Not sure hat to write about today. Visited my fabulous chiropractor this morning and my back feels great, this feeling alone is worth the $25 per visit I pay. I have some things to work on, but nothing pressing. I need to work on the “research questions” this weekend, but it’s not going to be a big deal. I have a number of good books to use for my references, and again, it’s a far too simplistic question to answer. I can’t wait to be out of this class.

That sounds so horrible, but I just can’t stand how it’s so haphazard. Add in the sarcastic behaviour of my prof as she responds to the justifiably confused questions of my classmates and I’m just stewing in annoyance. It feels very much like she feels that it’s somehow *our* fault that we’re not getting it right. Which… this is not high school, this is not mandatory, I *pay* for this experience. I’m here to learn and be taught, not watch the people that are supposed to be teaching me act like prats.

It’s funny how the focus comes upon the bad experiences. My history prof is great; I had a fabulous interaction with the undergraduate advisor for the history department; as a professor my cousin is fun, interesting and aware; I’m learning about who to avoid and how to interact in this setting. I haven’t yet told my good news to here and it’s been a week now.

Last week, I think… I decided to nail down exactly what’s involved in this whole “adult student” thing. At the moment I’m restricted to 1.0 credit per term, if I fail a course I am expelled from Laurier, and I’m being “assessed”. I wanted to know what I have to do to come off the Academic Probation and become a proper part-time student, and then move into full time studies. I know that if I attain a mark of C- in 4.0 credits I’ll be allowed to stay enrolled and if I attain a mark of C- in 4.0 credits I will be allowed to apply for full-time studies. The other benchmark is an average of B in 2.0 credits to apply to go to full-time.

Now that I write that out, it’s obvious to me that the AP ends at C- in 4.0, so basically a full year (not academic, a full 12 months year) at just squeaking by. But if you’re a better student than that, which I am, you can bypass the assessment and AP at 2.0 credits at a B by going into full-time studies. It looks straight forward now, but I was massively confused.

So I went in and spoke to the *cough* ladies at the registrar’s office. I remained confused, at which point they shooed me off to the History department since they’re “not here for academic counseling”, gee thanks. Scupper you too. At the History department I get it sort of explained to me by the department’s admin assistant. Then she herds me over to the office of the Undergraduate Advisor so he can explain to me the new layout for the Honours History program.

As we chat, he asks me about my situation and my grades to date. After which he says that he feels that if I’m getting the grades I am (84.1%, baby!) there’s no reason for me to be locked into the AP for another term at the minimum. He thinks he might be able to help me move into full-time as of next *term*. He wants to see what my grade is on my first history essay, which is being marked at the moment, and based on that will start moving on it.

Even if it doesn’t happen that I can go to full-time next term, it’s still a thrill that someone in a position of authority here has agreed with me that this AP sucks. I’m grateful that I was limited to the two courses this term, it’s given me time to adjust and figure out where I’m at, but… another term limited like this would drive me nuts. I’m doing the work, I’m getting the grades and I don’t want to spend the next 6 years of my life here.

At least I finally understand what’s happening with the AP. I’ll get that B average and get the hell into full-time studies either next term or next fall. At which point I’m going to need to keep my grades up if I want to graduate with an honours degree. Blah.

Something I don’t understand and I find fairly offensive? Young women baby talking and acting completely ditzy when speaking to a young man. There’s a girl in the lab with me at the moment doing just that and I want to slap her. It’s far too easy to sell ourselves so very short to be doing it deliberately. Ok, so he’s cute, but why on earth would anyone want someone that wants a stupid girl?

I know I’m a 30 year old woman sitting in a room filled with people barely into their 20s, if that. I know that I’ve paid my dues as a stupid girl, pretending to be remarkably stupid to get the guy. I know the thought process that’s involved when you’ve been turned down a few times because the guy you like is intimidated by you.

It’s still selling yourself short. I mean, I’m in a lab in the Science Building on the WLU campus. This is not exactly the land of the idiots. (Contrary to what uwaterloo people have the bad habit of saying… bastards. ;) ) *sighs*

Things I never realized I knew until I was surrounded by people that haven’t figured this all out yet. Well, that’s not exactly true. I never really had a clear, simple childhood. I’ve always functioned older and more mature than my age would imply. And yes, in many ways I was remarkably stupid in my early 20s.

Sometimes I sit in my classes, in the labs before classes and there’s this mild feeling of regret. I wish I had done this at the “right” age. I understand that at any age people feel out of place and nervous, but I just keep realizing how different my world view is from my peers. The very concept of getting trashed out of my head until I puke… Oi. Or skipping classes. Hell, no, I better be on my fucking death bed before I miss a class.

I’m incredibly driven when it comes to school right now. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep it up over the years, but for now it’s there, baby. I want the best goddamned marks possible. I want to see my name on the Dean’s list. I want my professors to know me by name as well as face and expect good work from me. The deck was so very stacked against me in High School. I want to take this chance and prove myself capable of being a kickass student.

And I want to prove it to nobody other than myself. It’s always been something missing from my life, this core deep confidence in my abilities. Not that excelling at university will give it to me, necessarily, but it’s another level. The quiet knowledge that I looked at my desire to make soap and from there created a decently successful business all. on. my. own. is pure gold for confidence building.

Gah, I can’t access any of my slides from previous lectures. I’m so bored. *laughs*

Today has been such an utter comedy of errors. Start with waking up at 4am because my lower back is killing me. I staggered out to the living room to throw myself upon the mercy of my fabulous heating pad. Then by the time my back started feeling better and I felt sleepy once again it was nearly time for Sara to get up. I somehow staggered my way through until I decided to warm up using Mike as a heating pad. I fell asleep.

I vaguely remember waking up at 8:24 and hollering at Sara that she better be ready to go out the door… and then her un-brushed head popped around the door edge and said she wasn’t ready. Yeah, duh. I fell back asleep after that. So very tired this morning. I’m starting to think that maybe if I had dropped Mike off and promptly gone back to bed life would’ve been in a much better state for me on this fine autumn day.

But, but, there’s always a but. I watched an Oprah show last night that talked about heart disease and that whole thing about belly fat being worse for you than ass or thigh fat in terms of heart health. I also have a $57/month membership to my gym that’s been going neglected for quite some time at this point. Add in that I’ve been feeling stressed through the roof lately and that exercise is supposed to be a stress reliever and we have my activity for the morning – going to the gym.

I’m thinking of turning my formidable will upon myself and just making it *very important* that I go to the gym every other day or so. I need to move, my lungs are bad, my back is bad, I’m sleeping better but still not well, and just making sure I take time on a regular basis to move my body should help with all of that. I just have to make it a priority again. If I go in the mornings, that helps. I’m realizing more and more that I’m just done in the evenings. I run out of steam fairly early.

Anyways, back to the drama of my fine day. I leave the gym with a blinding headache (that’s still hanging around like a very unwanted guest) and I reach for my sunglasses to take the edge off of the lovely yet far too bright sunlight. They’re broken. It’s a metal fatigue break, and if I had a soldering iron I’d fix it myself, but I don’t, so they’re going to have to stay broken for a while. At least until I get a chance to take them to lenscrafters. I’m not really annoyed since they’ve lasted 4 years now, and my glasses proper are just fine.

Then my beautiful car… Oh, Mephostophiles. It was fill the tank time again, and we’ve been noticing that the tires look a little under-deflated so I decided to try to fill the tires. 3 broken air pumps later, I’m looking at a front left tire reading 15 PSI, when the recommended is about 34 PSI. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to drive on that, visions of cutting through the tire walls dancing in my head… so I stomp off into the Canadian Tire and buy us a mini-air compressor. I’m highly unimpressed that I had to buy an air compressor to inflate my tires. So stupid. Ahh well, hurrah for more rarely needed toys to live in his trunk.

But now here I am, at school waiting for my lecture to begin. I think I like this taking of some time to type up a journal entry before class. I could be reading for class, but it’s not a big deal to do later or while I’m elsewhere. It’s all the balance act, as usual. Just feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day. Plus I then spend far too much time recovering from things. No matter how well I think I’m doing, when it comes down to it I have complex post traumatic stress disorder and that makes me different. I don’t process stress in a normal fashion and I do need goodly amounts of time to come down off of things.

It’s one thing I’m grateful to Lindsay for. She is very clear in pointing out that YES, writing an Essay is stressful, that YES, dealing with an unholy mess with the administration of a course is stressful, that YES, feeling tired and overwhelmed is utterly normal in this situation. Normal for the young ones, normal for the adult students, and therefore normal for me too.

I just wish my headache would go away. I’ve just finished an extra large coffee and it’s still hanging about so it’s definitely not a lack of caffeine situation. Blah. 2 hours and then I’m home and I can drug myself. *laughs* Ok, time to post this sucker.

It’s just one of those days. I’ve been poked and prodded and twisted by my chiropractor, gone over my woes with my therapist-type-person and now I’m killing time in the computer lab waiting for my History class to begin. Oh and I’m handing in my first real essay of my university career (such as it is) in lecture today. Oh, oh! I almost forgot, I also have a root canal booked for 4pm.

It’s just one of those days.

The depression weight’s been sitting on me all this past week. It’s gotten worse over the weekend and yesterday. I figure it’s just a reaction to the increased stress of this whole situation. I’m tired, I’m in a foreign land, I’m finding no time for myself, I feel like I’m failing at everything I should be good at… it just sucks. Money is freaking me out, school is a fucking mess, and I’m not eating right… gah!

I’m never taking a new course again. This course has been massively mismanaged and booched beyond all recognition. The assignments don’t match the expectations in the syllabus, the teaching styles and coverage changes between the profs, there’s no acknowledgement that they’ve screwed up and the cream on the top? My assignment that’s worth 10% of my total mark? They’ve decided to not give it a mark at this time.

So I’m the student that got 84.1% on the first test in the course and beyond that I don’t have a single blessed clue as to where I stand at all. Granted until I get my essay back from my history course I don’t know where I stand there either, but at least I knew that coming out of the first class. That class has actually matched the syllabus.

The inability to do anything about unprofessional behaviour in this environment is maddening. As a student I have 2 choices available to me: take it or leave it. I mean I could make a big ass fuss and take it to the dean, but ultimately there’s nothing that will be done. I’m enough of a realist to expect that. It just drives me batshit crazy. If I behaved as arrogant and dismissive of the concerns of my customers as these people do, my business would’ve failed instantly. Yet they have their cushy tenured jobs where they get to lecture a classroom of nearly 40 students about how men are the root of the entire universe’s ills… and nothing happens to them.

I sat in a room with my prof a couple weeks ago and said “Look, the syllabus says one thing about how to do this assignment; you have told people individually something completely different. This has created confusion. The sources we were given are poor.” And she responded with “I’ll keep that in mind as I mark.” Specifically the fact that the provided French sources were utter and absolute shit. The comment on my returned assignment? “The French answer is a bit weak.”

Un-fucking-believable.

I’m just going to make it through this course and then make damn sure to avoid any classes with these profs again. It’s my only recourse. Well not my only, but definitely the only practical one. Anything else would put my already way too high stress levels through the roof. It’s just bullshit.

Ahh well, at least I got 84.1%, eh?