Random thoughts for a Tuesday morning....

I felt like screaming in Con hall yesterday. You know what i felt like screaming? "All of you assholes that want to be doctors and can't even muster up enough compassion to treat each other like human beings, let alone give the Prof the respect she deserves to be listened to!!!"
This is why I take effexor.

I am so thankful for the people without hidden agendas in my life, (you know who you are) and so dubious of the people who do have them. This dude added me to his MSN and got me talking one evening... and ever since then has decided it's his own personal mission to save me. I don't need saving. It's him that needs saving.... from this brainwashed born again morality play that says anyone who doesn't think exactly like him is shit.

There seems to be fewer and fewer moderates that I encounter on a daily basis. Why is extremism rearing its ugly head more often, I'll never know.

Then again, there are very few people who would accuse me of being a moderate.

I wonder if I've majorly screwed myself when it comes to my education by coming here for the program I've chosen. It was (and still is) a risk, as it doesn't lead to anything tangible at the end. At least with an RN I know that I can get a job after four years. This life science distinction doesn't mean a whole lot... so I wonder if this is going to get me nothing but 80 000 dollars of debt at the end. At the end of second year it will be more clear, I think... and if I still suspect as much, it's only a matter of transferring and doing 18 months to become a nurse... nice, safe, nursing. Good place for me -- out of the way, typical, easily quantifiable to my peers, can't kick up a lot of fuss and even if I did, not listened to because I'm "just a nurse." Not that I'd ever be happy being that complacent, but hey....

I wanted for years to do a photo shoot of "squat toilets of europe" ala those "Doors of Ireland" posters that you see in poshy hippies houses....

K, must go struggle with physics for several hours now. This has been a good procrastination exercise, but like all good things, it must come to an end. :)

Why my daughter is one of the strangest kids in the world....

I know everyone has funny little kid stories, but Anastasia has a few things that set her apart. First of all, she eats hair. She can't go to bed without a hair in her mouth. I keep on telling myself she's going to grow out of it, but she's almost 18 months and it's still going strong. I had to get her one of those dollar store hairpieces because I was developing a bald spot from her ripping out hair from my widow's peak. If you were ever wondering why my hair looks the way it does, that's why. Secondly, she pretends to sleep on the bottom stair. I don't know why she thinks this is a good place to sleep, but apparently it is the perfect place for her to pretend to sleep. And I'm not talking about once, or for a couple of minutes. This is a theme. She does it every time she goes past the stairs, for several minutes. She'll have her bottle, and insist that I hang my head over so she can play with my hair. Weird, weird, weird. Third, when she's in the bath, she'll dump ice cold water on herself. Then laugh. She loves to be cold, far more than she likes to be warm. She can't stand blankets and will kick anything I put onto her off. Fourth, and last, she doesn't have tastes like other babies. She loves anything strong tasting. She will drink lemon juice straight, if I let her. She adores Clamato juice and smoked salmon. Pickles are for her. She, and this is no word of a lie, had more of an adverse reaction to her first banana than to her first dill pickle.

I have a weird little daughter. But that's ok... it keeps it interesting. :)

story of my life...

Ok. So I go to this Time Management Seminar for parents, through counselling and learning skills service. Show up a little bit early, no one is there. sit my butt down, pull out my day planner, and start writing stuff down. This is the makeup of the room: there is one young-ish woman sitting with a little boy, spoonfeeding him some lunch. There's a pregnant woman sitting up at the head of the room, and there's an older woman sitting close to her. I figured that the pregnant woman and the woman with the kid were both students, there for the seminar. I think "well, it's a bit of a small group, but that's ok..." Then another woman walks in, and sits down.

So, then the woman who is heavily pregnant speaks up. "Well, I guess we're just about ready to begin. Can we go around and introduce ourselves?" The woman with the kid introduces herself as the woman who is running the time management seminar, and the older woman and the pregnant woman introduce themselves as from the family care office. So I'm still thinking that the last woman that came in is a potential parent... so I say to her: "You go first."

She introduces herself. "Well, I'm a fourth year PhD student, and I don't actually have any children, but I was wondering how people would be able to balance school and children... because I was thinking about having children in the future, and I want to be prepared."

Uh huh. Not only is she probably younger than me, she is infinitely more educated than me and is just doing this to plan ahead. Typical overachieving UT student that can't leave anything up to chance, I guess.

Cut the camera to me. With the snot on my shoulders, and the halo of motherhood that I call my rats' nest of a hairdo, the dark circles under my eyes and my inability to utter a sentence without mentioning my daughter... the most meaningful conversations I have nowadays are about the loggy loggy log and the bear in the big blue house going potty... me, in my "doing the best I can" life, is all of a sudden put on the spot as the only ACTUAL parent needing time management. What is perhaps, a bit ironic, is that I have pretty good time management skills already. It was utterly necessary for me to develop them. So, their time management seminar was useless for the most part, as I just wanted to meet some other parents on campus and succeeded in not meeting a single one. What I did manage to do was depress myself.

What's worse, perhaps is the next person that makes the mistake of talking to me is Ishraq -- he probably thinks I'm shit off nuts, because I just unloaded on him. He was looking at me like "who is this freak, and why is she telling me this?" Which I can't blame him for... lol

The most surprising things about U of T were:

1. The rampant conservativism of the people that go there.
2. The inability of most of the teachers to teach.
3. For a whole lot of really smart people, most act really stupidly when it comes to competitiveness.
4. The amount of work.
5. The mutant squirrels which I'm sure are bred somewhere in the bowels of RW.

*sigh* Somedays it's hard not to lose faith.

Well, at least I can do this well.

I wrote what I thought was a kickass midterm for my seminar course, "Women, Gender and Work". I figured A-, because they can't give out that great grades, and I knew my arguments weren't as fantastic as they could have been. That said, I felt like I nailed it, so much so that I was confident enough to leave a 1/2 hour early.

Got it back today. B. I know that seems like a good mark, but it was very disappointing. I don't understand how you can lose 25% of your mark for three run on sentences and one erroneous abbreviation of the word "position." In the marker's own words: Good essay! Your ideas were very easy to follow and well supported."

Ok yes. niggling shite that I shouldn't worry about, but still makes me mad. The prof himself came up to me and said: "this should be higher." I stared at him blankly and said, "yes, it should be higher." As in: why the hell don't you change it? I don't get upset with marks very often, but this one felt very unfair.

I guess in the quantitative courses I'm taking, I feel like I'm able to accept the fact that, when it comes right down to it, I didn't know the answer. I can see the motivation behind giving hard exams, because it pushes you to study harder and have a greater understanding of the course material. But when you do your best (as I try always to do) and it's not good enough to nail something you feel you have a very fundamental understanding of.... well, it cuts deeper, I suppose.

Ah well. Must run and catch a train now.

Later...

And let this be a lesson to me... Don't forget to take my effexor in January. :) I was really, unambigously upset, moreso than I have been since I've come to UT over that midterm. I was crying on the train on the way home... and I was super thirsty, too... and had a headache, and a dry throat... wait a sec? Did I take my drugs this morning? nope... HA. Gives me some perspective and a reason why I'm crying over a freakin B.... lol

Ten Reasons why Canada is Better than Switzerland

1. Space.
2. You don't feel like you're going to die every time you go for a drive.
3. Extra large all dressed pizza in Switzerland = 75$
4. Salt on the roads (I would normally be against this, but after driving down a mountain with none, and it being covered with 3 inches of ice, I kinda like it)
5. No oompa music
6. Nicer people in Canada.
7. Space.
8. Women didn't get the vote until 1971 (No, that isn't a typo.)
9. Clocks BONGING, DINGING, RINGING, constantly.
10. Not so anal about shoes being in a neat row here.

Ten Reasons why Switzerland is Better than Canada

1. Mountains.
2. Factory work = 4000$ a month, minimum
3. Solar panels. Everywhere.
4. Only 14 chemicals (TOTAL) allowed in food.
5. Chocolate has minimum cocoa content.
6. Mountains.
7. Fantastic social programs.
8. You can drive for an hour and be in a completely different climate
9. You can wait for an hour and be in a completely different weather system
10. Fantastic eco management.

Yet another thing to waste time with...

I've tried doing one of these things before, but they always turn into extremely depressing missives about my lack of social graces and dreary posts about how I miss this that or the other. Why I think this will be different, I have no idea... but I never really had a ready made audience the way I do now... presto, change-o, biome becomes my own personal sounding board. Not that it wasn't already.


But yes. I do admit to scrolling through Noaman, Deepayan, and Shankar's blogs... and wanting to do some writing of my own because of the inspiration that I've drawn from them. As well, there are very few people I can talk to about what my life has been like over the past 4 months who could even hope to have a modicum of understanding, so this may be a more productive outlet.

Some stuff:

1. Why, when people ask about getting into medschool, do they very rarely (I've never witnessed it myself) ask what the make up of the people who are there is? This is what drives me crazy with curiosity: do most of them come from families with doctors? Are most of them rich? Do any of them have life experiences not relating to tailoring themselves for the most ivory of the ivory towers? Are those things valued in the slightest? The answers are probably hard to find out (privilege rarely flaps its lips about itself) and I'm suspicious that I already know them.... or at least have preconceived notions that may need tearing down.

2. I think I've figured out why UT is so tough. It's something I've turned around in my head trying to come to an understanding about it more than, perhaps, I've spent on my schoolwork this semester... It comes, not to a "Survival of the Fittest" conclusion (like most first years seem to immediately want to apply) but one of simple economics: UT gets 4 times the amount of tuition money from an international student as from a domestic one. The federal funding has been cut drastically to higher education in recent years, so they don't get as much from the government, either. They are a well known school internationally, so they can afford to market themselves to an international audience, and must keep to a certain standard so they continue to be attractive to international applicants. International schooling standards are higher than Canadian ones, hence, UT's educational standards have to be higher than your average Canadian Postsecondary in order not to be considered a joke school. All of this is extrapolated (rather without basis, I must admit) from a conversation that I had with a friend of mine from mat135 that went something like this:

M: our mathclass is a bit of an odd mix of people, don't you think?
A: Yeah... it's like there's no middle ground at all
M: Half of them look like they're bored to tears and the other half look like they're completely out of their depth... I'm glad I took the basic math in Switzerland, otherwise I would look completely bored to tears myself...

and that got it stirring... Then I looked back at some of the posts I took so much offense to in early bioming days... and they all said similar things (though not in very nice terms) about India's school system.

So, the question is... why is our educational system treating us like morons?

I have an answer, too (shortly: because it serves them well to do so) but that will have to be for another day.