Tuesday 29 November 2011

Farewell!

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! :)

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!

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).

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!