Well folks, this is going to be my last blog post. Elisse, I know you thoroughly enjoy these so I'm sorry to be disappointing you. Other than you, I don't think I'll be letting down too many other people.
This blog was made for my Information Systems class and to be quite honest I'm not much of a blogger. I could never think of topics to write about. I would generally consult friends to give me inspiration. Plus I'm not a big writer....generally the only person I let edit my essays is my Dad so putting out my writing for anyone to read on the internet was just scary for me. So now that I'm not required to write for my grade, I'm probably going to abandon this blog (I mean c'mon, let's face it. we knew this was going to be an epic failure when I wasn't even creative enough to call it "Kristen's Korner")
I do enjoy reading other people's blogs however (mainly because I'm not the writer). So if you are an active reader and would like something better to read, I suggest reading http://culturalwha.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2011-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&updated-max=2012-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&max-results=18
It's written by much better writers than I who are way more funny than I. Enjoy! And thanks for following my posts! :)
Tuesday 29 November 2011
Those annoying people who talk in class
Don't let the title of this blog post mislead you. I'm all for group discussions, debates, hearing other people's points of views and what not, but when you are in a class of 600 people that is just not feasible (hence the creation of conferences).
And yet, there seems to always be that one person who manages to raise their hand and speak at least once each class. Everyone in the class comes to recognize them and eventually hate them....said person either doesn't mind or never picks up on that. Since we never find out their true name but we need to label them something in order to bitch about them to our friends who are also in the class, I've come to give these people nicknames (they generally come to me on the spur of the moment in mid-bitch). Here are my two favorites....
Question Girl: This girl was in my Introduction to Behavioural Neuroscience class. Without fail, this question girl would raise her hand and ramble on and on and on about some article she had read or some research she had heard about and how it relates to this concept in the most minor insignificant way and NO ONE CARES! It would drive me crazy because she was clearly not saying anything of importance, just trying to prove to the 599 other people in that class that she's a know-it-all and trying to impress the professor. The professor (thank god!) was clearly unimpressed and would cut the girl off mid sentence to inform her that her "question" was too long. By mid semester, when a hand was raised in the front left side of the classroom I would instinctively groan and curse "question girl". Luckily, by the end of the semester, the professor was ignoring her, conveniently not looking in the direction of hear raised hand. That made my life.
Duh-huh! Boy: Oh duh-huh boy. You also annoyed the crap out of me. This guy was in my 600 person cognition class. Unlike question girl, this guy didn't ask questions. Instead this guy would make his appearance after the entire class had laughed about a joke the professor had made. He would wait for our laughter to subside and just when the professor was about to resume lecturing, he would literally bellow for the entire class to hear "DUH-HUH!" (I guess it was his way of obnoxiously laughing). At first, I'll admit it was funny. It made it seem like it took him a little longer to pick up on the joke and it made the entire class start to laugh again. But when he continued to do this for every single joke the professor made, it just got annoying. I'm a jumpy person and it would scare me when I wasn't expecting it.
Moral of the story: if you're in a huge class and your question is not relevant for the other people in the class, shoot an email or visit during office hours. quit wasting my time!
And yet, there seems to always be that one person who manages to raise their hand and speak at least once each class. Everyone in the class comes to recognize them and eventually hate them....said person either doesn't mind or never picks up on that. Since we never find out their true name but we need to label them something in order to bitch about them to our friends who are also in the class, I've come to give these people nicknames (they generally come to me on the spur of the moment in mid-bitch). Here are my two favorites....
Question Girl: This girl was in my Introduction to Behavioural Neuroscience class. Without fail, this question girl would raise her hand and ramble on and on and on about some article she had read or some research she had heard about and how it relates to this concept in the most minor insignificant way and NO ONE CARES! It would drive me crazy because she was clearly not saying anything of importance, just trying to prove to the 599 other people in that class that she's a know-it-all and trying to impress the professor. The professor (thank god!) was clearly unimpressed and would cut the girl off mid sentence to inform her that her "question" was too long. By mid semester, when a hand was raised in the front left side of the classroom I would instinctively groan and curse "question girl". Luckily, by the end of the semester, the professor was ignoring her, conveniently not looking in the direction of hear raised hand. That made my life.
Duh-huh! Boy: Oh duh-huh boy. You also annoyed the crap out of me. This guy was in my 600 person cognition class. Unlike question girl, this guy didn't ask questions. Instead this guy would make his appearance after the entire class had laughed about a joke the professor had made. He would wait for our laughter to subside and just when the professor was about to resume lecturing, he would literally bellow for the entire class to hear "DUH-HUH!" (I guess it was his way of obnoxiously laughing). At first, I'll admit it was funny. It made it seem like it took him a little longer to pick up on the joke and it made the entire class start to laugh again. But when he continued to do this for every single joke the professor made, it just got annoying. I'm a jumpy person and it would scare me when I wasn't expecting it.
Moral of the story: if you're in a huge class and your question is not relevant for the other people in the class, shoot an email or visit during office hours. quit wasting my time!
Fighting Sickness
Keeping with the theme of upcoming exams, I've decided to discuss ways to prevent/fight illness since, well, everyone inevitably gets sick during exam season.
Okay so there are your typical get enough sleep, get your vitamin C, eat well, drink tea, keep warm, etc. but I hate those...they really aren't convenient when you have an exam in 16 hours and still have 48 hours worth of studying left to do.
So my recent method has been to lie to myself. When your throat is sore, your stomach hurts, you have that annoying headache that's putting you in a horrible mood, you have two options:
1. you let all those things get to you and complain to everyone who happens to run into you that day about how your life sucks, you have that huge exam tomorrow and of course your body decided to get sick at such an inopportune time! you get in your sweatpants, decide to wear your glasses, and frown all day long.
OR
2. you don't let it get to you! You wear a nice outfit, put on a bit of makeup, wear your contacts as always. When you run into those people you know on campus, you smile and say hi, say that your sick but it'll be fine! it'll pass in no time with a bit of sleep and vitamin C. Most important thing though is that you smile (even though you don't really want to). Trick your body into thinking its happy and pretend to be peppy!
Trust me it works and within a couple days you'll be as good as new. It's my extension of the James-Lange theory of emotion (applied to illness).
OR you stay in a horrible mood all day because you're nervous about the exam you have the next day so that if you get a bad grade you have something to blame it on (that's another extension psychological theory they have for procrastination).
Okay so there are your typical get enough sleep, get your vitamin C, eat well, drink tea, keep warm, etc. but I hate those...they really aren't convenient when you have an exam in 16 hours and still have 48 hours worth of studying left to do.
So my recent method has been to lie to myself. When your throat is sore, your stomach hurts, you have that annoying headache that's putting you in a horrible mood, you have two options:
1. you let all those things get to you and complain to everyone who happens to run into you that day about how your life sucks, you have that huge exam tomorrow and of course your body decided to get sick at such an inopportune time! you get in your sweatpants, decide to wear your glasses, and frown all day long.
OR
2. you don't let it get to you! You wear a nice outfit, put on a bit of makeup, wear your contacts as always. When you run into those people you know on campus, you smile and say hi, say that your sick but it'll be fine! it'll pass in no time with a bit of sleep and vitamin C. Most important thing though is that you smile (even though you don't really want to). Trick your body into thinking its happy and pretend to be peppy!
Trust me it works and within a couple days you'll be as good as new. It's my extension of the James-Lange theory of emotion (applied to illness).
OR you stay in a horrible mood all day because you're nervous about the exam you have the next day so that if you get a bad grade you have something to blame it on (that's another extension psychological theory they have for procrastination).
Reactions to Stress
With final exams coming up next week (or final term papers for those of you who arts students....or final presentations for those of you who are marketing students), the level of stress on campus has noticeably increased (like it does every year...not really much of a surprise). So in light of this exam/paper/presentation stress, I thought I'd talk about the many different ways people behave when they are stressed.
1. Some people eat (its a comfort thing)...they eat a lot and they eat a lot of shit.
2. other people do the exact opposite and stop eating
3. basically everyone starts drinking enormous amounts of coffee
4. some people become bitchy (they make mean comments, are more short with you, etc)
5. i know one person who just stops attending class and stays home (you know who you are mwaha)
6. a friend pointed out that one thing that differentiates midterm season from finals season is that during finals the hallway outside of the fish bowl in redpath becomes filled with students having mental breakdowns (you know that girl sitting on one of the cushy benches with her head hunched over and her friend sitting next to her consoling her)
7. some people plan excessively
8. some isolate themselves and keep really quiet
9. the majority of people do a combination of the previous 8
GOOD LUCK WITH EXAMS EVERYONE!
1. Some people eat (its a comfort thing)...they eat a lot and they eat a lot of shit.
2. other people do the exact opposite and stop eating
3. basically everyone starts drinking enormous amounts of coffee
4. some people become bitchy (they make mean comments, are more short with you, etc)
5. i know one person who just stops attending class and stays home (you know who you are mwaha)
6. a friend pointed out that one thing that differentiates midterm season from finals season is that during finals the hallway outside of the fish bowl in redpath becomes filled with students having mental breakdowns (you know that girl sitting on one of the cushy benches with her head hunched over and her friend sitting next to her consoling her)
7. some people plan excessively
8. some isolate themselves and keep really quiet
9. the majority of people do a combination of the previous 8
GOOD LUCK WITH EXAMS EVERYONE!
Monday 31 October 2011
Procrastination
I finally thought of something to write about (if you don't understand that, please refer to my previous post entitled "I don't know what to write about")!!! Well actually, I didn't really think of it. My roommate suggested the topic to me (shout out to Elisse).
So once I was in a french class and our professor gave us a story to read. Basically the story was about this teacher who had a bucket and she put these big rocks in the bucket till they reached the top and asked the class if the bucket were full, to which the class responded "yes". And the teacher was all "No it's not" and so she put some small pebbles in the bucket that filled up the gaps between all the big rocks. And once again informed that class that it wasn't full and this goes on and on with gravel and then sand and then finally she put water in the bucket and finally bucket was "truly" full.
Okay so this story was a metaphor for student's procrastination. You know we students fill up our bucket of time with big rocks like school, sports, other extracurriculars, etc. Then we feel like we have "no time". And then we add on top of these big rocks some pebbles that take up more of our time with things like seeing friends, partying, etc. Okay so you get the point. And so we have these rocks and these pebbles and we think that our time is all taken up and really we have all these empty gaps. We fill them with facebook and tv shows and other "unproductive" behavior.
Basically, I get the point of the story and I get what my french professor was trying to tell us by having us read this story, but I mean its impossible to completely fill your bucket with water! Your going to knock over your bucket and lose all your marbles (or rocks, pebbles, gravel, sand and water that is). I agree that maybe people leave a little too much space in their bucket for fb and other mindless stuff, but you can't always be productive 100% of the time. It's too much. So yeah...I'm gonna end this now before I start coming up with alternative interpretations of the story.
So once I was in a french class and our professor gave us a story to read. Basically the story was about this teacher who had a bucket and she put these big rocks in the bucket till they reached the top and asked the class if the bucket were full, to which the class responded "yes". And the teacher was all "No it's not" and so she put some small pebbles in the bucket that filled up the gaps between all the big rocks. And once again informed that class that it wasn't full and this goes on and on with gravel and then sand and then finally she put water in the bucket and finally bucket was "truly" full.
Okay so this story was a metaphor for student's procrastination. You know we students fill up our bucket of time with big rocks like school, sports, other extracurriculars, etc. Then we feel like we have "no time". And then we add on top of these big rocks some pebbles that take up more of our time with things like seeing friends, partying, etc. Okay so you get the point. And so we have these rocks and these pebbles and we think that our time is all taken up and really we have all these empty gaps. We fill them with facebook and tv shows and other "unproductive" behavior.
Basically, I get the point of the story and I get what my french professor was trying to tell us by having us read this story, but I mean its impossible to completely fill your bucket with water! Your going to knock over your bucket and lose all your marbles (or rocks, pebbles, gravel, sand and water that is). I agree that maybe people leave a little too much space in their bucket for fb and other mindless stuff, but you can't always be productive 100% of the time. It's too much. So yeah...I'm gonna end this now before I start coming up with alternative interpretations of the story.
I don't know what to write about
I've been thinking for a very long while about what I should write about and can't think of really anything. One of my roommates suggested that I write about all the things that I cook....but seeing as I've been swamped with exams I haven't been cooking...and when I do it's a grilled cheese...or pasta...not really very exciting. My other roommate suggested that I be like her and write about the topic of her essay for her Human Sexuality and its Problems class....needless to say, I think everyone is grateful that I politely declined this suggestion.
I finally decided to go through my stream of thoughts when deciding what to write about. Generally the first thing that comes to mind is something I want to rant about. Anything that's bothering me that day. Then I quickly realize that if I actually write about those things and the people involved happen to stumble across my blog, I'd be really screwed. So ixnay (I just googled that to verify the spelling of that word and I'm pretty sure that's it...besides the point) on my rants. Plus, I'm sure the TAs for Information Systems don't want to have to read a million blog posts all complaining about this, that, and the next thing. I hate complainers.
Anyways, then once I've decided that I don't want to write about something that's bugging me, I'm generally at a loss for what to write about. Occasionally I have this brilliant idea of using my blog pastes as a way to study for my exams and to just sum up a chapter or a theory in a blog post, but that's kind of boring. And usually I lose the motivation.
Then in between all these unimpressive ideas for blog posts, I start to fret over the fact that I'm really self conscious about my writing and the fear that people will read this. I suppose I should get over this fear.
I'll let you know when I finally decide on what to write about!
I finally decided to go through my stream of thoughts when deciding what to write about. Generally the first thing that comes to mind is something I want to rant about. Anything that's bothering me that day. Then I quickly realize that if I actually write about those things and the people involved happen to stumble across my blog, I'd be really screwed. So ixnay (I just googled that to verify the spelling of that word and I'm pretty sure that's it...besides the point) on my rants. Plus, I'm sure the TAs for Information Systems don't want to have to read a million blog posts all complaining about this, that, and the next thing. I hate complainers.
Anyways, then once I've decided that I don't want to write about something that's bugging me, I'm generally at a loss for what to write about. Occasionally I have this brilliant idea of using my blog pastes as a way to study for my exams and to just sum up a chapter or a theory in a blog post, but that's kind of boring. And usually I lose the motivation.
Then in between all these unimpressive ideas for blog posts, I start to fret over the fact that I'm really self conscious about my writing and the fear that people will read this. I suppose I should get over this fear.
I'll let you know when I finally decide on what to write about!
Tuesday 18 October 2011
Management Core Exams
Before I start my little rant, I would like to point out that I am writing this post before the Information System's midterm (this Friday for those of you who are oblivious). And so I'm not actually talking about the Information Systems midterm, but rather the countless other exams for core management courses I've taken in my past 3 years of studying at McGill (yes, i am a fourth year taking IS...I know).
In addition to Information Systems, I am taking Operations Management this semester. The midterm exam is next Friday. The professor has already warned us that they do not give us enough time to finish the exam so that we shouldn't waste time writing out and explaining our work. Just write down the correct answer (diligently making sure to not have made any calculation errors) and get moving to the next one.
I'm sorry but how on earth is this a good method to test our knowledge!? First of all, it puts all native English speakers at an advantage (and this is coming from a native English speaker!); who necessarily will be able to read and understand questions quicker than non-native speakers. This may not be a huge problem at most schools but McGill has tons of students who's first language isn't english.
And second of all, a student may know exactly how to answer a problem but makes a little mistake while punching numbers into their calculator and POOF! they lose ALL marks.
Absolutely ridiculous....
In addition to Information Systems, I am taking Operations Management this semester. The midterm exam is next Friday. The professor has already warned us that they do not give us enough time to finish the exam so that we shouldn't waste time writing out and explaining our work. Just write down the correct answer (diligently making sure to not have made any calculation errors) and get moving to the next one.
I'm sorry but how on earth is this a good method to test our knowledge!? First of all, it puts all native English speakers at an advantage (and this is coming from a native English speaker!); who necessarily will be able to read and understand questions quicker than non-native speakers. This may not be a huge problem at most schools but McGill has tons of students who's first language isn't english.
And second of all, a student may know exactly how to answer a problem but makes a little mistake while punching numbers into their calculator and POOF! they lose ALL marks.
Absolutely ridiculous....
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