Homestretch

It's the final countdown...

There are only 2 more days until school is over and then I'll only have exams to worry about, hallelujah! I can see the finish line coming ahead and am pretty much functioning on adrenaline and pure will power right now. I still have about 4 more assignments and a paper to whip out before I can fully immerse myself in cramming the whole semester back into my head.

But I can't complain because my sister who's still in high school still has two more months of this semester and will probably be stressing about her summatives during the break while I get to go school supplies shopping!! Can you believe I actually filled up my notebook with notes? (What else would I fill it with, notes?) But it had almost 400 pages in it and practically all of them are covered in my semi-comprehensible scrawl.

I'm kind of scared for exams, three hours of sitting down and writing while being stressed out is not my cup of tea, especially because I can't stay still for that long. They only exams in high school that even got close to the three hour mark were my grade 11 and 12 physics ones and I was literally dancing in my seat trying to finish up. And what even is checking over your answers; that never happened. (that semicolon usage thanks to my technical report writing class. I did learn some useful things there apparently.) BUT that is not the attitude I'm going into them with, no sirree I love sitting and solving math problems it's what I live for.

Kind of embarrassed to say this so imma shove this paragraph in between the others and hope you non-existent readers don't notice it. I'm really going to miss my engineering mechanics discussion group because for one it was a really small class so I didn't feel overwhelmed and could actually ask questions and then secondly my TA was certifiably hot and that is a thing that I will miss.

Weird to think that more than half of my new friends will be leaving for a while once exams finish since they're all from "Toronto" and by "Toronto" I mean a tiny town that is anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half away from Toronto. I'm not used to everyone not being from Ottawa. Oh well, that means I'm obligated to hang out with fewer people over the holidays and can spend the time not working insane holiday hours destressing and doing pointless things like knitting mittens.

Sorry about this mind dump, I don't post very much personal stuff here so let me know if this is a good thing or if you just want my book reviews and list posts and things like that.

me sprinting away once school is over

New-niversity

I am so pleased with that punny title. Let's all take a moment to appreciate it.

*appreciation*

A thing has happened in my life. I thought it would be a scary thing, but it's not as bad as I imagined. I might even like it!

Frosh Week: Couch Carry (I'm the blonde girl on the right)

My life as a first year mechanical engineering student started four weeks ago and so far it was been going great. I participated in frosh week and got to do weird things, met friends and even made it on the local news! I don't know how it is wherever you are but here, the engineers are crazy and slightly full of themselves. Our frosh leaders painted their entire bodies purple since purple is our unofficial colour throughout many universities and we got to do weird activities such as a picture scavenger hunt with a couch.

This whole experience is exponentially different than high school! For one, I have 5 classes per semester (0 electives though, engineering is that kind of course.), not 4, and they happen sporadically throughout the week with 2 hour and a half lectures plus an optional but super helpful at times discussion and then a three hour lab on top of that for some courses. Making my schedule almost made me cry. Seriously, it was so hard to fit everything in and not have like five hour gaps or super early or late classes. But I managed to have an average of three classes per day, which is a crazy amount, especially compared to literally all my friends who are in some kind of arts program (communications, psych, history, etc.) and complain about their one day with three classes.

Woah, tangent. Anywho, other differences are not having set hours for class. For example, I managed to get most of my classes to start at 11:30am which lets me sleep in to a wonderful time and also get things done in the morning hours. And then there's the thing of my place of education NOT being under 10 minutes away anymore. I used to literally roll out of bed half an hour before class started and get there on time but now I have to check the bus schedules and plan my life around that. The bus takes about half an hour to get to university which isn't actually that bad compared to other people that live at home as well.

Speaking as a shy person, I was immensely pleased with myself for how many friends I made! I think it helped that nobody knew each other; the pre-made cliques were non-existent. Still, I was a little worried since I wasn't living in residence that I wouldn't make any friends but I managed to prove myself wrong. You end up talking to the people around you in your classes, usually just about the teacher and stuff, but then you walk out of class together and realize you have a break together and suddenly you're always sitting together and have each others' numbers and bang: friendship. And before you ask, those phone numbers are pretty much all girl numbers. Just because there's way less girls in engineering doesn't mean that I'm suddenly a hot commodity.

So this concludes my happy post. I'm sure everything isn't going to be this easy going for my full five years but I really don't mind it being this nice right from the beginning.

Guess Who's Back

(back again)

me abandoning ship

Hello all! You've probably thought I abandoned ship by now. I know I thought I did. Life got too hectic with graduating from high school and working all summer at camp to keep up with a blog. Although I'm kind of sad about that, I was doing okayish!

Now that I've started university, I kind of want to document my life again maybe with shorter posts that happen more often that are mainly me rambling. I thought about starting a whole new blog for that but what's the point since I've already made this one and people (like 4) actually know about it.

So this is me getting back on track, the monthly poll will get updated again, you will get to read my super interesting thoughts and get updates on my life. How's that sound? Perhaps I'll play around with my theme and get all weirded out whenever I look at my blog until I've gotten used to the newness because change is good. No matter how much I hate to admit that.

I have a wackload of stories from camp this summer and have just started a new chapter (how poetic) how my life in university studying to be an engineer so you shall be hearing from me!

Thanks for putting up with me,
Karen

Prodigy: a Review

Goodreads says:

June and Day arrive in Vegas just as the unthinkable happens: the Elector Primo dies, and his son Anden takes his place. With the Republic edging closer to chaos, the two join a group of Patriot rebels eager to help Day rescue his brother and offer passage to the Colonies. They have only one request—June and Day must assassinate the new Elector.

It’s their chance to change the nation, to give voice to a people silenced for too long.

But as June realizes this Elector is nothing like his father, she’s haunted by the choice ahead. What if Anden is a new beginning? What if revolution must be more than loss and vengeance, anger and blood—what if the Patriots are wrong?

I say:

Ok, so Prodigy is the sequel to the book Legend by Marie Lu. I loved Legend so I had high expectations for this next installement.

And I have to say, it did not disappoint! You see, usually in these trilogy books, the middle one is a little boring and/or pointless because you already know everyone and the premise has been introduced but it's not quite time for the big showdown at the end where all is resolved and you can happily stop wondering every second what is going to happen next while you wait for the next publication date. Also, for some reason, a second love interest comes into play (they're starting to introduce him earlier on but back in my day you met him once the second book rolled around.) and that gets really annoying. ANYWAY, all that was to explain why second books usually don't tend to be good and why it's awesome that Prodigy didn't turn out that way.

This book could've been its own story aside from the fact that you wouldn't really know how they got to the part where it starts off.

I really liked how you got both perspectives from the main characters, June and Day. Not even just to get more storyline when they're in two different places but to know what they're thinking of their situation and of each other. Segueing from that, I also liked how their relationship was real. It wasn't love at first sight, they're getting to know each other better, having doubts but still trying. It's not perfect at all times but what relationship is? That was awesome to see instead of one where there is only instant attraction from some helpless female and a mysterious dude. (QUESTION: What was the first book that popped into your head when I said that?)

The secondary characters were great, it was nice to get to know some, like Kaede and Tess, better.

As for the plot, I never know how much to give away since I hate having things ruined for me personally but I still need something to talk about. I guess I'll stay within whatever Goodreads says as the description. They inevitably team up with the Patriots since both are against the Republic. It was kind of random that the Elector just dies but since this story is happening in a book and not in real life, it's ok for things like that to happen because it makes for a better story. I just like how it turned out, with each of them learning more about how people and places have more than one side, including ones you never saw coming. (Major twist near the end, props if you saw it coming cause it's sure blindsided me!)

Overall, conclusionary statement that I'm not very good at making: This book was tres tres good. Legend was a wee bit better, but then again, Legend was earth-shatteringly good so what do you expect. June and Day are both strong characters that can both be fine without the other but also depend on each other if that makes any sense at all. The plot is fast-paced and riveting so don't be starting with a massive deadline looming.

Poll Results: December

This was kind of disappointing. After getting 7 whole votes in my previous poll, I was expecting an increase in number. But, alas, only three got in on the action. I guess the question was slightly too weird.

Here are the results:

Seems like blue was the overall winner with dark blue taking the prize. I am not surprised with these results seeing as blue is a pretty amazing colour.

It would make my life if January's poll got more than a few votes since it means people actually care! New topic is: Favourite Type of Severe Weather

My Ears Kind Of Love Me Right Now

This is me right now.

So I just added about 30 new songs to my ipod and am in heaven right now. I listen to music pretty much all the time - walking to and from school, while doing homework, when running, before going to bed, while I'm having conversations with other people - so the songs I have end up getting pretty overplayed after a while.

But since I'm a lazy person, I will jot down songs that I discover - on scraps of paper, on my hand, on the notes app in my phone, on my sister's forehead - but not take the time to find them and load them to my music listening device.

So I'll be going about my life, with music, obviously, and then my brain will be like "I NEED TO LISTEN TO THAT SONG THAT WAS REALLY GOOD THAT WE DISCOVERED 3 WEEKS AGO" and I'll be like "cool beans, let me just find it in my ipod... wait. oops, haven't added it yet, sorry man."

^Yes, I have conversations with my brain. Yes, in these conversations my brain talks in caps lock and I talk in lowercase letters.

So this is why I feel pretty darn near euphoric when I talk the time to get every single one of those songs on my ipod and can listen to them whenever I want.

If anyone's interested in the songs, you can ask in the comments and I'll happily oblige!