silva rerum

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail

Last night, I stayed up until mid­night with some clas­sical music and Agatha Christie just to wait for my marks to be released. I’m far from dis­ap­poin­ted but I know there’s room for improve­ment; I’ll just have to work harder! It’s been a great year though – I can really reflect on courses now:

• BIOL 200 – This course was actu­ally quite inter­est­ing (con­sid­er­ing I’m into cells and all) though it was a little poorly com­mu­nic­ated exactly what was needed to do well. My sec­tion (Berger) did cata­stroph­ic­ally on the section-​specific midterm so we were scaled up. I’d advise reg­u­lar study­ing for this course – it’s a lot of con­cepts and pro­cesses to understand.
• BIOL 201 – I really dis­liked this course for the sole reason that what was taught was not dir­ectly trans­lated into exam­in­able mater­ial; far too much mater­ial was expec­ted to be gained by doing the prob­lem sets. It almost seemed like lec­tures were extraneous.
• CHEM 233 – Difficult but reward­ing if appro­pri­ate (i.e. lots) time invest­ment is alloc­ated for this course. It’s easy to fall behind so stay ahead by study­ing early and often.
• CHEM 205 – Straightforward and simple – there aren’t any tricks to this course. Learn the mater­ial, and learn all of it. Practice the prob­lem sets, they’re harder than the actual exams.
• CHEM 235 – Fun and easy but decept­ively tough on mark­ing. Take the time to watch all the pre-​laboratory videos and study hard for your writ­ten final.
• ENGL 221 – Easy, peasy and fun elect­ive course. Covers Romantic era to modern-​day lit­er­at­ure. Should be pop­u­lar with those who dis­like older literature.
• ENGL 348 – Absolutely amaz­ing. This class is by far my best class at UBC – sym­path­etic instructor, enlight­en­ing class and inspir­ing people. There isn’t a lot of work either, just walk in with an open mind and do attend as many classes as possible.
• ENGL 357 – Enjoyable read­ings and a great instructor made this one breeze by. I wish it were longer but I’m happy with the fair mark­ing overall.
• PSYC 100 – Biggest mis­take ever – this course sucked my soul from my body and left me an empty shell. Entirely rote mem­or­iz­a­tion – the exams test on ridicu­lously minute trivia. Would not recom­mend to any­one who has a pulse and a brain unless it was abso­lutely neces­sary. UBC Psychology, work on your ped­ago­gical devel­op­ment! Doing those psy­cho­logy stud­ies was fun though; espe­cially for credits.

I woke up a bit earlier today to have break­fast with my dad and grandma. It’s always nice spend­ing time with them; I find that I’m typ­ic­ally out of the house for most of the time dur­ing the school/​work year so meals are good fam­ily times.

Afterwards, I promptly went to cam­pus to return my boat­load of books on col­lab­or­at­ive author­ship and the Augustan authors (evid­ently, I received 88 on my paper and 90 on my exam where I wrote two essays — one on the char­ac­ter of the Rake and the other on the char­ac­ter of the Coquette through the Restoration and eighteenth-​century). I then met with J where I was a tad on the gar­rulous side, talk­ing about OpenCourseWare and First Year Seminars. I know he’s still look­ing for an Associate Vice President Academic and sev­eral com­mis­sion­ers so I’d look out for those oppor­tun­it­ies. J is driven, smart and dip­lo­matic – I think he’s poised to effect real change this year. I hope he reaches out to S and J for their great ideas though.

Afterwards, I bumped into S at the Minischool office where we’ve got…let’s say…a pickle to sort out regard­ing book­ings for Fall courses. While it will be a phys­ical night­mare (can one of the pre­requis­ites for my assist­ant be that s/​he must be able to lift their own weight in wooden stages?), I’m cross­ing my fin­gers and pray­ing that the book­ings people can help us out. I found out that she might be head­ing to Edmonton which sad­dens me a little, but she’s doing what she’s always wanted to do so more power to her. We joked a bit, had a free lunch cour­tesy of the AMS (who says there are no free lunches in this world? mine had penne car­bon­ara today!) then par­ted ways.

I went to go pur­chase my BIOL 334/​335 text­books which were exor­bit­ant but thank­fully K has assured me that I may bor­row her set for the sum­mer. I get to return my books and get my money back! Hurray.

All in all, not a bad day at all. I’ll be spend­ing my day with S tomor­row doing Minischool turnover stuff. I’m still wait­ing on A to fin­ish his turnover so I can begin Director of Finance duties at SUS.

Seems like I never take vacations.

On a happy note, I found a video of “My Boyfriend’s Back.” It brings back memor­ies of ball­room les­sons with L. Weren’t those fun, L? See the video after the jump.

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