid? Probably. But that's not the only reason I deactivated. You see, I got facebook only 2 years ago and I have recently begun the pondering of why that is. In fact for most of high school I've refused all facebook invites with a strict belief that if peope really wanted to keep in contact with me, there are countless other ways of doing so. But now it seems few people are very fond of the idea of sending nice emails or a simple text. In fact, thinking about it nowadays, I don't often talk on the PHONE much either!

So I decided that I shall return to that former mentality and just start emailing people instead of posting on their wall. After all, that is the point of a wall post... in a way. Actually a wall post is a lot more public, it's basically screaming for people to see your conversation with a friend.

I would continue my rant on facebook, but really it's all common sense. Instead I shall list how productive I've been without it!

• Biochem giant study sheet completed
• Physio study sheet started
• Bio study sheet started
• Wrote this blog post
• Finished anthro chapter
• Checked Google+ every 10min instead of facebook
• Found nothing really happens on G+ which forced me to be productive 
• Cleaned out gmail (I'm trying to get my memory usage down to 1337MB)
• BAKED AN APPLE CRUMBLE

Also I was so relaxed that I decided to take a nice hot bath. Sadly I got a slight case of heat stroke from being in the bath too long and forgetting that the water was extremely hot. Yes, this stuff does happen.

-update-

Reactivated it... with the intention of using it for networking purposes ONLY! Realized I needed to get this one person's email; but didn't have it... it's on their facebook. Darned publicity... 

Getting sick pre-flu season

Every winter I generally go through 3 sicknesses. 2 minor, and 1 extremely major.

Looking back at high school I recall once my major sickness happened during December exams. I OD'd on advil and scraped a decent mark by my standards.

First year university my stommy randomly one night decided to make me vomit mid way through my peaceful slumber. I was out for another day or so.

This year I'm hoping that my current flu/cough/cold/w/e is going to be my major sickness of the winter. I've fallen at least a week behind, if not more. In fact I was burning up a fever one night in my apartment when my roommate went home for the night. Alone and without medication, I then proceeded to make some lamb soup and pitifully forced myself to drink it hot while bundled in my blanket to try to break the fever.

Luckily it worked, sadly I was left with terrible aches on my body and head. And so this weekend has been rather unproductive as well.

Anyways I don't really have any particular point to make with this entry since I really just wanted to complain. But today my headache isn't so strong anymore so hopefully I can get my biology pre-lab done...

-Update-

WHEEE! JUST GOT THE ASUS EEE PAD TRANSFORMER WITH DOCK! (http://www.asus.com/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Pad_Transformer_TF101/) Life is good again.

Lack of true emotional responses

Ever hear a piece of news and have a reaction to it, only to realize afterwards that your reaction was not socially proper?

Today my brother said he was being bullied in summer camp. Apparently some kid told him his face was ugly then encouraged the rest of the class to laugh at him.

My immediate reaction: HOW DARE SOME LITTLE BRAT INSULT MY BROTHER?!? I WILL HAVE A TALK WITH THIS KID'S MOTHER!

After a few split seconds I had another reaction: lol, kids these days with their idiotic insults

Then I switched back to the original reaction: LITTLE IDIOTIC BRAT DEFILES THE NAME OF HUMANKIND WITH HIS/HER LAME INSULT!

And then: Well kids are kids and they don't have the ability to come up with anything better... they'll learn

Which finally concluded to: Hey, I dealt with bullies when I was a kid, my brother'll just have to learn to do the same thing. It'll strengthen him up if he survives it.

But does this mean I will sit by calmly and allow some random kid to bully my brother? Actually yes I think I will... but at the same time I certainly don't think I would if I had not had a secondary emotional response.

Lately (some time ago) I've been reconsidering what makes a person who they are (nature/nurture). And I say it's the former (nature).

At this moment there is actually nothing I'd like better than to find the kid who told my brother his face was ugly and demand an apology for such insolence. But of course, I won't. A: it'll be pointless since screaming at little children does not look very good and B: I doubt the kid knew what (s)he was doing. So following through my multiple reactions to the news of my brother's bully I've concluded that my instinctive self is of an evil and selfish nature.

It may be cynical, but I stand by the belief that as a person, individually, all human beings are evil and selfish. The only reason we're good is because it's to our benefit to be selfless.

Consider this: You're lost and alone on an island. What do you do? You survive; killing innocent animals. If you're trying to be selfless and vegetarian, you kill innocent plants. If you choose to not kill or hurt ANYTHING, you die. Selflessness kills.

Now consider you're lost but not alone on the same island. The number of prey and resources has not increased. But in this situation it'd probably be a good idea to partner up with whoever else is with you as to increase your chances of survival. Out of selfishness for your own survival, you'd probably be willing to share food and water. If you were truly selfless you'd hunt and gather resources with the other person but eat and use nothing. This results in your death.

Now maybe the other person's a better hunter so you allow them to eat more, to increase their chances of survival since they can increase your own chances of survival. But I truly cannot think of a good reason to offer them more food otherwise. Unless you're just a nice person and would feel bad if they didn't eat more than you (in which case you're only being nice to avoid the guilt you'd feel otherwise).

I suppose in the end I feel like a functional society is the only reason we're even nice to each other at all.

Back to the case of my brother, society has deemed it unacceptable for me to yell at the bully, and... well if we didn't have other people around the whole incident wouldn't even have happened.

This is why I like it much better living on the island in my head. I can be as selfish and evil as I want and it would not impair me IRL at all.

My idea of a good book: One that make you cry and hate people

I read Unearthly by Cynthia Hand the other night (a long time ago because I left this entry unfinished). Actually that's a lie, I got to the second chapter then gave up. Below are my thoughts of the book written in real time while I read it:

Let this be a reminder to me to never judge a book by a cover.

Main character has been established (to me at least) to be a Mary Sue. Key note: being suppressed in school (Pg. 6: Called a “dorkina”) while secretly being capable of doing great things (Pg. 7: Ran too fast because she “wasn’t holding back”) and being of angel blood. The angel blood I don’t mind, picked the book up for it, but the entire mention that she was a fast runner was completely unnecessary. It was as though Hand was looking for an alternative to just having Clara tell us she was awesome, which she does anyways (pg. 12: Ohh, she heals faster and can randomly speak in other languages; awesome but there MUST be some other more creative way to tell us that).

The fact that she is suppose to look good (Pg. 13-14) is also unnecessary, I suppose it’s just a personal pet peeve when the author goes into a deep discussion over how wonderful their character looks (Comparison: Twilight). Note that what Clara believes are her short comings are actually traits that  considered impressive: being skinny “in a storklike, all-arms-and-legs sort of way” doesn’t change the fact that she’s skinny; a figure that today’s society considers attractive. And after going to such detail describing the magnificence of her eyes and their variety of colour changing abilities, she says they’re too big for her face. The hell; note that today big eyes are also considered attractive (Google “Circle Lens”). And after saying her hair is her best feature, she goes on to complain about it. Bella Swan (wait, that was the name of that girl from Twilight right? I can't remember...) anyone?

Oho! Her parents are split up as well… MORE Bella Swan anyone? And she seems to have a bad relationship with her father… my gosh I don’t know how many more clichés I can take here!

However I’m liking the idea of people with angel blood having a purpose in life. Good idea, done before I’m sure but the visions and general concept seem to be well set in place in the first little bit. Generally easy to understand the plot as it’s going along; character development… needs some work.

Finding it strange that all the information I get about Clara’s mother is that she looks angelic and acts angelic and while I understand she’s got angel blood, where’s the human side? Is there some dark sin she committed that is not being told yet? There had better be otherwise the lack of character in this book will infuriate me.

Also noted that Clara is the narrator… just realized I’m reading the inside of a teenaged mind… like she keeps like using the like word ‘like’ the way like a teen would like use it. INFURIATING!! However it does go along with the fact that she’s 17 and in that stage of life; more difficult for people who aren’t generally fond of YA fiction (like me) to cope with though.

Oh she just met him! Ahhh!! Cliched first love scene alert! Also she’s in a school with "pretty people" apparently… so unrealistic. And she’s good at math too but she also has to hide that...Why bother?

So she categorizes people as either pretty or not pretty… this is very effective as a YA fiction except putting an angel in with the “invisibles” is almost going against some rule here… By definition angels are suppose to be beautiful, in fact there was a section dedicated to Clara explaining her physical appearance which I have previously explained makes her an attractive person. Why is she not considered a “pretty” one? I have deeply confounded.


Wait wait... they named their clique? AHAHAHAHA!!! Ok, so I also named little friend groups before, but not anything like the "invisibles", are they somehow proud of it? I don't understand the logic of that name other than to make poor little Mary Sue seem like she's such a pitiable thing. And besides, group names should be a more intimate matter, not something to go around telling random newbies. This books seems like an adult take on what they believe high school now days is like.

Oh he's talking to her... Why is he talking to her randomly? Why could he not find sometime after school in private to talk to her? Why is this so cliché? NOOO!! SHE’S DESCRIBING HIS PHYSICAL APPEARANCE AS HOT!! Twilight Alert Triggered! Ok book officially dropped. Will Wiki rest of plot which actually might have been good if there was less clichéd teen fantasy romance. 

---End of real time reading frustrations---

I seem to highly dislike books that are meant to be read for fun. I actually often feel that my deep hatred of the Twilight series stemmed from the fact that it was such a happy book with a girl leading such an (dare I say it?) ideal life. Honestly I'm sure lots of hormone raged teenaged girls got their giddies reading the book; I skipped a good half of the book (probably more...). And now on GoodReads this Unearthly crap is getting only good reviews. Probably because most of the people who read it enjoy YA fiction in general. I only enjoy YA fiction it if it's got another genre thrown into the mix somewhere.

Honestly I feel like the point of a book is to take me to a place I haven't been before, or into a situation I could not imagine for myself. Hence my love of Fantasy and Sci-fi. But I've also found that some of the best books I've read involves a very good catharsis; usually proceeded by extremely agonizing pain.

-Book spoilers begin here for: Mists of Avalon, A Little Princess, Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre-

I loved Mists of Avalon; in the middle section I utterly despised Arthur for listening to his pious wife and her little close-minded pleas. The injustice of their belief that Morgaine sneaked into court to do evil when it was she who they had beheld as the angel that had passed the Holy Grail around was so aggravating and made me want to stab them all. There's really no other way to explain my anger. I was in complete and utter distress knowing that I, as the reader, could do nothing to make these imbeciles see the errors of their thoughts. However at the end, it was Morgaine who forgives them and she acts truly as the better person; offering me consolation that though injustice was done, she has overcome her suffering and so all is well again. It was a saddening thought but at the same time offered a much needed relief from my mental anguish.

A Little Princess started off happily enough; a nice mindless kind of thinking involved. But soon I was again in extreme mental disarray as the poor girl got abused and used just because she suddenly had no money. Honestly, I wanted to attack Miss Minchin, except that would harm my delicate book. I actually had the mindset to just throw the book against a wall in my frustration with her. Of course in the end happiness ensues and justice is somewhat served. I seem to enjoy happy endings, but only after a plot full of evil.

Currently getting through Oliver Twist, not a lot of time so it's going slowly. Still, the beginning was terrible, not as in it was badly written, but I felt that same burning anger and hatred for the antagonist of the story. And it didn't help that Oliver was so naive and innocent, I was melting with agony and sympathy for the boy. Unsure about the ending so far; hope the people who wronged him die though.

Jane Eyre I just started; her childhood was miserable too. At where I am right now that misery is over and done with, but its results you can still see in Jane's actions. Hoping that she gets with this rich guy and goes back to show off her foster mother though... unlikely to happen it's not something she would do but every good thing that happens to Jane now feels like justice.

Actually looking now at all these books that I really liked I think I understand why I liked them so. They all presented me with either an innocent person, or one who wished to do good, and placed them into terrible situations where the world was against them. And to see a 'good' person abused for petty reasons seem to strike a chord with me.

Now people can say that this Clara from Unearthly is an innocent, good-hearted person who was being bullied by society. I disagree. She's being bullied by her own lack of sense and good judgement. She's an angel darned it! If she wants to lead an awesome life, she can do it! Don't give me any BS about her having to hide her powers so she doesn't get discovered, she can hide her powers while making use of them. Is it so terrible an idea for her to do well in math? Will people see that she does well in math and hence make the connection that she must be "unearthly"?

And all the 'abuse' she undergoes completely lacks deeper meaning. In all the books above I enjoyed the protagonist was being abused due to a conflict in morals or values, or spite. No matter what the reason is though, it is clear and feels valid (maybe that's not the best word because validation almost seems to justify the action... but you get my point). Clara being called a dorkrina out of no-where leads me wondering why this random girl (who's name I was not even given) decided to insult her. There's no background to explain why she isn't "popular", especially given that she's generally pretty (even though she doesn't have the sense to see that) and from her action seems like a nice girl. Hell she struck a random conversation in another language with a stranger, don't tell me she's shy.

Guess it's another pet peeve of mine when the main character has low self esteem or is otherwise very unsure of herself. I prefer my protagonists to have a strong will and set out to do something with their life. Think that gives the story line more moral, "look this person got a happy ending because they never gave up and worked for it" rather than "look this random girl who's doesn't really try and has no real dedication to a long term goal in life somehow ended up with a happy ending". I guess I value the idea that we have to work hard for our own happiness rather than sit around waiting for it to be handed to us.

So now that I have completed this long winded rant (which took me over a week to write out), I encourage everyone to read books that make you cry and want to hate people: because if it can make you feel that strongly, then clearly it's been written realistically.

Now this doesn't count if you end up crying because the book sucked and hating the author for wasting your time. 

MCAT Frustrations 1.0

• Shoots the physical sciences part is hard... wait I didn't learn this stuff yet!
• What the heck is a bremsstrahlung?!?
• WHY MUST THEY TEST US ON ELECTRON FLOW?!? I HATE IT WHEN ELECTRONS MOVE!!!
• Why the heck is it called Verbal Reasoning? Are they going to read the passage to us? 
• Aha, Verbal Reasoning section is easy! As long as we're reading the passage ourselves... 
• Where do I find answers for this test?
• Where do I buy old tests with answer keys?
• YES! FOUND OLD VR TESTS WITH ANSWERS!
• Must... find... for... physical sciences...
• FOUND PAST EXAMS!!! Must... get... answers...
• Answers for $4! My gosh this is a good business... 
• Aha! I can do 1/2 of the biology questions! 
• I should start a study group or something for this... wonder if UOT already has one...

It all started on the bus

I was sitting on the bus yesterday enjoy my ride home so I could eat. Being the classy person I am, I was also listening to Chopin at the moment. However sometime along the bus ride I realized that I could not enjoy Chopin as I usually did. No, something else was disturbing me.

It was the guy sitting right in front of me. Loud, irksome music of some form was coming from his general direction. I was displeased.

Now normally I would not have minded much, after all I've had people tell me that they can hear my music randomly. But the problem this time was that this guy was purposely forcing the rest of the lovely bus-riders to listen to his music!

How do I know this? Because only one earphone was in his ear; the other one rested on top of that same ear facing outwards towards the general public. If he wasn't forcing us to listen to his music then why the heck was his second earphone pointing out at us?!?

Oh, maybe he was just trying to look cool, the old, "I can wear my earphones however I want". Fine, I respect that, but at least do us all the favor and find a way to wear them so your music doesn't force its way into our ears! Why does the earphone have to face us? Make it face behind you or something!

Ok, so I'm taking this out of hand and maybe he just didn't want to listen to his music with both ears. But seriously, if your music's that loud of course you wouldn't want both earphones in; turn the volume down!

I guess I'm just annoyed by this because I myself always consider the strangers around me when I'm on public transport; I mean I don't want to annoy them anymore than we're all already annoyed (by the slow moving traffic). And personally I see no reason to need to put on an air of any sort with these random people so I don't try to make an impression of myself. There's no point in that.

Now I can continue this little rant by explaining that as this guy left the bus his pants were much too loose. I don't understand the attraction in that, if you want to show the world your boxes, just don't wear pants. If you're just too lazy to pull your pants up, just don't wear pants. If you think it's a fashion statement to have your pants on and flash your boxers... actually no I just don't understand that. Is it more comfortable to have your pants half on? I do not understand. It was a warm day too so he can't be showing off his boxers with pants on because it was too cold to not wear pants... This is all just too complicated.

-Update-

AHA! I just found a blog dedicated to writing letters to annoying people on public transit: http://alettertoastranger.blogspot.com/

I was throughly amused.

Answer Attack

I really like questions. I think. I'm not actually 100% sure about that fact because I question it so much. Not that I really need an answer, it's all about thinking of the answer.

It sometimes bothers me when I'm doing a problem and someone comes along and tells me exactly how to get to  the answer when I didn't ask for it. Hell even if I ask I normally rather have just slight hints rather than the full solution. Not to say I don't appreciate the help, but I just wish the difference between "help me" and "load up a rifle with answers and shoot me" had more of a distinct line.

I never liked being taught procedures, it made no sense. This is probably why I never bothered to memorize my multiplication tables back in grade 4; I saw no reason to multiple. Then they gave us problems to solve with the multiplication... and only then did I start remembering the multiples of numbers. And it was never through sitting down and staring at the multiplication table, I think I just picked it up along the way solving problems. And still today I don't know them all, but the fact that I know that 7x8 is simply 7^2+7 keeps me going along. Most people would be thinking, "that doesn't look very simple..." but hey, it works.

That was a bit of a tangent there, but back on topic. I don't like it when people give me the answers. Ever had that situation? When you ask a friend one little question and suddenly you get an Answer Attack? It's painful and I don't approve of it.

Besides the whole fact that throwing answers at people doesn't mean they'll understand the concept (defeating the purpose of helping them in the first place), I find the entire act simply arrogant. When someone asks for help, they have already admitted that you may possibly know something they don't; don't make a fuss over it. By throwing the answer around, it's almost as if you found the solution extremely easily. Unless the question was something that one ought to know (ie. a fact that should be memorized); not everyone will find the question easy. And whoever asked for help will definitely feel less competent if you're spilling over all the concepts that they have yet to understand.

Also, assuming you're better than someone because you can do the question may not always be the fact. What if the person who asked for help simply misunderstood the question or made 1 careless error? Then suddenly they're stuck listening to you ramble on about all the steps they already knew how to do. I would personally find it insulting that someone was assuming I didn't understand the concepts I already knew.

Of course all people react differently to being helped (see The Keener for clarification). I'm speaking more from a nerd perspective. I enjoy learning things myself, help is only needed when I forget a fact. Otherwise I would rather mull over my notes and/or seek professional help. I do find that keeners take well to having answers pelted at them and geeks tend to end up arguing over their respective answers to prove they were right. Geniuses though will no doubt take great offense to being 'assisted'.

And of course I realize sometimes I'm guilty of attacking people with answers as well. Oh dear I'm a hypocrite aren't I? Well that's not too bad! (Reminder to make a post about why being a hypocrite is better than being naive sometime...)

So remember, if you want to help a friend; always check to see exactly what kind of help they want at first. Never Answer Attack.

TDSB Homework Ban?

So I'm becoming increasingly worried that my brother isn't learning enough. Gosh these kindergartens these days don't teach them anything of substance. They say today that children in grade school are incapable of doing simple math like addition and subtract. Well I say it's obviously because they don't get taught before how to do that! Parents spend too much time at work, too little patience at home. They let their kids slobber down in front of the TV (aka idiot box) or on a computer trying to seem older than they're mentally able to.

Ok, all this aside, at least my brother still gets homework, little book summaries that my mother had to write for him. Better than nothing right? Right. Oh wait, guess what? TDSB is going to ban homework!

Don't believe it? http://www.todaysparent.com/schoolage/education/article.jsp?content=20090313_150716_9440&page=3 <-- Yes I read Today's Parent for fun

So apparently not doing homework is good now. Ok, I guess homework does give kids a lot of stress... well you know what I have to say about this? GET OVER IT KID! Seriously, how else are they going to learn to take responsibility? How else are they going to learn study habits? How else are they going to learn how to manage their time? You have to start somewhere, and I personally feel that high school is NOT a good time to start learning these basic life skills. My thoughts are that once a child can understand empathy, they have to understand that the world sucks and start learning how to deal with it. And homework teaches us how to manage to live a decent life even if there's something boring to have to do for say 30min a day after school.

Their argument for getting rid of homework mainly consists of the fact that it stresses kids out, and that what may take 1 kid 10min will take another kid 40min. I don't quite see how this is suppose to be an argument against homework... it's basically saying that kids don't learn at the same pace... I thought we all knew that already.

Now there are some people don't need homework to learn, but even people who know the material can benefit from a bit of practice here and there. Concepts are important, but homework shows how to apply it, and if you're seeing a question on the test for the first time, sure you can figure it out, but it'll take some time. Whereas if you did your homework, then you already know the fastest and simplest way to the answer since you've seen the general format of the question before. I speak from experience.

The biggest problem of a homework ban, I feel, is that kids will suck at basic math. Math at lower levels is all about memory. You memorize how to add, how to subtract. You need to memorize your multiplication table (unless you know how to add and subtract so perfectly that you can get to the same answer in relatively the same amount of time). Regardless, time needs to be spent fine-tuning these basic skills, and I honestly know no other way to do that than by doing homework. Do things enough times and it will be memorized. And that's what homework is for.

So, going back to the kids who don't do homework since they don't know how to start on it. Ok, look at the question long enough, fire off at least some neurons on the topic, and when the teacher takes the homework up the next day at least you'll know what the question is. After all, figuring out the question is quite a bit of the battle. And since I'm hoping all kids at least know how to read and interpret written text, then just attempting the question (aka. reading it) will give the kid some (maybe minor) understanding of what it's asking for. And the littlest bit of understanding can help both teacher and student with the learning process.

This of course, does not apply for the ones who sit in front of their homework and stare at it all night hoping that the answer will come flying in through a window. If you don't think, don't expect to know. And since kids seem to be complaining about spending so much time doing homework they can't do, I have slight suspicions that this is exactly what's happening. Again, parents are too oblivious to notice the real problem so they blame the school system. School system is part of government, and so must satisfy the parents.

Well I know that this summer I will be teaching my brother how to add up to 100 and the multiplication tables of 1-3, 5, 9-11 & all the squares of numbers (which are the only bits of multiplication that I myself memorized). And if YRDSB (holy powers forbid) ever adopts the homework ban, he'd better be expecting lots of homework from me.

It's not good to have lots of potential

So it seems to contrary to my beliefs, my father still has higher expectations than I do for myself. This is extremely depressing, I'd much rather him give up on me than continue with the hope that I'm somehow going to magically pull straight 4.0s out from nowhere.

The Story:

I went to a seminar about applying to the type 3 specialist POSt LMP. They say I should be in the safe range with a 3.7. Wonderful. Problem is that due to my idiotic and fail mistake on my last physics midterm (when I assumed a proton had a charge of +1 and forgot to convert to the fundamental charge), my 3.7 in physics may not exist anymore. Not so wonderful.

I was going to actually do a long winded rant but I decided that it would not be interweb appropriate.

I think the big problem with things right now is that both my parents know that I can do very well. I think I'm like a proton in a parallel plane capacitor. I have a certain potential due to my charge (which is not +1C) and so I have the ability to do work, which sucks since no one likes doing work. No. This is a bad example. It brings back terrible memories...

Actually I'm pretty sure I don't have as large a potential as many people think I do. To be perfectly honest I don't think I've got extreme intelligence at all. Never in my life have I done an assignment last minute, but then I suppose that means I never tested out my ability to do an assignment last minute. Oh wait, there was that chem lab!

Yes the chem lab... electrochemistry due the day after the experiment. On the same day as high table... That was not fun. And I know my lab report was not nearly as great as it could have been, but hey, I had no time to add the awesome touches.

I don't even know what I wanted to write about now since it's the day after I started writing this.. so I'll just publish it.

GPA is (almost) EVERYTHING

Not sure about many of you, but I've always been at the top of my class. Cross that, I've been within the top few percents of the class. There were 1 or 2 people who could do better than me, but it took them that much more effort. Nope, throughout high school I got by brilliantly and still had time to do lots of other things (explaining my countless hobbies).

Of course I'm not about to sit here and type out all the reasons I'm awesome, we all already know that ^^. Thing now is I've noticed the differences in people's values of their grades now that I'm in university. I always knew there were people who didn't care much for their marks, as long as it was good enough, but most of the people who were at the top of the class certainly valued their averages. Not once in my life have I heard myself, or many of the people I labelled competition, say, "oh, it's an 75, it's good enough". In fact the joke was always that anything below an 80 didn't exist.

However now, faced with the increasing struggles of first year Life Sciences, I've discovered that sometimes a 75 can be considered pretty fair. In fact many people would be delighted in getting one.

Perhaps for most people, all throughout high school, the marks were just for entrance to university. Now that they're here, a pass is all they need.

For others I think it was their parents who pushed for them to get the high marks, and perhaps that just never became part of their own values.

Some people don't need a high average anymore, they just need to get involved and meet people in order to be set.

For for me, and some of the more traditional people I know, it seems the value of marks has been infused into our brain. Logically speaking, I just need 70% in everything to graduate and be able to fine some lab technician job, but that neither pays well nor is very appealing to my nature. In the end now, it's not even about my future. Yes, I need a 3.7 and up to find good research placements and get a good head start, but that's not why I want a 3.7 and that's why I will not settle for only a 3.7.

All those years I may not have been the best, and I don't strive to be perfect, but I know I'm good. Some people have come here without doing a shred of work, some people have come here by studying day and night. I'm a bit of the first, but competitive enough to put some work into the big projects just to make sure I win in the endless competition against my peers. Yes, I'm competitive, but that's what makes things fun, winning is something I believe one ought to be proud of, it's been programmed into our brains. And out of the many competitions in high school I wanted to make sure I wasn't at the bottom of any of them. So I didn't give 100% of my effort into every project or every test, I had a life, I had hobbies, I went out with friends. Because whether I want to admit it or not, in high school having a social life is important, and every teenaged mind wants to have a reputation for something. And so I just used my 'natural talents' to get by easily.

But now in university, having 'natural talent' is no longer enough, and luckily I am one of few to realize that. So I know with a bit of work I can make it back to the top, maybe not the very top (I do still need my hobby time), but at least not just 'above average'. I know a 4.0 is so easily possible, and so I should pursue it. Having a big social life is no longer the most important in my mind, I've easily grew out of that. Social as I can be, I am also easily socially satisfied. And all in all, a simple life can be just as fulfilling as one full of adventure.

So while people still decide to rely on what natural abilities they have, I have decided I will give up a few things here and there to learn more. I finally understand that I don't want to know I can get a 4.0; I want to have a 4.0.

Cal-kill-us

Maybe blogging right now is not the best idea considering the amount of work that needs to be done, however I fear not for I am once again almost a week ahead! *keen

So after being tired with my obsessive poetry posting on Tumblr I have followed a dear friend's idea to start another blog via Blogger!

Being me I needed a theme, so I somewhat followed the theme of another dear friend's blog and decided to use this as a more or less commentary blog on the injustice and extreme fairness in the University of Toronto's Life Sciences program.

What should I comment on today? How about the intensity of the official Life Sciences calculus midterms? For those who are in MAT135, am I not wrong in saying that the last question is a hell of a lot of fun? Or pain?

For those who don't know about the class, basically on every midterm, the last question is hell. In fact it even tells you it's hell:

Oh, and yes, if you don't follow the correct procedure you get 0.

So unless you can get the last question perfectly, it's impossible to score above 92% on the test even if you get everything else perfect.

Not to mention after multiple choice number 10 things start to get annoying... I'm talking extremely long polynomials and fractions... very mean fractions. It's not really the solutions that are hard in the end, it's the simple math that most people will screw up on. One sign error here and maybe a miscalculation there (since calculators are not allowed) and it's all over!

By all over I mean each multiple choice question is worth 5 marks (Edit: IT'S ONLY WORTH 4 MARKS! HURRAY!). No marks given for work shown... in fact hell you can just circle any letter you want w/o doing any work and if it's right then you get the 4 marks!

Of course if one little mistake in your work makes you end up with the wrong answer, then that's 4 marks out of the 100 gone!

Though as traumatic as this test can be (I hear the 3rd term test is the worst one), you have to admit it's very cunningly designed. Out of the ~1500 students in first year life sciences, not many are really qualified for the upper level courses, so in a way this calculus course (which is mandatory) is used to weed out the weak. By having each multiple choice question worth 4-5 marks, students who can still manage to score above an 80% must have good attention to detail, check their work efficiently and/or are less susceptible to careless errors. These are all important traits for scientists and doctors alike and thus is deemed important to be tested on.

And for the demon question at the end of the test, it too has a good purpose. The last question(s) usually consist of problems that students have never seen before but should be able to solve given the concepts taught in class and pure hardcore logic. Students who are able to solve these questions, or are able to start on the correct solutions to these problems have the logic and problem solving mentality that makes a good researcher.

So while these tests are brutal to the average life science student, you have to admit; it works. And it works extremely well to make Life Sciences have such a high drop out rate!

But I personally feel attacked by the stress caused by this test; and so my roommate and I have decided that come Tuesday night, if we don't make it out of the test alive it will be due to the following reasons:

1. Strangled to death by integral sign
2. Cut into infinitely small vertical pieces dx
3. Cut into infinitely small horizontal pieces dy
4. Lost in a maze of special triangles
5. Divided by zero and were thus transported to another dimension where calculus doesn't kill us.