Done With School, Now Oh So Lazy

Finally completed my first year of college. The final exams for the most part were pretty easy, except accounting which I wanted to throw up before and after while taking it. Now since I have tons of free time on my hands, I can finally get to working on TYSIC some more. Too be completely honest I finished school May 15th, but I've been so lazy that I haven't even updated this thing yet.

So far my first week at home hasn't exactly been stress free. My mom had to go to the hospital (which is about 30 minutes away by car) with my sister for her last session of chemotherapy. So I have been responsible for waking up my other sister at 6 am and get her ready for school. I didn't even wake up at 6 am while I was in school. I also had to babysit my neighbors two year old daughter.

Right now, I'm hoping to start writing and reading. But of course I might just decide to be lazy and watch tv. I have missed the past 3 Doctor Who episodes and also the Lost finale is tomorrow and I feel like I may just make that a whole days event

Still No Progress

School has completely pushed everything aside for now. So basically at week 7 I have nothing to show for it really. I did actually walk out of my comfort zone this past week. I walked about 3 miles to wear there are always loads of people and places to shop. I was only there because I needed to go the post office, but still it was a big step. Of course I did get lost, but I kinda expected that. I'm not exactly good at directions and the fact that I rarely go out doesn't help.

Anyways for now it is all about final exams and the exams before then. It sucks but I always tell myself to make a schedule and I always end up breaking it. I should really put DO NOT PROCRASTINATE as part of my TYSIC, but that's one bad habit that I know can't be broken

Oh well, I'm going to list my last exams on here to remind myself how quickly the next couple of weeks will go by.

May 7th: Theater Paper (On Henry V)
May 7th: Accounting Exam, 7 pm- 9 pm (Cannot afford to fail)
May 10th: Credo 4 (On The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal)
May 11th: Psychology Exam, 12:30 pm - 2:30 pm (Allowed one cheat sheet, only front)
May 14th: History of Ancient Greece Exam, 4 pm - 6pm (From the Peloponnesian War to 4th century)

May 14th: Freedom, 6:01 pm - Onwards

The End is Approaching

Of my first year of college anyways, this is still only the end of week 6 of TYSIC, I'm not giving up yet. My last final is on the 14th of May. Needless to say I'm completely dreading it. With the unpredictability of my computer I don't see how I'm going to be able to write two 15 page papers and one 10 page paper in the next four weeks. Hopefully, it won't betray me till school is over.

This may not seem TYSIC related, but it is given that one of my goals is to have a degree in business, specifically I'd love to work in international business, and I'm interested in marketing and advertising. However, I'm really having trouble with one business course this semester. I absolutely hate accounting. It sucks that it is required for all freshmen. I took Accounting 101 (financial accounting) in the Fall and I also thought I would fail, however we had stuff like participation points, and a couple case studies that brought my grade up to a B at the end. However, the class this semester, Accounting 102 (managerial accounting) is all about the exams pretty much. I completely failed my last test and I have no idea if I'll even pass the class. The thing I hate most is that the test was one 4 questions that doesn't exactly give you the best chances. I got partial points on two of them, but I still failed. I just want to get this class over with, even if it is a barely passing grade.

My exam for this class is the May 7th, so I'm going to try to go to every extra session we have in order to try to learn as much as possible during this time. It just makes me feel awful because I was always the "A" student, and while I didn't plan on staying that way in college I still wanted to have good grades. This is the only class I'm doing bad in. Psychology, History of Ancient Greece, Writing, and my Theology class are all fine. The worst part about accounting is that it is killing my desire to be in business. I feel like I have no interest for it right now.

For God Sakes Calm Down

I end week 5 of TYSIC, by coming to the conclusion that I overreact way too much. My main problem this week was that my cable went out so I couldn't watch TV. Right, well, this might not seem like a big deal for some, but for someone that practically avoids contact with the outside world it's important. Actually the first time I called the cable company I was pretty upbeat. I usually have problems talking to people over the phone, it makes me nervous. But after last weeks laptop incident I decided that I must remain level headed. That kind of stopped after 4 or 5 days of still not having television however.

The worst part, as mentioned earlier, I tend to overreact and just burden myself with whatever little problem is occurring. So basically throughout the week I could only think of fixing my television. This meant unplugging and replugging everything to try to get it to work. And then like last week with the laptop I called my dad. Only to have him yell at me about what I should try doing and then me yelling back about how I had already tried that. For a couple of years now my dad has been tolerant of the fact that sometimes I use curse words in front of him and my mom. They both used to hate it but now they seem fine with it. However, that they I must have used one too many in a row because I hadn't been yelled at that much since forever. And I'm pretty sure he thought I was calling him a "stupid fucker" when I was just arguing with my TV. My reaction to all this was to basically breakdown and start crying.

Yes, I realize that's irrational. It wasn't only the TV though, but I'd also been having a lot of stress from my classes, especially accounting since I think I bombed the last exam and from not having enough time to do my financial aid form by next Thursday. All of this has just given me a massive migraine the past couple of days. Luckily after almost a week and having to call the company (with a really unhelpful staff btw) three times a week my TV is working again. No one in the company knows what happened or how it got fixed just so you all know.

In other news, my next step in getting myself out there is to sign up to listen to another lecture. I know most people might choose going to a party, but I like to think that I'm taking baby steps first. I need a controlled environment. Anyways hopefully I'll get a ticket to go if not to many people signed up already. It's to go listen to Richard Branson, so it could be interesting.

Failure Alert!

I kick off week four of TYSIC by doing absolutely nothing. From looking at my previous posts I have noticed that my pattern seems to be one week of progress and then another of falling flat on my face. I also realized this week how badly I tend to react when things go badly.

Yesterday, I went to my school's dining hall and brought my laptop (maybe if I would have actually tried this week I would have been social and gone with a friend, but I didn't) with me so I would have something to do. I open it up and it just froze. I did try to use my newly found optimism by thinking "hey, that's okay lot's of computers freeze." I turned it off and when I turned it back off nothing happened. Well, it seems that was all I needed to turn most of the optimism I had found into the pessimism I've always known so well. I pressed down the power button and turned it off again. I waited a couple minutes and decided "okay, let's not get carried away, it'll be okay." I turned it on and the computer got stuck again. All the screen showed was "Toshiba - Leading Innovation." I started doing everything at that point. From unplugging it to removing the battery to having it cool off and then try again, but nothing.

That's when I called my dad to tell him how incredibly crappy the computer was. I went off on how Toshiba was a bullshit company run by a bunch of idiots. Yes, I lost it. I know. And he just told me "Well maybe you can take the battery off for a while, maybe that will work. Anyways I need to get back to work. I'll call you later." So what did I do I called my mom and basically told her the same exact thing. Only it took me longer because I couldn't find the exact words I wanted to use in Spanish.

After I got done talking to her, it still wouldn't work. It had been almost an hour. And all optimism had gone out the window. I did even smack the keyboard a bit. But after I did hit it, magically my laptop came back to life. So now that I know I have a masochistic laptop, I guess I'll know what to do if this were ever to happen again.

So if anything, this week was a test of my optimism and I failed. Here's hoping I'll do better next week.

Going Out and Being Social

This marks the third week of TYSIC, actually I was supposed to do this yesterday, but I got home really late so Friday will do I guess.

I worked on my putting myself out there more this week by being more social.

Monday, I went to a lecture about Henry Blundell and his huge collection of Ince art. It wasn't required or anything, and I usually don't go to these things, but I thought it would help me to be more social. If not I would have probably spent my Monday afternoon in my dorm watching the tv and being on the computer. I think I would call this day a success. I managed to talk to one person there, and she was really nice. Apparently we had a class together and talked about how things are going.

Wednesday, I met with my mentor from a scholarship program I am a part of. I get what you're thinking, that this was basically required so it doesn't count, but hear me out. If there is one thing I'm good at it's avoiding people. I was supposed to meet her in September, and I faked sick, so we called it off. Other times I just said I had to study and hopefully we can meet up after exams and stuff. So about a week ago she emailed me to meet finally. She took me to a coffee shop where another sophomore was there with his freshmen mentee. They were all nice people. Me and the other freshmen were pretty much shy, but the mentors tried to get the conversation moving. And the next thing I new an hour had passed. I would also call this successful, but tiring.

Then on Thursday, me and my writing class went to go see a production of Henry V. Again, if I really wanted to I could have found a way out, but I thought it would be a good learning experience on going out more. Since I've basically only gone on the metro once before. The bad part was that from Noon to 5:30 I had already had 4 classes. And our teacher told us to leave around 6. So as soon, I was out of accounting I had to run to the dining hall, and stuff my face with as much past as possible. After, I ran to my room changed and waited for a classmate I ended up going with, since they new which metro stop to get off on. We got there really early about 6:45 and ended up wandering about. The play started at 8 p.m. and at first it was fine.

I don't really know how to explain it, but there was a stage and there were 2 wings on the left and right where you can sit, and then a raised stage on top of that where the actors would actually be. I was right on the edge on the front row. I was really close to the actors at some points. Sometimes I would get hit on the legs with their robes as they would run offstage. That was kinda cool. And other times it was scare the crap out of me because they would sometimes have these large sticks and hit them on the stage right next to me. The noise alone made me jump. I thought it was a really good production. They did interesting things with the chorus. And it was a lot funnier than I thought it would be.

Right now it sounds like it was a lot of fun. But the thing was 3 hours long! I was already so tired from classes, I had a major headache and just wanted to go to sleep. Also being that close to the stage, the lights would sometimes shine right on your eyes, which didn't help the headache. Some of my classmates ended up leaving at intermission, which was at like 9:40. As much as I wanted to go, I decided to stay basically because of TYSIC. I tend to always live in my own little world, and this was an experience I never had before. And I guess I should add doing different things to my TYSIC. The play ended at about 11:00-ish. And I didn't get home until after midnight. Because of the sucky buses the school runs. I was so tired and just collapsed on to my bed. This explains why I didn't write down my TYSIC yesterday.

I Fail!!!

It's week two of the TYSIC and well I have absolutely failed at life this week and got nothing accomplished. So because I actually want to write a blog everyday, I will list some small things I have done during week two.

I really wasn't optimistic this week. At least not about my own life. I've realized that it's not the pessimism that's the problem it's the fact that I just tend not to care. It's pretty sad, but half the time I just don't have an opinion either way. I feel that I'm too lazy to try. I, however, hope that I will be able to be more optimistic next week. If there is one thing I am constantly trying to be optimistic about it is my sister's health. I refuse to believe that things can get any worse. My mind is set to believing that soon she will be completely better. And I'm glad to say that not much worse has happened this week.

Semi-TYSIC related, I had an accounting quiz today, and I believe I made a hundred. Well, I'm not sure, but I'm fairly optimistic about my grade. Which, is a good thing because it's a requirement at the university I go to if I want to get a business degree.

And on the putting myself out there front, I initiated conversation with two people in my writing class. Sure all we did was talk about class really, but it has been a big step for me. I've only spoken to one other person in that class, so I'm up to three now.

I think I'm going to try to get something accomplished by starting to read The Bell Jar, though I may decide to re-watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail.