Dang it's been a long time since I've blogged. Sorry for the delay!! It's been one hell of a busy month so far. Let's start with FYP Cup.
FYP Cup is where all of the First Year Programs compete against each other to create the best banner, be the most creative with the Alma Matter, and over all be the best FYP at St. Lawrence. Throughout the year we earn points, compete in sports, etc. The easiest way to think of FYP Cup is in terms of Harry Potter: In the Harry Potter novels the have the House Cup, a competition of earning points between the four houses of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. At St. Lawrence, we've taken that concept and created a First Year Festival to kick off the First Year Cup. However, instead of there only being four houses, there are 15+ Colleges in the First Year - each having a program of their own; mine being Curtin College, which belonged to the Representations of Marriage and Family program.
In preparation for this, each college was given a bed-sheet to create their banner, a College Color, and T-Shirts. My college's color was an off-white so we decided to tie-dye them to make them prettier. I have to say, mine was the absolute best :P
Not bad for the first time ever tie-dying in my life neh?
Gaines College, of course, had the most amazing Alma Matter. They sang it to Feel Good Inc.
Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz
In place of the line "Feel Good" - they said "Gainesters"
And, obviously, in place of the Feel Good Inc. lyrics - they sang the Alma Matter. It was very creative, very well rehearsed, and it was nicely done. They even had live instruments!
For our Alma Matter - we came up with it in about 5 minutes and sang to "Bye, Bye, Bye" by N*Sync, with Ben as our lead singer. It wasn't great, it was messy, but it was amazing and hilarious at the same time.
Bye,Bye,Bye - N*Sync
Banner-wise, ours was rather... bland. Other FYPs had painted Uncle Sam, Abraham Lincoln with abs, etc.
Ours was a bunch of paint splatters with silvery black writing on it. I have to say though, our banner was ingenious for coming up with it in about 10 minutes and hardly anybody in our FYP working on it ;)
When the Festival ended, before the FYP members were sent off to their respective games (which they had signed up for earlier in the week), each college was called by Dr. Cathy Crosby-Currie, the Assistant Dean of the First Year Program and also one my FYP's Adviser (the other being Dr. Sarah Gates). When the college is asked if they are present, they are expected to be as loud as they possibly can and make as much noise as possible. For our College, we counted to three and said "We love you Cathy!!" then freaked out like there was no tomorow.
All three aforementioned festival tasks were all judged and gave us FYP Points. We weren't too shabby in our placement, but we weren't in Top 3 unfortunately. But hey, we made Top 10!! Not bad for a college who had no interest in the FYP Cup and who threw it together the night before and morning of, I think.
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Well, FYP Cup over and done with, classes began!
For my very first semester here at St. Lawrence, I started out taking 4.5 units consisting of FYP Plenary, FYP Seminar, Elementary Japanese, Elementary Japanese Lab, Philosophy East and West, Psychology 101, Psychology 101 Lab.
The first week went pretty well - I learned Hirigana in Japanese, realized just how much I hated Philosophy, had an amazing experience with Psychology, and started to really get into my FYP.
The second week? Not so great. Japanese was moving far to fast and was being treated like an Intermediate level course because of all the experience in the class: students with previous knowledge of the language, Asian students already familiar with Asian languages (just not Japanese), and students who studied a year in Japan in high school through a foreign exchange program.
This, to me, was highly unfair for the few of us who had NO EXPERIENCE with neither the language nor the writing system and it was HIGHLY UNREALISTIC to expect us to learn 100+ Hirigana in 4 days. Not to mention learn a completely new system of writing less than 14 days later.
Sooo - after talking with Cathy about my issues with the course and after thinking about it for a great while, I decided to drop the course. Thankfully this wasn't a problem and Cathy was more than happy to get it arranged for me to do so, fully understanding the circumstances.
With Japanese off my shoulders, I am now able to focus on my other studies and fully give my attention to them, having been unable to prior to dropping the course because it was so much work trying to keep up with the class and catch up.
Caution to all:: When learning a language, if the class starts out fast? IT'S GOING TO STAY FAST!! Make sure you talk with the Professor or find a slower paced course because if you're taking more than that one course, you're going to have a great deal of trouble trying to keep up with all of your courses.
Now that I've had my little tangent about Japanese, let's move on to Philosophy! LOL Philosophy, however, is another tangent of mine. Well, it has been, anyway.
To begin the year, we learned a Buddhist bow. It's not too bad, just a bit strange. However, seeing as how we started the year off with a Buddhist tradition, one would think that we would be learning about some Buddhist Philosopher, right?
WRONG!!
We started learning about a French Philosopher named Rene Descartes. Ugh. Let me just say, he is the worst Philosopher I've ever read, and I've only read a few. Not only does he talk in circles and prove his original statements with that aforementioned original statement (just reworded), but his logic is so twisted and crazy you'd go insane just by reading it!!
SO! Once that horribly written book was over, nearly our entire class jumped for joy! Only problem was, we had a paper to write on his theories :(
I wasn't happy to say the least :P
Buuuut - I made it through! I don't think I did too terribly on it.
Now, from what you've just read, you'd think I absolutely HATED my classes, right?
Well, you'd be 90% right. I love my FYP, but I hate the pace we're going in it. I think I'd enjoy it more if we weren't analyzing our own families / were reading the novels a bit slower. Being assigned 30-40 pages in 1 book while being assigned 10 chapters in another at the exact same time is a bit ridiculous in my opinion. Some nights it's close to 200 pages I have to read. My brain and eyes are NOT thanking them right now. However, I absolutely adore the professors and enjoy the class aside from the aforementioned point.
As for Psychology, words can't describe how much I love the class. Dr. Ronald Sigmundi is the most hilarious guy I've ever met; he honestly reminds me of a mix between my grandfather and Mr. Cooper. Sigmundi is witty; one of those old coots you just love listening to because they say what they want without worrying about what people might think; and he tells these stories that relate to our discussion / answer our questions that are just absolutely hysterical to listen to. The best part is, 99% of these stories are about his wife!!
My Psychology Lab, with Mela Lawson, isn't too bad - but not my favorite either. For the first experiment, it was pretty tame other than the calculations being so confusing on the formula. The second experiment, unfortunately, wanted to make me cry. Not only did we take a tour of the lab-rats' home in the bottom of the science building and see all of the different animals kept there for psychology testing as well, but our experiment consisted of watching 2 lab-mice in a cake container and observing their behaviors. Now, it wasn't bad enough that I'm absolutely PETRIFIED of mice, but to top it off the mice we had in the container learned that if they JUMPED they could almost read the OPENING OF THE CONTAINER!!
All I have to say is thank God we had a tall container or else those mice would be out of the containers and into our laps! As you can imagine, I was about 3 feet away from the container at all times. Plus, once the mice nearly got out and knocked the container over? I went hysterical 'cause it was right at me that it was jumping and the container FINALLY got moved to another desk. I could actually breathe once THAT happened. It was not a happy camper when Ms. Lawson kept the mice in the containers instead of putting them back in their "homes" while she finished her lecture in class.
To be continued........
