Oh man: The Academic Appeal

I just got done writing the first draft of my academic appeals letter. It appears, according to the Ombudsman, that I am only the second person to appeal a grade that wasn't in trouble academically in his tenure here. --grimace-- I found a form template here and I'm not going to lie. I felt myself get worked up all over again. I sent the rough draft to the ombudsman, who is out of town, so i figured i would post it here [minus names of course in case anyone had any feedback]. How do you tell someone that they were a careless jerk who risked ruining your academic standing and remain professional. The guy got insulted if I asked him how to do an assignment, I can't imagine he's going to react very well. Perhaps, If I'm lucky he'll continue to be reckless enough to shoot his mouth off when he rejects my appeal. He's been pretty good for that so far, right down to the audio recorded conference. Yeah, I'm that chick, who knows intuitively to document everything at the first glimpse of trouble. I had to do something, my advisor went awol and I'm not going to take something like that on without back up. Either way, I'm not too worried. I just have to remember to remain calm. I already have what I need to go further if I need to. I just would have preferred receiving preparation for the course instead. here's what I wrote.

Dear Dr. So and so,

The purpose for the letter is to formally appeal the grade I received from you in the Q section of GSTR 210 during the Spring Semester of 09. As outlined by the 2008-2009 Student Handbook, on pages … I am required to submit this appeal to the instructor prior to submitting my request to the department chair first. So I am writing to appeal my grade upon the following grounds.

According to the 2008-2009 Student Handbook,

It is recognized that instructors must have the primary responsibility of assessing the quality of academic performance, advancement, and achievement of students in their classes. However, instructors are subject to human frailties; these frailties can cause errors in calculation or judgment that may affect assessment of a student’s performance. Because all instructors are required to reveal on the course syllabus the method in which the final grade will be determined, it is the responsibility of the student to review the course syllabus and become familiar with all components of the course grade. Further, it is the responsibility of the student to discuss any questions about grading practices during the course with the instructor.

I have contacted you on numerous occasions throughout the course with my questions via email and in person regarding the criteria of our undocumented assignments because I often noticed many discrepancies with what was graded and what was assigned. Without being provided written or electronic documentation of what was assigned, I had a lot of questions throughout the semester which were left unanswered. Based upon what we discussed in class was required for our assignments and because we were not instructed or provided with resources how to avoid making many of the common errors that we were critiqued upon, I do not feel that my grade reflects what was asked nor what was taught, which is the basis for my appeal.

I have saved my written requests for clarification of the assignments and kept dates of when I specifically asked for written documentation or supplemental resources that would show me how to complete the assignments properly, i.e. websites or other visual models. I know that I repeated many enquiries regarding the assignment parameters early and even expressed to you that without documented guidelines I had much difficulty understanding how to correctly complete the assignments since the information was not provided in writing on blackboard or documented except in a listing on the final copy of the syllabus. I believe that this caused us both a lot of frustration and if you’d like, I would be willing to forward you a transcript of these requests and have also saved written and audio notes from our class meetings to review. I also have the audio recording from our meeting on February 26, 2009. I did use the book that you gave me during our meeting on May 13 before class, two days before our final paper was due. But I feel that this was not adequate time to prepare my paper according to the grading criterion you attached to my final paper especially since this was information that I specifically requested from you beforehand. This seemed to be a recurring issue from the first assignment. I was very careful to make sure that I communicated throughout the course my difficulty with not understanding how to do the assignments due to the lack of attention to the instruction of how to correctly complete the procedures. I specifically asked to be provided with the information needed to produce our final paper before our assignments were due and even went so far as to explain how this created a learning barrier for me and for some of my other peers.

According to the final syllabus, we were also supposed to have conferences on April 13 and May 4. I believe that because we did not use either of those dates to discuss questions and concerns that we had this may be why an assumption was made that we all had a clear understanding of what was expected in the assignment. But because many of my peers were also very unclear, and the Learning Center and TAs I consulted did not fully understand the guidelines as they were not documented, this is why I came to your office to ask for clarification on May 13th. After numerous requests for documented guidelines I did attempt to use the book that you finally loaned me. But this did not address all of the information from your critiques in my previous grades and so I simply consulted online resources so that I could have something to turn in by the due date. With the amount of effort that I spent working on the assignment and trying to learn how to do the assignment with such limited resources, I feel that it is very appropriate to request that my grade be reconsidered to reflect the considerable amount of work that I put into the assignment despite the fact that I was inadequately prepared to do such a sizeable amount of work correctly in such a short span of time given.

According to the Blank College 2008-2009 course catalog, the GSTR 210 course is

designed to develop and build upon the reasoning, writing, research, and learning emphases of GSTR 110, while engaging all students on issues close to the historic mission of the College--race, gender, Appalachia, and class. Initially, each section explores the story of Berea, including as it relates to the unifying themes of GSTR 210. Each section of the course involves explicit, continuing attention to writing, reasoning, research, and reflective engagement with various texts, including instruction in the processes of producing a research paper.

I understand that each of the instructors for this course has a different set of parameters for how he or she chooses to teach the material. But I think that based upon what I was asked for, what was provided and the guidelines outlined by the course catalog, that allowances be made to compensate for discrepancies in the grading this semester as the instruction seemed inconsistent with the goals of the course. I have been very careful to keep documentation that supports my claim and want to reiterate that my grievance is specifically is with the grading inconsistencies and not the instructor. I realize that this can be a very tedious process, but feel that under the circumstances that it would be irresponsible for me not to request that my grade be reviewed once more and changed. I have reviewed the handbook, understand the procedure, and will compliantly await your response. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

yadayada

I know i need to go back in and add handbook page numbers, but that is the gist of it. let me know if you see anything that needs to be struck. i don't want to come across as pompous as this guy is

Lofty Goals

So I haven’t written in a while, which trust me, is a great sign. I’ve been taking summer classes and trying out new talents, learning new topics and budding new relationships, and my life has been pretty full. It’s great. I’m in bed by midnight if I can fight to stay awake that long and exhausted by the time my head hits the pillow that I barely make my bed anymore. The good news is, that my bed in my summer residence is lofted, so I don’t have to see the clutter, and it makes life a bit simpler.

How to build a loft bed courtesy of ehow

Right now I’m taking a couple of classes, working 20 hours a week and heading up a marketing project for a company who is struggling to promote their business. Of the two classes I’m taking; survival swimming and a required physical science course taught by the notorious physics professor who now knows my name because of all of the visits to his office, I have surprised myself in swimming the most. I realize after today’s mind numbing exam that I’m going to have to be more proactive in getting supplemental visualizations of the conceptual physics, but all in all, I am a 27 year old black woman who is wiping the floor with the other people who are learning how to swim. Today I swam in the deep end for the first time since I was pulled out of the pool by a life guard at the age when my mother’s cousin pushed me in. I had a little anxiety attack, but someone else had a bigger one, so it gave me a little bit of strength to talk her down and kick my way across in one breath. I think it’s all of those races with the 6 foot Tanzanian girl that got me through it, but at this point it’s only a matter of time. I’m kind of excited to be a swimmer, but really I’m excited to be able to go safely on trips that don’t involve chlorine infested water.

The other class, I’m not going to lie has been a bit of a challenge, but I’m not going to lie has created some great benefits. [and not just because I met a guy ;P]. Last night I kind of amped up my nerd status by going to the local coffee shop, ordering the biggest brownie they had and a vanilla malt and I just compiled a video playlist on youtube which illustrated all of the concepts from our texts and how to derive the corresponding equations. Some of those vids are pretty funny. It was funny getting to the problem this morning on total momentum and remembering that weird and wacky white guy jumping around with toy cars and rolling balls to illustrate how the concept worked. It makes me want to publish some vids here. I think I’m going to introduce the concept to the learning commons committee next year. I think youtube webinars could make us an educational leader on the web, especially since our school just got its own youtube channel.

Click Here for the Exam #1 Playlist for GSTR 332 with Lahamer
for dummies

The there’s our consulting project which actually has presented a pretty interesting challenge. I got recruited to [well honestly it was more like involuntarily appointed] to facilitate a consulting project for a company in Lexington and it has been a challenge. I don’t know what I’m doing, I let them know, but evidently neither do they, so that instantly puts me in a position of responsibility over other people, which of course leaves me shaking in my boots. My strategy to get past the micromanaging and being blamed for stuff not getting done [that I would have never known to anticipate from my younger peers] was to assess where the communication gaps were, accept the blame for the communication breakdown from the people in charge and then initiate the coup. When I tell you, there are some very confused former officers who thought they were going to be able to do what they want, it makes me want to laugh. I pretty much scrapped the team I had, leaving them to be responsible for the parts they decided to take ownership for and left them standing by the side of the road.

The only reason that it came to that, is they literally left me standing around on hold for them last week after flaking on me for a very crucial commitment and then tried to hold me in a long ass meeting about why it was my fault for not confirming with them that they were going to uphold their end of their commitments, and I listened, I got the conversation on track to figure out what the next steps were, and then I bailed. I told them I had a study group, to avoid being demoralized by another 4 hour meeting. Then I went home and contacted a few friends, project coordinators I knew. I got a stage manager, an alum who was in the organization, but still needed work, his buddy who will be graduating, an overeager writer/advertiser who could use something to keep her busy, and the campus life director. Our cash cow, had to travel out of town for the summer, but he agreed to join up with us when we come back and I can begin grooming him to replace me.

Live a Stress-free Life: 11 Tips

It is possible to lead a stress free life, even in this day and age. But to do so, we need to look past the surface reasons of stress and find out the root causes. We need to adopt a new attitude towards life. Here are some tips to help you live a stress free and fulfilling life. Read more here.

I went online and looked up tons of articles, from ehow and about.com on how to do marketing plans, business models, rebuild client trust, risk management strategies, learning & development models, how to train employees, went over the business plan and rocked the hell out of our first official meeting. I even brought snacks as an incentive [fresh blueberries, cost me $2.50] to keep those who were serious about attending feeling as if the experience were rewarding. That was my goal, and we got the meeting done in less than an hour, when something miraculous happened. I began to pack my things to leave and the group members began going over the publication materials themselves, something that they self-initiated, and assessing what needed to be added, what needed to be done to make it look more professional, and so on. I honestly felt like a jerk for trying to leave, and when I mentioned how heartened I was to see how eager they were to get started, they told me that they were motivated and gave me really good reasons for how this was rewarding that extended for reasons beyond building their portfolio. I can’t tell you how excited I am to learn from these people, because they all have a sense of ownership in the process now and understand that we’re all sharing the responsibility.

Some of them will even be facilitating and coaching new team members, as I shifted the focus to learning how to learn as well as how to teach to maximize how we spend our time together. I want to keep detailed records of this model to gauge the progress of our groups. I’m going to be sending them all a link to the human metrics questionnaire and giving them a small assessment to fill out by the next meeting. Then hopefully we can do individualized peer assessments to help each team member measure how the group perceives their efforts toward reaching the goals that they set. I’m really excited to see how it goes. This absolves me from the responsibility of having to bear the responsibility of judging people and helps them to be more mindful of things that they and their peers do that is effective and helps them coach each other so that they will be more agreeable role models with others in their future teams and projects. If all goes well it’s going to transform my role as vp of membership from being a recruiter toward being more effective in the role of hr [which I’ll probably refer to as leadership resources (LR)]. My goal is to get a little handbook published by the end of the year for my successor, cause the person before me didn’t leave me much to go on. I got elected on the premise that of my visible popularity and that I run organizations effectively, get results, and get work done with minimal time restraints. So hopefully I can find more things to bring to the table, that will make me a more effective and charismatic leader. I don’t really care to be in charge of other people, it’s my INTP leanings that make me that way. But perhaps by taking more of an active interest in bringing my strengths out in other people by appealing to their personality traits and individual learning styles I can have a leadership model that enables me to be a more effective mentor despite the fact that I can be a little bit hot & cold some times.

feral kitty taken by Katherine

As for the rest of my work, PR is great. Some of the work I’ve done on my extra-curricular project allowed me to enhance my research and analysis of a project I’m working on with my labor department, so I’m excited about that. I got filmed for a documentary yesterday, as soon as I hear about that, I will update the content there. My facebook time has been brought to a minimum, and between photography, swimming, and building a incredible relationship with my jewelry making friend, my life is full and pleasant. Even my roommate situation is working out. Yesterday I joked that at this rate in about a week we’d be lying in bed asking the other person if they were “sleep”. I may actually miss her when I go back to my single at the beginning of the fall. Although I will definitely be lofting my bed from now on, you wouldn’t believe how much space it saves once you get over the fear of heights.

I’ve actually conquered quite a few fears, cut back on gossip and can’t remember the last time I fed my negativity. I get thoughts that come up periodically, but I’ve decided that instead while I have internet access, I can reduce the time I spend indulging in it by looking up strategies to correct these challenges and give me some freaking inner peace for a change. Actively working to fix these things seems to be much more effective for me through practice then it does to ruminate about them. Which means that I’m going to have to find more wonderful and exciting things to ruminate about… [like am I smothering this new guy, or am I appearing too unavailable when I take a few days off to be with my friends]. How difficult would it be to coordinate a group of people to trap and neuter the city’s ferrel cats now that the budget is approved, and how soon can we get new faucet aerators up in the dormitory as well as a stat sheet about how much water you save when you turn the spigot off when you lather your hands. What am I going to write about now that I’ve gotten rid of the jerks who caused me so much pain, and how can I communicate joy in my pieces without making people want to gag, or stalk the people who bring them joy? And why the hell haven’t I been receiving my Fast company magazines. I subscribed like a year ago and I’ve only received like 1 issue and 2 issues of INC. I love the publications but their service standards are terrible… or so I think.

Any who. I’ve been enjoying the wonders of classical conditioning, and feel like taking the time to learn about it, creativity, and practice it has definitely benefitted how I direct my choices and outcomes in life.

I feel that sense of gratitude all the time now, from within, [it feels like you do sometimes when you think that you’re in love, but really you’re just pleased that things are finally going well for you and you just want to ride it over the next hurdle because it feels so flippin good]. Yeah, I must admit by choosing to focus on the opportunities and people who bring me joy, I seem to be attracting more of it, and it is welcome here any time.

sunflower shot by phiG

Ironically, I posted an honesty box question that reads:

"Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy." ~Thich Nhat Hanh... I'd love to know what makes you joyful.

I’ve got almost 600 friends and only two responses. But those two made such a difference in my day.

Vitamins for the Soul: A rocky Place.....

So there's this amazing zen rock in the contemplative garden behind the building where i take all of my classes. It sits in the koi pond, half submerged and teeming with life within the soft succulent peat that grows there. I often imagine it when I am meditating, as I did yesterday because for me it represents a metaphor that unlocks the key to my own enlightenment. I've been having difficulty this semester determining a healthy balance between when it is appropriate to delve and probe the issues that have concerned me and when I just need to lighten up. I think that both have their merits and so I've striven to keep them in balance and even though I've been overwhelmed by the process from time to time, I have seen a tremendous amount of growth result because of it. Where this rock comes into play is I noticed that at the place where the rock converged with the water and the air seems to be the place where the most abundant forms of life reside, where life in that space is fullest and I spent a moment ruminating about how that correlated to my own life and consciousness. So I cultivated this metaphor.



The rocks below, the ones submerged in the depths had their own forms of life covered in algae, stagnant, complacent, and seemingly trapped. They had "fallen" or rested so deep that all they could do was stay buried in their environments, in their space within, in themselves. It's not a bad way to be, if you can make peace with that, but I wouldn't want to be like that all of the time. If I compared it to my consciousness I could almost compare those rocks to myself when I am lost in thought, trapped in contemplation, or lost in my own ego.

The rocks above I imagined lived wonderful lives. They were heralded in that garden as fixtures, of service to all of those fortunate enough to regard them to offer support, stability and a novel moment of peace and solitude. But for those who were unfortunate not to be regarded they would be at the mercy of the elements, drunken college students, and wandering pets and kids. The winds could carry pieces of them whereever it pleased and those rocks would come into contact of worlds and warmth and all sorts of brilliance that the rocks below could only dream of, they were the rocks which were most unstable, least anchored, and most likely to be carried away. They were destined to have a lesser life span but more likely to be remembered. They were glory rocks fated to meet their own end.

The rock in the center though, my rock upon which no one will ever sit, lays untouched, unscathed and instead of being stripped away by the winds is simply stirred by it. For the life that grows upon it and within it in those spaces where the depth and the warmth of the stirring present collide, represent the vast abundance that can fill us, me when we position ourselves in a harmonious balance between the sacred and steady depths and the whirling warmth and beauty of the mundane. Life unfolds at the point where those depths and external world converge, and the moment that I find that place, I find that I am filled with abundance and gratitude, that fills up my life and slows everything down enough for me to be able to appreciate it.

It is the place where freedom and service collide and love and happiness yield joy. Where we are steady, mindful and expressive all at the same time. This is the place where love and life and art are born, and if we take the time to notice these moments within our own lives, we find a fuller part of ourselves can be born by simply living..noticing and appreciating the sacred process and significance of the present.




Presently I am remembering how incredible my weekend was. I was hanging out with a friend of mine and we had quite the adventure. We were headed out to walmart to buy food to bake for our departing international friends but the freakish anime style sporadic thunderstorms kept trapping us in odd places and so we ended up on an oddysey and had the most amazing day of bead shopping, jewelry making, hw, and partying. how often do you get to live a full day with another person and truly enjoy it? we had an amazing time. the next day i woke up went to morning meditation and thought of this rock while i did my walking meditation. as i walked i tried to be mindful of my breathing and of my steps, this week's area of focus. It was amazing as we walked circles around the "Fireside Room" I was able to feel the warmth of the person's footsteps in front of me.

It was incredibly warm in those spaces and then my feet arced around the cold coiled carpet once more until it found another step of his and I felt a sense of comfort at being in the presence of such tremendous energy. It reminded me of why it is important to be mindful of my own steps, because even though people were not always going to be mindful of coming across my own energy, the impact of the steps that I take could just as easily be felt whether they were noticed or not, and that it was my responsibility to ensure that the impression that I was leaving were those warmth, of conscious responsibility and of growth. Those were the "footprints" I want to leave in the hearts of those who know me. Not of one who is negative or destructive; reckless. Which means I am going to have to start taking better care of myself.

Smoking Pot

So I was considering going off of the meal plan this summer. I have a week and a half to kind of make the decision, and while I've decided that access to amenities will most likely keep me on campus, the issue of whether or not it is economical to try and feed myself [or run the risk that I continue to pay the same amount as everyone else with the limited resources in dining services makes available and risk being frustrated] is something that I certainly can't ignore. I don't know that I can take another hungry summer, especially since summer is 12 weeks and meals will only be offered for 8 of them. A friend of mine is planning on going off campus and offered to let me cook meals there under the stipulation that I cook meals [to which i agreed so long as those meals did not contain meat.] i came up with the idea of grilling vegetables and veggie burgers or building a separate veggie pan with a long handle but it appears that someone has already beat me to the punch. I wanted to see whether they have cast iron, ceramic or stainless steel fryer inserts, but to be honest I have a lot of homework to do, so I'm not going to stay up late going through that. My amazing journey led me to a much cheaper and inventive option, which i discovered trying to learn how to make a my own hibachi stove.

Making stoves out of empty cans, which i think is much more sustainable [although i'm not sure whether the cans can be recycled once they've been used. but i don't see why not....] anyway, here are some great models that i've found.

the journey starts at wikipedia



How to Make a Simple Beverage Can Stove

Try making your own easy, lightweight and portable cooking stove from used aluminum beverage cans. This project costs virtually nothing to create and it will cook for up to 15 minutes. This is a really simple version of the beverage can stove. Other versions can be more complicated but this one works well despite its simplicity. You will be creating a top half and a base half from two different beverage cans, both halves which are then telescoped together to create a small, solid, lightweight stove. The steps outline creating the base and the top halves of the stove and slotting them together. The article also provides steps on priming and ignition of your stove.

How to Make a Top Burning Alcohol Stove

aka - The Pepsi Can Stove

lists advantages and drawbacks to using a diy portable stove.

image courtesy of redding.com

for those of you who take your diy a little more seriously....
we have:

Introduction to the Pika Alcohol Stove System

The Pika stove is a new arrival into the wilderness. Using most any type of beverage can available, you can build an ultralight alcohol stove system to suit your hiking needs.

The Pika stove is a passive air-laminar flow intake type stove, versus the pressurized Pepsi stove. The Pika is fuel efficient, lightweight, and easy to build using simple tools. There are several sizes of pikas that can be built: the smallest, the solo models, use Coors cans or 12 oz soda cans, then the Mad Pika uses 24 oz beer cans, and the largest is the Fat Pika made from Foster beer cans. The two smaller stoves are perfect for the solo hiker, and the larger size pikas can serve as big boilers when needed. The cat stove by Roy Robinson is the first passive air alcohol stove I built. It taught me well, and inspired me to design my own stove. This site will cover construction methods lightly, and will present many ideas that you can apply to any stove construction project. I prefer to let the builder study the photos and ideas rather than focus on deep construction details. Pika stoves require two beverage cans of equal type, and one smaller can for the fuel bowl. Ultralight alcohol stoves are easier to make than you ever believed.

Zen Backpacking Stoves



But some people take this super seriously. so i didn't want to leave you without some input from the pros...


A simple-to-make, hot-burning, backcountry stove

The Super Cat Alcohol Stove

These guys have broken out all of the stops testing beer can stoves, stoves made from cat food cans, recorded burning length and recorded temperatures. It doesn't get more empirical than that. This will be good stuff to know in the event of any more natural disasters.

Afraid to Fly (reposted)

"You were Born with Wings, Why Prefer to Crawl Through Life" ~Rumi

I have never felt so demotivated in my life, and I am finding myself fighting everyday to just stay focused upon what I should be doing, so I can move forward. I've had to really begin fighting just to get myself to follow through on things. I know I'm pretty burnt out. But the truth is, it isn't an excuse to stop going and I understand that now. I have found tremendous strength and resilience to keep on pushing through, stay on the grind, but there are sometimes when that is not enough. I'm finding it harder to get out of bed, harder to be punctual, to stay committed. I used to be on such a corporate time schedule. Now, I have somehow become the epitome of the overworked demotivated student. I don't want to be a clique. I added some responsibilities for the next year, like SIFE and accepted an advisory position for the SGA [the power minus the commitment] so hopefully that will force me to tighten up a bit. ] I think the problem is that right now I have no one to be accountable to besides myself... which would be fine if my authentic self weren't so fond of fun and naps.

"We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it." ~Newton

Who you tellin. How do I balance my adult self, the one with all of these responsibilities with the part of me that once to yield from time to time and enjoy life to the fullest? The only thing I have done to resolve it is to get up earlier and try to squeeze a few extra hours out of the day. That means I get to enjoy later afternoon naps and I get two days out of one. The problem is, I keep squandering the free time I gain during the bottom half of the day. You know what the problem is: Facebook. Well actually, that's not entirely true. I was barely on it this week until Thursday when I just shut down. But yesterday I wasn't on it and still nothing really got done, [I know, but it was Friday]. To be honest, I think my sensible adult self is still programmed to real world expectations where taking a weekend or getting rest or going for an early morning hike, or doing laundry is permissible because it is a sign of balance. Unfortunately, it seems that with all of the power outages, mini dramas, and so on that perhaps I am overwhelmed because what was carefully scheduled out gets pushed back onto the things that I've put off and I'm stuck with a whole mess of things that I need to do and I no longer have the will to want to do them.

“When you get right down to the root of the meaning of the word "succeed," you find that it simply means to follow through.”

~ F. W. Nichol [ I suppose this means I should start on my assignments]

See this is what it has come to in order for me to get work done. I have to limit the procrastination that I do engage in, to specific pursuits. The video above was fun, but I've tightened the parameters very specifically to personal development, or things that can help me with my assignments and only after given intervals. I just got an assigment done. Which is why I'm on here. One down and a jillion piling up. I can't wait for this semester to be over.



So Rumi, you're right. But it isn't that I crawl because I like being stuck in the mud, I think the fear of doing the work it takes to fly is what's keeping me down. Following through for me is what it's going to take for me to get to fly.... or perhaps I'm still going through some growth...

Quality Procrastination

So I won't even lie. It's the end of the year. I'm stretched way too thin and people keep adding on assignments and commitments that are now going to take me into next school year. I will do them but I have to decompress from time to time just to get keep myself amicable enough to keep doing it. it may be procrastination, but at least its constructive. note to the reader, please note the time of this post. this is when i started writing this. i have yet to do any hw... well technically everything that's due for my classes is finished. i just have some other deadlines encroaching that i need to take care of so i don't get overloaded this weekend. i must admit that lowering the bar to just under-overachieving has reduced my stress and anxiety levels. Sadly I will not be making all A's this semester [a grim reality that these videos will help me accept].



I should probably note that it's in your best interest not to watch the entire playlist in one sitting. Even if you have the time, you should try to do something at least a little bit productive. Believe me you'll thank me later. This guy will explain to you why:



but, let's face it. we are multi-dimensional creatures. sometimes lack of motivation is related to exhaustion and other times we may just need to be properly stirred. This is what I dug up that made me want to get out of bed today.



I would also like to note for those of you who are bummed, angry, or just going through some things, even though they are one of my biggest time wasters, I have found that the Facebook Quizzes serve as excellent self-esteem boosters or distractions when you've had a very awkward, challenging, or frustrating day. Yesterday was frustrating which proved to be distracting so I listened to some guided meditation for my midday nap after classes so I could wake up and get some work done. Something about sleep and a little bit of NLP (neurolinguistic programming) seems to be soothing when I find myself scattered and in need of a little bit of grounding. According to today's round of quizzes I am:

You belong to the Freaks [in the Which 60's subculture would you belong to quiz]. You usually hangout on buses or in caravans of clowns and your friends are Merry Pranksters and the Yippies. Your motto is: Do It! Your heroes are people like Ken Kesey and Abbie Hoffman..

A Scene/Emo Kid [in the What New York City Teenager Stereotype Do You Qualify For? quiz]: Scene kids are simply emo kids who don't want to be associated with emo kids. Who would? Your idea of a perfect day is hanging out in Union Square with your scene friends, having a picnic, doing a lot of cocaine, and taking pictures to document the whole thing. You're internet-famous for no apparent reason, but thank god for the internet every day; as it's where you've met most of your friends. You have more friends on MySpace than you, or anyone for that matter, will ever have in real life. Your biggest fear is that your 200K myspace friends will one day realize that you are actually a fat chick with acne. But, after all the angle-shots and photo editing, no one will ever know........ ...except for all of the people who see you in real life.

An Old Soul [in the "How old a soul are you?" quiz] Life's a rich affair of the senses, where emotions are music and the physical world the orchestra. You play as hard as you work, inhaling the rewards of both in a familiar and appreciative way. You know how to take care of yourself - spritually, mentally and physically, and are not prone to excess except in particular, carefully chosen instances. You appreciate art and music, free to escape in the concepts they birth. Time represents a canvas on which you display your craft, expressing your experience with life in interesting and new ways. You find yourself yearning for the past as a means to escape the hurried and impersonal present, recalling the lifestyle of your earlier times here. You are happy to lead but also know when following is more rewarding, and why. While you can tell the difference between and old soul and a young one, you are still prone to mild impatience when faced with other souls' faults or bad habits. As a result, you sometimes distance yourself and miss out on what otherwise may have been valuable experience. It is those experiences that will draw you back again and again, until you are a very old soul, and ready for the graduation from the school of the physical..

A PLATINUM MOTOWN GENIUS! [in the Do you know the MOTOWN HITS? quiz] Are you really Berry Gordy, Jr? You MUST BE because you know all about the MOTOWN CLASSICS!.

A Professor in Experimental Nuclear Physics [in the "What is your dream job? quiz] which is heartening because i really want to be an asset to the scientific and tech community but with my struggles in trig i was beginning to have doubts... If you don't know what this is, take the quiz again and don't lie this time. Otherwise, your head is always in a math or science textbook. Your theories can beat out Einstein. Keep up your studies and a doctorette degree is coming your way..

I'm Jason Kidd [in the Which active NBA player are you? quiz]. You're maybe old but your basketball IQ washes the entire league over. You're a nifty passer, a good rebounder given your lack of size. You glued the entire Olympic team to get that Gold Medal. 100+ triple doubles and counting, surefire Hall of Famer, Jason Kidd!.

And finally....

that's right a Master Ninja...
You are a Master Ninja. AKA the perfect ninja. Your skills are greater than any other ninja. You use your knowledge and skill with such expertise that you never have to kill anyone. You are a teacher to all other ninjas, a mentor.

I wanted to post this result to my wall, but this is the one quiz that does not have sharing options. I'm not gonna lie. This semester has been rough and I have been a reluctant warrior about it, but from time to time i have gotten pretty lethal. I just try to keep that stuff under wraps because well what can I say, I have to be mindful. If someone else got this I would be in awe and wonder how can any one person be THAT awesome?!!! I don't know either. I just hope these are qualities that will carry me throughout the long haul.

tapping in to faulty reasoning...

eh, today i woke up and I had gotten a full 8 hours of sleep [accidentally of course]. it was supposed to be a 5 hour nap to give me enough of a boost to get up and work on my trig assignment. but who am i to fight what my body needs? anyway, i've noticed that i'm beginning to have more mornings where i dread getting out of bed. [except real egg tuesdays. those i would break someone's legs for, jk]. i just remember waking up. looking at the alarm clock and realizing that i was running behind schedule and thinking, ya know. today is the day that's going to make or break me. i am now officially in danger of failing trig, we have a quiz today that i haven't even begun looking at the material for. i'm still behind on the assignment that i've gotten two assignments for and if i don't really buckle down i am done. then i wondered whether trig was offered in the summer [not my most rational moment, i know] and laid in bed an extra five minutes or so before i realized that i had somehow fallen into a pattern of behaving like a defeat-est. a trend that had been picking up almost every morning this semester. [it started when my friend died and gained steam with the advent of this little melodrama i've been carrying around].

to be honest, i've noticed a couple of irrational patterns taking shape. while i can't control all of the songs on the radio reminding me of an almost love that never existed, [that have tricked my psyche into this destructive attachment with this figment of my imagination that i've projected onto this poor guy], i do have control over my actions and i have done a wonderful job of not saying or doing anything stupid, but this doesn't seem as if it is enough because i'm burning off a tremendous amount of energy thinking about it, ruminating, obsessing. i should be paying attention in class and my mind goes to him. i should be studying, it goes there. i don't even miss the actual person. i think it has just become a realization that after 4 years of isolation i feel the abandonment itch kicking. you know how you have this picture in your mind of how you want things to be? of what's safe and familiar and healthy? i think i've been scripting that with people who can't live up to it, and with myself. it's hard enough for me to live up to the image that i've concocted in my head of who i should be. i can't imagine anyone else less seasoned with my expectations to live up to them. even now i'm scripting that i'm going to turn into this math aficionado and i'm losing sleep hours and spacing out because i'm just now where i need to be. i know it's the early stages and i need to be practicing more, but this mind/body disconnect makes me see myself as this huge failure instead of the strong, vibrant, multi-faceted woman i have grown to be. although i must admit, for all my brilliance and know how i feel quite lost; like i have to choose between being of importance to my community through service or alienated but doing the work that is important to me. --sigh.



i have a lot to be thankful for this semester. i have actually owned up to and faced some really serious behavioral patterns that have always seemed to get the best of me in the past. i should be immensely grateful that i have the wisdom to be able to identify when things that i am doing are not consistent with my values even if i have not been willing to fix those things right away. but we all know that's short term. i'd rather change than live with guilt; a euripidean flaw in it's own right. but lately, particularly as exhaustion has begun to set in and i find myself being dragged in a million different places, i've been having to re-evaluate what i will allow myself to feel guilty about by weighing my efforts against merit and what constitutes balance. and i have to be honest. in the real world i would be getting sleep, and the amount of work that i do far exceeds that of a normal person. i just need to make more reasonable choices about where to expend that energy so that i can ensure that my energy expenditure translates into tangible results. this morning was an interesting test of that, because i was so far behind. i really wanted to tuck my tail between my legs and cower under my blankets with my trig book and try to make sense of it. but if that would have worked, i would have done it by now, and i think i've actually tried that. so i did the next best thing. i did not skip class, even though i knew i wouldn't pass the quiz. instead, i went to breakfast, went to draper hall and worked on the assignment until 10 minutes before class. took what i HAD worked on and submitted it into my instructor's box. Asked her for clarification upon what would be presented on the quiz in a very calm manner and explained to her that i was far from being prepared and unfortunately had opted to fall asleep studying rather than stay up and try to make sense of it.

my instructor, who had seen me many a morning looking dazed and frazzled because i'd only slept for a few hours advised me to sleep. i asked her very paradoxically how that was supposed to happen when i had all of these deadlines on assignments. i knew what was going on with me, but i didn't think my other instructors would understand. anyhow, it seems as if there are plenty of other people who are struggling as much as I am and I somehow managed to rationalize that my appearance would help me in my quest for growth and character development. who knows. of all of the people i've met who are engineers and architects and such, they all seem to be pretty stable and boring people, but they don't have a lot of drama and most of them seem pretty happy and have an incredible ability to balance their lives. why wouldn't i learn balance through this process? i just think that i've been so resistant to the idea of failure so much that i find myself trying to juggle around it and dropping the ball from time to time. but if this is a safe enough place for me to pick it back up and carry on, it would be foolish to squander that opportunity.

so after my excruciating trig class in which the quiz was miraculously overlooked and assignments were pushed further back i left class and skipped lunch. i went to the library. there in a hidden corner full of dusty outdated books I found books about math theory and blah blah and yadah yadah. There wasn't a single current book in the collection. And by current I mean nothing published this century or possibly within the last two decades. There were exactly 3 books on trigonometry. The rest were labeled in the table of contents of the geometry books and I couldn't tell if I needed Euclidean, planar, or what so I just picked one trig book and two geometry based upon the simplicity of the diagrams. I started one before I came to work. Just to set the intention. So far it's a cool read. It's introduction began with a story about a baseball team and then interpersonal conflict among siblings over who does the dishes. Then it began to segway into the argument that learning how to navigate geometric proofs provides good practice into how to formulate logic, balance arguments, and minimize faulty reasoning. And who doesn't need a little more of that in their lives. I only wish I could get away with learning to do these things not for credit. [Damn grades... foiled again.]

would it be logical to argue that faulty reasoning is the foundational basis irrational behavior or other forms of mind/body disconnect? it would be an interesting experiment to research how the discipline and practice of teaching logic and math skills to women and minorities [or other math challenged or free spirited individuals] impacts decisions made and improvements made to quality of life. hmmmm very interesting....