To be honest, just being back on Verizon makes me extremely happy. T-Mobile was just terrible. The signal strength in most areas I frequent was appalling and just dealing with customer service made me so angry.

I’m also using the WordPress App, which I got through the Android Market. The WordPress App is pretty simple to understand and lightweight. Having this app on my phone might actually encourage me to update more (don’t hold your breath though). I really like it and am glad I got it.

Other than that, classes start later today (Monday). I still need to get my independent study sorted out and paperwork needs to be signed/sent in. Let’s hope it all goes smoothly!

Also I need another job that’s not time-consuming…I may have some financial problems once my max hours on campus goes back down to 19 per week.

That being said, I’ve spent most of yesterday and this morning reinstalling Windows XP and Ubuntu 10.04 on my desktop computer. Why, you may ask? Because for some reason, my DVD player was unplugged.

This was discovered Monday night when a friend was over with Brendan and I, and the general consensus was to watch Spinal Tap (still haven’t watched it, mind you). When Spinal Tap wouldn’t play in the Playstation 2, I decided to test it out on my desktop. DVD player wasn’t ejecting. Brendan took a look inside the computer and saw that the DVD player was not plugged in, therefore no power. Probably was unplugged when Brendan unplugged a lot of things to put in my new graphics card a couple months back. In any case, after we plugged that in, a new problem presented itself: none of the OS’s were loading! Problems ensued – it would either not load to the grub list, or not get past the first startup screen listing the components within the computer, or the BIOS wouldn’t start up.

Eventually we found an Ubuntu 9.04 live CD and used that to boot into the computer and manually (as in using the terminal) moving files from my XP/Ubuntu partitions. Then we reinstalled Ubuntu 9.04 over that partition, and all was well. Except Windows XP was not working still.

Tuesday…I didn’t even bother touching my computer. My head hurt too much, my throat was making me want to claw out organs, and I was in general feeling very restless by the end of the night. Wednesday comes around, and I’m stuck at home, still reeling from pain. Being sick is not pleasant, even if I do get a day off from work.

So using my time wisely after I slept away half the day, I decided to reinstall Windows XP Professional (with Service Pack 2) on the XP partition. Installed. No network. What? No network? Why is it not reading the internet? Frustrations ensued. Tried to reinstall again, XP wouldn’t load properly. And again, finally worked but again with the no network. Eventually my brother responded to my frantic pleas on AIM and helped me through it (forgot about manually installing drivers). Had to find the drivers that I saved from my last dumb-what-happened-install of XP that my brothers sent me. After all of that was said and done, I reinstalled some of my more-commonly-used programs (VLC Player, Adobe Photoshop CS4, MediaMonkey, Firefox, Google Chrome, etc).

Then I decided to take a look at my Ubuntu side. Now 9.04 is a nice install, but I wanted to try out 10.04 and see if it fared any better on my desktop than it did on my laptop (had to downgrade with a fresh install of 9.10 because of some weird graphical errors). So I did that, and it was great. Now I updated, installed restricted graphics drivers, and everything is nice and dandy…right? You would think that, until I tried to install the Ubuntu Studio packages through the repository. While everything seemingly works, the boot/usplash screens are all weird and messed up. Tried to fix the usplash problems, but ended up creating more problems with my graphics card. Eventually I accidentally (I think?) deleted usplash and had no startup!

So here I am, reinstalling Ubuntu 10.04 again. I’m going to give Studio a try one more time and see if I can get around that nasty shutdown/usplash screen and get the default back at least.

And yes, I’ve been up for quite a while. Tried sleeping earlier but ended up tossing and turning too much to stay asleep. Yay sickness-induced insomnia!

Oh, did I also mention Brendan was sick over the weekend too? It was pretty bad.

“What a great post, but it doesn’t look right on a Mac. Take a look at it: (URL)”

“Nice post, but would’ve made it longer. Keep up the good writing, etc etc.”

And other things of that variety. I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s so late at night and I’ve been so sleep deprived lately that I found that pretty interesting. For those of you who own blogs, do you ever read your spam comments? Do you get any that are pretty interesting and convincing sounding?

So these are my plans for the summer:

• Try to wake up by 7am every weekday, by 10am on weekends (so far this has failed…).
• Work office hours (9am-5pm) every weekday to earn some money!
• Bike ride a lot!
• Explore Silver Spring on bike.
• Make my place suitable for living (aka. unpack and clean up the cobwebs…).
• Spend time with Brendan.
• Cook more meals.
• Make a new design!
• Possibly switch to Habari in the process of making a new design.
• Record more solo songs.
• Play Starcraft 2 Beta until it goes retail.
• Play any other games I’ve bought a while back and need to start and/or complete (i.e.: Persona 3 FES, Persona 4, Suikoden Tierkreis, Suikoden IV, Suikoden Tactics, etc).

My class schedule for next year is still a bit wonky, as I haven’t gotten that independent study approved yet. Life’s been pretty good otherwise; Brendan and a few of my friends are graduating this Saturday since they’re seniors, and it feels a bit lonely now.

It’s a bit scary thinking about senior year, as I still haven’t come up with a plan for my senior project that will actually work. All my ideas are kind of lame and web-based showing, as opposed to something you’d want to display as an actual artwork in an exhibit. It’s hard trying to switch to that mentality. Hopefully something will come to mind…soon.

Speaking of classes though, I did fairly worse than last semester on grades, so my GPA has dropped to a 3.377. Personally, I don’t care that much as I’m still good for the loans and grants I have, but it’s still slightly sad. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to do better now that I have most of the boring requirements out of the way.

Definite classes:

• ART 451 – Senior Studio Art Coordinating Seminar: This is my senior seminar class that I must take. For some reason it’s not letting me sign up for it, so it’s not official, but seeing as we only have seven senior Studio Art majors, it shouldn’t be a problem. Of course, this is for my Studio Art major. This class kind of cut off some of my options for other classes though, ’cause it spans over 3 class meeting times (Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:10pm-2:30pm).
• ENG 312 – Norse Mythology: Although I now have heard mixed reviews about the professor teaching the course…it’s Norse mythology. I always have been interested in Norse mythology, and have been trying to take this course for a while now (but it’s either always full or during a time slot where I have another class I need to take). It meets every Tuesday and Thursday, from 11:10am to 12:25pm. Right after a nice class about ancient gods, I’ll be having lunch! I’m taking it to fulfill my English minor.
• PSY 376 – Cognitive Psychology: Apparently the professor is good (and easy), and I’m taking it with a friend of mine. I’m not so sure how interested I am in cognitive studies, but might as well try it out. It’s an early class on Tuesdays and Thursdays (9:35am-10:50am), but not as early as the Lifespan Development class (8:10am-9:25am) I’m taking this semester so I’m not complaining. This is for my Psychology minor.
• TRS 260 – Christianity and Culture: Eh…the advisor for TRS majors/minors suggested that I take this because the professor is good. I need to a take 200-level Christianity related course in order to fulfill my general requirements for my major. Since I’ve already taken four TRS courses (Confucianism and Taoism falls under elective since it doesn’t fit my remaining TRS requirements), I figured I might as well minor in TRS since I would be forced to take five either way, and just need one more to make a minor (six courses). This one fits in pretty nicely with my schedule, meeting at 11:10am-12:10am every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It’s a pity that it’s my only Friday class though, but oh well. 300-level courses is where it’s at though…to be honest, I really put off taking a course to fulfill this requirement because the classes that actually fit for that requirement sound so terribly boring. I mean, Introduction to the Old Testament? New Testament? I had to go through all that in grade school/high school. I don’t need a recap in college, thank you very much.

Possible choices:

• CSC 696 – Independent Study: This is all to fulfill a requirement in Natural Sciences. Argh, it’s so frustrating that the most advanced web design related course they have is “Introduction to HTML”. From what one of my friends told me, it was a joke, and probably would’ve been an absolute joke for me to take it. So my supervisor at work and I worked out a proposal to make a more advanced course just for me, which would essentially teach me the programming aspects that I don’t know (ColdFusion, Java, etc). We were going to do it this semester (Spring 2010), but I had another independent study, so it wouldn’t work.
• ART 309 – Introduction to Photography: Now I know that I’ve already taken the Introduction to Digital Photography and Photoshop course, but this is different. This is old-school photography, with the darkroom and all. It’s so exciting! Though, since the Art department doesn’t officially have a professor for this yet, I can’t say that I’m definitely taking it. It’s sad. It meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:35pm to 8:55pm, so I’m not sure how much photography we’d be doing in class, but it’s definitely good conditions for using the darkroom and whatnot. And of course, it hopefully fulfills my concentration in Digital Arts. I’m not too sure about that though…my advisor never made it really clear…
• ART 303 – Painting I: This is a maybe. I may take this if I can’t get into the Photography class, I may take this even if I do. This depends slightly on whether or not I get the Computer Science (CSC) independent study course that I want. This may or may not help me with my senior project, seeing as I still don’t really know what I want to do. We’ll see. It meets right after my senior seminar class (Mondays and Wednesdays 3:10pm – 5:30pm), so that would be kinda bad in terms of work hours.
• ART 360 – Sculptural Self Portraits: Again, like the Painting I class, this is a “maybe” class. Depends on the Photography class mostly, as it meets at the same time as the Photography class.
• PSY 226 – Close Interpersonal Relationships: I signed up for this, but I’m not sure if I’ll actually take it. I was kind of interested in it, but now I feel like it’s not as interesting as I made it out to be in my head. It would be an easy class, but it also divided up my Tuesday/Thursday afternoons weirdly (it meets from 2:10pm to 3:25pm) so I wouldn’t be able to work as many hours if I took it.

There were a few other Psychology classes I considered, such as Psychology of Terrorism and Forensic Psychology, but the scheduled class times don’t work well for me.

Speaking of Fall ’10, I was able to get the housing I wanted off-campus. It’s technically an apartment in someone’s basement, but they just call it a room in their house. It’s so nice though and I’m so glad I was able to get it, because it’s only $650 per month, all utilities included (cable, internet, electricity, heat, water, etc). It’s a fully furnished room, and in the “hallway” area of the basement, there’s a kitchen – refrigerator, kitchen sink, stove/oven combination all included. The only thing not included is the microwave, but hell – I already have one! There’s also a washer/dryer combination near the bathroom (which I can get to through the hallway), and it’s my own private set. I’ve worked out the pricing, and if I max out on transportation costs (always going back and forth during peak hours, which I probably wouldn’t), then I still save a good couple hundred each month. I start living here in the summer (so after finals), since I’ll be working on campus again over the summer break.

Apartment hunting. So it’s apartment-hunting time, only this time I’m all alone on it. I’ve looked into one place in particular so far, which is a “room in the house” type of setup, and it’s really nice, not too far metro-wise, and cheap. The people are friendly too – one of them is a long-time worker on campus in the Construction and Planning department. It’s going to be an arrangement until the end of next year (aka. when I graduate), so…my original plan of living with a friend went flop because her mom doesn’t want to do that. Let’s hope for the best!

Spring break. It’s spring break! So I’ve been playing games and NOT doing the work I should be doing for classes. Hah fun!

Time Hollow. Remember the Nintendo DS game I bought a while back? I finally played through it once. It was interesting – what you chose in the very beginning strongly affected the path you took for the rest of the game. That being said, the rest of the game wasn’t as dynamic as that – once that path was chosen, you were kind of stuck on that path. It wasn’t bad, but it’s not a game that I would play through over and over and over to see the many endings I could get…as I don’t think there are that many to begin with.

Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online. Just started playing this MMORPG – it’s pretty fun. It’s like a mixture of an actual RPG (with cutscenes and a specific story plot that you must follow) and an MMORPG, where you battle with friends and have side quests and whatnot. I like it so far – people have been extremely friendly and helping me learn the game, which I find somewhat rare in a lot of MMORPGs I used to play. Plus, it’s based off of Persona. Gotta love it.

Persona 3. I bought Persona 3 for the Playstation 2 the other day, which also came with Persona 3: FES, the “add-on” game. The only reason it came with it is because the used copy I was buying didn’t come with the soundtrack it was supposed to, and we (the store employee and I) had no clue what FES was. So she threw it in for me in case it was the soundtrack – but turned out to be another game. Pretty nice overall though. So far it’s been pretty straightforward – cut scenes and automatically following other characters. Supposedly the place where I stopped playing is where the real action and choice-making begins, so I’m looking forward to picking it back up when I get the chance.

Suikoden Tactics. Also bought Suikoden Tactics, but haven’t played it yet. I’m looking forward to it though!

Skate or Die 2. My boyfriend and I were playing the original Nintendo game of Skate or Die 2 last night. For the ramp mini-game that’s in it (not the main storyline), we were making the high scores over and over…kind of. The highest we made was around 66k, and then next one down was 65k (both by me). That’s around 4-5th place on the actual high score list for the game, but apparently better than 3rd place on the Twin Galaxies scoreboard. That kind of made me happy. One day we’ll actually videotape our runs and try to get on Twin Galaxies! But for now, we just took a picture of the screen near the end of the night…though he has the picture at home.

I’ve also been considering getting back into the scanlation world. I used to be an editor primarily for ShoujoMagic when I was in high school, and I tried doing editing jobs with other groups too…but eventually quit when the workload from school got to be too heavy for me to handle the workload from editing. I’ve applied as a Quality Checker at one place that I like so far, so we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully my photoshop skills haven’t gotten rusty in terms of editing…heh.

Speaking of which, I was contemplating switching to Habari as my blogging platform. WordPress is great and all, but it is a bit bulky for me and I don’t use a lot of the awesome features that comes with it. It might encourage me to actually design the next theme for my blog too. Who knows how long we’ve seen a design from me now? Over a year?

In any case, let’s hope that the snow ends soon. It’s a bit tiring to just see white through my windows all day.

Yeah. I have to say, yesterday was so much fun, minus one very angry and terrible event that we all felt slightly obligated to go to. I really wish at this point that we didn’t go. Really wish it to be honest. I felt a lot of malice toward one particular person that had I not restrained myself, I would have done some really nasty things to him during the snowball fight we all had really late at night. Just that ruined that part of the night for me, because I spent most of my time during our second snowball fight avoiding this guy just so I wouldn’t feel urged to smash a really icy snowball in his face multiple times. That was how bad it was. I’m glad I was able to restrain myself, but at the same time I knew that if I didn’t restrain myself and did something like that, I would not feel any guilt at all for it. And that’s the part that scared me enough to restrain myself even more.

In any case, it was an amazingly fun day yesterday, despite “drama”, so I’m glad! Jake, Judith (Jake’s girlfriend), Andre, Therese, and I went to Brendan’s house because classes were canceled the night before; well, for me, my off-campus class wasn’t canceled until a couple hours before it started. From there we went to a Chinese restaurant Brendan and I love to eat at for its cheapness, speediness, and amazing deliciousness for lunch. Everyone enjoyed it a lot, which made me happy because it’s one of my favorite restaurants. I had Chicken and Vegetables on Rice, Brendan had Roasted Duck on Rice, Judith had a lunch special – Chicken with Cashews, Therese had Chicken with Black Bean Sauce, and Jake and Andre both got Chicken Curry. They were surprised at the large portions, and were furiously trying to finish up their Chicken Curry to no avail. Thankfully, they doggy-bagged it to save for one of these days (as we won’t be able to go out at all).

Then there was a Target run, where we didn’t really buy much other than nerf guns (courtesy of Jake) and Game Stop run, where I bought a used dance game called Dance Factory for the Playstation 2 and a used Nintendo DS game called Time Hollow. Both games seem promising; Dance Factory‘s price and the fact that you can create dances for any music CD (customized J-Pop and K-Pop sessions anyone?) made me want to buy it despite the fact that I don’t have a Playstation 2. I played a bit of Time Hollow in the car, and it definitely uses the touchpad well, as you touch objects to search and learn more about things that might be related to the plot. Andre bought Phantasy Star Zero, for which we both created characters in the car.

We went to the thrift store after that. Andre had to buy more socks because his roommate (a roommate that I had over the summer too when I rented an apartment out with friends) keeps wearing all of his (really, really gross by the way). Judith got an acoustic guitar (with a star painted on the front) for $26; all she needs to do is replace the strings. Both Brendan and Jake bought trench coats for $10; Jake got one that’s similar to another one Brendan bought a couple months back (just heavy cloth material), and Brendan bought a real leather trenchcoat. Therese and I just wandered around looking at anything that had cats and/or were cat-shaped and deciding what we’d want for the apartment we were going to share with each other over the summer. It was awesome.

After that, we stopped by Brendan’s house again to drop off a few things and to assess the situation. His mom gave the okay for driving to the Cheesecake Factory, and we all went there for dinner. We met up with Jen (my current suite roommate) and Kenton (her boyfriend) there, though they came when we were nearly done with our meals. We all got dessert, and I just loved every bite. The cheesecake there is amazing. Really amazing.

We got back to Brendan’s house after 9pm; the snow was really sticking at that point, and it was pretty hard for him to drive. When we got close to his place, a car in front of us was stuck in the snow; the people were trying so hard to push but not doing a good job at all. So the three guys (Jake, Andre and Brendan) went out to help them. It was really great of them to do so…but we kind of got stuck temporarily afterward. Then we learned it was partially because Brendan left the emergency breaks on still. So after that, we get back, Brendan goes and prepares to stay on campus for at least a week (because at this point if he comes back with us, he’s stuck with us), and I borrowed his family’s Playstation 2 and a few games because his older sister’s boyfriend gave them a Playstation 3 (with games, bluetooth capabilities, and lots of other crazy stuff) for Christmas.

Brendan’s older brother Brian drove us to the metro; at the metro kiss-and-ride, there was a lady who was just stuck in the snow, so Jake, Andre and Brendan went to help her too…after that she kind of swerved crazily and then stopped again to get out for some reason. At that point we decided it’d be best not to get involved anymore, because it seems she was dropping someone off, or herself off, or SOMETHING. It was weird. We got to the metro though, and then Brian’s car got stuck, and they couldn’t push it out. He eventually made it out by backing back a bit and then flooring it, so that’s good. We were able to catch the LAST train back though. And we more or less had a whole car to ourselves, so we were dancing and singing and acting all crazy. It was great.

Then we stopped by my dorm (Andre went back to Jake’s dorm because he wanted sleep) before going to a birthday party for an…acquaintance of ours. I can’t say friend anymore because he’s just been pushing us all away with his belligerent “I’m right, you’re fucking wrong, don’t even try to argue with me” attitude on everything, even on things that don’t have a right or wrong, that it’s just…not the same anymore. I’ll call him The Friend for the rest of the post anyway. But he surprisingly personally invited all of us to his party, and we felt kind of bad already skipping out on the majority of it to have an adventure without him, that we decided to at least go for a bit. We weren’t sure how many people would actually show up because he’s pushed literally everyone he knew away except for his roommates (kind of) and a couple stragglers. So on our way to his dorm, we had a snowball fight, and just ran around a lot in the snow.

And then the party. Oh the party. To be honest, the party itself was fine; The Friend greeted all of us, saying “Wow, I didn’t think you two would actually come,” apparently to Brendan and I (I initially thought he meant Judith and Brendan because he pointed to them, but Jake said he meant us). His roommates were there; one was doing laundry and walking in and out kind of in a “yeah…this is boring” manner, and the other was playing World of Warcraft in his room. The two other were playing Super Mario for the Nintendo Wii with a friend of theirs (who I suppose came for the party, but really only knows the two she was playing with and not The Friend). And then our art-punk friend was there. The night was essentially all of us playing video games and occasionally darts, and The Friend and Art-Punk Friend talking about music (because The Friend purposely played all the music he knew Art-Punk Friend would like…so that made him an awesome DJ in Art-Punk Friend’s mind…I have a lot I could say on that, but I won’t). The downer was when a guy, we’ll call RPG Pres, came by to check up on the WoW friend to see what he was doing, and realized there was a party going on. The Friend told Brendan and Jake/Judith especially that he did NOT want RPG Pres to know about the party at all. Fishy? On many, many levels. We all thought he was the only one who could actually tolerate The Friend long enough to be close friends with him still. In any case, he was upset, and then had to bring up something that was upsetting for me to discuss at that point, and I just blew up at him because 1) I really didn’t want to be there, but since Jake, Judith and Brendan were going, and I didn’t want to just severe all friendship ties with The Friend, I went, and 2) I felt really offended that with something I created because I was asked to, and worked on because I was asked to, that they would just out of the blue say “hey, we won’t use it because [insert excuses]” instead of saying “we just don’t want it” or even trying to work things out with me first. And then The Friend got mad at us for “discussing business” at his birthday party and told us not to. I got really pissed off at him, told him a firm “No”, and he told us to get out because it was his room. I contemplated not leaving and continuing the discussion, but I felt bad for the few guests that were there, and I respected THEM enough to do so. Not The Friend. So we continued it in the hallway, where I learned that the reason I didn’t know anything was because The Friend wasn’t doing his job as the secretary, and conveniently “forgot” that I gave him the powers to do whatever, told RPG Pres that I didn’t give him powers, and never contacted me about it afterward to remedy the situation. Yeah. RPG Pres and I worked things out and I apologized for blowing up at him on two occasions; my main problem with it all was that no one TOLD  me about trying to fix the situation, and I tried so many times to do something otherwise, and I suddenly get dropped with a “we’re not using anymore because of so-and-so excuse” and it feels like my work was completely wasted because of it. But my hatred for The Friend grew, and I went back with RPG Pres because, you know, I couldn’t leave yet with all my stuff there, and since Brendan was going to be staying with me, he’d need a way back into my dorm.

So I just cheered on everyone else as they played Super Smash Brothers Brawl; thankfully The Friend continued his music talk and his ignoring-all-the-other-guests-technique. Eventually we all went outside for a snowball fight (this is #2 for Judith, Jake, Brendan and I). We all were playing, etc. I avoided The Friend because I knew if I had the chance, I’d do something so bad to him, and that I would definitely NOT feel any regret or remorse for it, and I didn’t want to become that kind of person. At one point, Brendan had a huge snowball that he was going to throw at The Friend, so The Friend played a sympathy card, going “oh, I’m not feeling well, don’t do it,” etc, etc, and so Brendan didn’t. But he did so to knock the snowball out of Brendan’s hands. Okay, that’s fine, it’s a snowball fight. So Brendan retaliates by just scooping up snow and tossing it at The Friend’s crotch. The Friend blows up at him, saying he grabbed his crotch (really, he was no way near it; the SNOW touched him, but not Brendan), and was getting angry that he did so after he knocked out the large snowball. Yeah…all the guys were throwing snowballs at each other crotches, and a couple were actually SMEARING snow on said crotches. Literally, smearing, touching, groping. It was a SNOWBALL fight for Christ’s sake. Everyone thought it was extremely stupid of The Friend to do that.

Afterwards, The Friend told Jake that “Brendan is such a fucking repressed homosexual” and ranting about it. Jake just didn’t say anything and walked away after grabbing his stuff from the room. The Friend, if you didn’t notice, is very homophobic, does not believe homosexuals deserve any human rights, etc. He also doesn’t believe in “interracial breeding”, as he likes to call it (something I was very offended by because I, as an Asian, am dating Brendan, who’s white, and if we ever got married, we’d have to “breed”). It was just ridiculous.

The rest was great though. Jake and Judith went back to Judith’s room because Jake is avoiding the negative hellhole in his suite in the other dorm, and Brendan and I went back to my room. Art-Punk friend came with us and was drunk silly, but he made it back to his room fine after taking the Atari 2600 and games from my room (which is technically both his AND Brendan’s, more so Brendan’s because he spent the time and effort to find it on Craigslist AND drive down there to get it).

And yeah. That was my crazy snow day. And today, hopefully I’ll be able to play lots and lots of games and have more FUN snowball fights and yeah.

How is everyone else’s weekend?

As you can see, classes on Tuesdays/Thursdays start at 8:10am…and I am very much not a morning person. I get breaks in between for lunch and dinner. My last class ends at 8:50pm (I mistakenly thought it ended at 10pm and was lamenting about it to everyone…oops!). I will have another time slot scheduled for Art 596, which is my Independent Study course (Digital Arts II), but as the professor is being very slow in getting back to emails, I’m not sure when that’ll be.

My work schedule might change a bit too so it matches Brendan’s a little better (such as working until 6pm instead of 5pm on Mondays/Wednesdays). I’m hoping that I’ll be able to stick to the work schedule and make 19 hours every week…which is the max number of hours you can work on campus. Thankfully I’m not necessarily constricted to the 9:00am-5:00pm, as some work assignments can be done from my room.

To explain the classes a bit though since no one would know what the numbers stand for, here are the titles/brief descriptions:

• PSY 379 – Life Span Development. Lecture. This is a psychology course I’m taking to fulfill requirements for a Psychology minor. Children and development are some of the topics I’m interested in…other than art and its relations to psychology, of course. Unfortunately they don’t have many of the art/technology-related psychology courses offered, so my choices are a bit limited. I don’t know much about Professor Monaghan, but hopefully she’s good.
• TRS 390 – Taoism & Confucianism. Lecture. I don’t care much for sitting through Christianity courses such as “Introduction to the Old Testament” and whatnot, as I’ve already learned a lot of that in high school. I’m really interested in other religions, and even though this really doesn’t fulfill any requirements (and actually kind of sets me back in my Theology requirement as this doesn’t fulfill the last slot I need to get done), I’m kind of excited for this class. I heard Professor Jones is good, so we’ll see!
• ENG 301 – Creative Writing:  Fiction. Lecture. I want to improve on my writing, especially within the realm of fiction, so this is a good course to take to fulfill my English minor requirements. I know nothing about the teacher, however, so I’m a bit worried.
• PHIL 313 – Philosophy of Human Nature. Lecture. Eh, it’s philosophy. I could care less, to be honest. The only reasons I chose this class are because 1) no other courses fit my schedule/fit the last requirement slot, and 2) I’ve had Professor Tassone before. He’s a nice professor and a fair grader. His course load is a bit heavy on the reading, but not too bad in terms of writing assignments. The only problem I have with him is that his lectures are a bit on the dull side.
• ART 362 – Making Your Mark: Experimental Drawing. Studio. This is replacing my “ART 202: Drawing II” course requirement, as that originally conflicted with my Digital Arts II class (though it doesn’t anymore, but let’s not sweat the details). All of my art professors were praising this class, so I’m hoping it’s as good as they say. It sounds interesting at least…come on, experimental drawing? That’s got to be awesome! I’ve never had Professor Kretz as a teacher before, nor have I ever heard of her, but we’ll see how it goes.
• ART 596 – Independent Study. This is the independent study class that I’m doing with Professor Navarrete, the only Digital Arts professor we currently have. It’s supposed to replace the “Digital Arts II” class that was canceled due to low enrollment. Fulfills my Digital Arts concentration requirement. I had “Digital Arts I” with Professor Navarrete, and he was a good teacher.

So we’ll see how I survive my first day of classes tomorrow. I’m hoping the pile-up of 6 classes in one day won’t kill me, but it might…ah well! That’s life!

What I don’t understand is how they could allow early arrivals and not have any intentions of making the dorms a livable temperature. They knew I would be staying at the dorms starting Monday since before winter break started. How do I know this? Because I have to request for their approval so they can reactivate my student ID. Our student IDs are designed to swipe us into our dorms, and they deactivate them over the winter break to make sure people aren’t sneaking in and out.

It won’t even hit 60 degrees! I can live with 60 degrees because that’s what my mom keeps the house at, and the heater jumps on every now and then to warm the place up. But there’s no heat. At all. And they didn’t inform me of this when they said “hey, you’ve been approved to come back to campus a week early so you can work!” Now they just expect me to accept things as they are because they didn’t think to inform the poor student that they will not turn on the heat at all until Saturday.

The other bad thing is that it’s prohibited to have space heaters because it’s a “danger to the dorm and the student”…at least, that is what they’ve written in the student handbook. I think it’s more of a danger to not have heat and to allow someone to live in that kind of condition. Had I known I wouldn’t have heat, I would’ve disregarded the rules and brought a space heater from home.

I might still disregard that stupid rule and buy a space heater…