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

Reactions

As you all may or may not know, I am a girl in mechanical engineering. I'm not making myself to be special or superior to any other person in any other program but it's just a fact of life that you don't see that every day.

When you meet people, you obviously have to go through the small talk of school and what program you're studying. It's inevitable. I think asking people what book they're currently reading is a much more interesting form of small talk. I am going to make that a thing. But of course, when I tell people what I'm studying, I get THE BEST reactions. They're usually extreme and there's always the typical ones but I've gotten some pretty atypical ones. Since I get a kick out of them, I figured you dudes might too and this is what the rest of this post entails.

1. Wide eyes. This is usually when they're trying to mask the fact that they had a reaction altogether and go on to regular answer like "Oh, are you liking it?" and "Are you living in residence?"

2. "I'm so glad there are people like you..." This comes from people who can't believe anyone would want to continue doing math voluntarily. They kind of make a joke where they're thankful that "people like me" exist because if it were up to them to do what I will be doing once
I graduate the world would start crumbling in on itself.

3. Genuine questions. There are people who know a few things about the classes I'm taking and ask how I'm finding them and all that. I like giving them feedback.

4. The future-thinkers. These are the same people that always asked what you were going to major in back when you were in high school. Now that you've got that pretty much cemented in, they move on to the next big milestone: your career. You are asked what you plan to do with your degree and where you'd like to live and basically all the questions that make you want to go back to kindergarten where everything was safe and certain.

It's always the creepy old people too

5. BOYS. WINK. This reaction is by far the creepiest and kind of the most insulting. This is where they point out that engineering is mostly filled with people with XY chromosomes. They ask for ratios of girls to guys in your classes, and, inevitably, talk about how easy it will be for me to find a boyfriend. Like whoa, who has time for a love life when you're taking these kinds of classes. That is definitely not my number one priority.

6. Doom predictors. These people know of other people who also decided that they could handle becoming an engineer but ended up doing really badly or dropping out or switching to a different program and on the outside I'm all like cool story bro but on the inside I freak out because it's not like I was a child prodigy or anything I've had to work hard and what if it's not enough and my entire life falls to pieces before my eyes.

Your turn! Tell me about the funniest or most insulting or best reactions to whatever you're doing with your life!

Sneak Peek

I have zero time to write but I'm still bursting with ideas aka the worst state of being to be in.

SO I have decided to give you a look into what's to come. Not saying that they'll be like in the coming week or even the coming month but that they're there and when I have some spare time that I don't use towards watching How I Met Your Mother, I'll be working on them! They're pretty great ideas, if I do say so myself.

Here you go.

Book Juggling

Imagine that literally?

In this case, I'm talking about being in the middle of reading multiple books at a time. This is a thing that I do. My average is 3 books at a time.

Why exactly I do this is because I have different moods for what I'm reading. Sometimes I just really want to breeze through a mindless chick lit novel while other times I am so down for complicated subplots and dragons. There are even times when the main character of a book will just be annoying me too much and I will set that book down and pick up another because there is never a shortage of books in my house.

Another reason that just popped into my head is convenience. I am the kind of person that will just start a new book if the one I was reading at the time was in my room and I was on the couch. This way, I can just leave a book in all my reading locations and not have to wonder where I set it down last. You could come into my house and find a book on the kitchen table, beside my bed, on the floor near the couch, in my backpack and even sometimes in the bathroom.

It almost feels weird to only have one book on the go but that rarely happens anyway. There's nothing worse than not knowing what to do with yourself once you've finished a book so being in the middle of two other stories makes the brain shift that much easier. Just as long as no characters have the same name, it's quite simple to keep everything straight in my head.

Question: what are your book reading habits? Are you a big book juggler? Do you have any weird reading locations? Please share in the comments!

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.

Say NO to Mind Reading

If you are randomly asked which super power you'd want if you could have any one, chances are that mind reading comes to mind. And who wouldn't love to know exactly what your friends thought or all the deepest darkest secrets of your coworkers. In theory, it's pretty sweet.

Now, think about what this actually means. You will be able to hear in your own head whatever is running through the minds of however many people who are within a certain radius of you. All those thoughts will be piled up on top of each other as each person's separate inner monologue takes place within your brain. And they never go quiet, do they?

Here's an example of what is literally running through my brain while I'm in the middle of typing this:

what if I have don't have anything interesting to say I mean think obviously cause it's in my brain but anyway oh snap I need to study for my math test it's in let's see today is friday because I have youth group tonight and we're doing something with toilet paper kinda interesting sounding I hope Jason is there but then the next day is saturday then sunday then monday so technically three more days and I totally forgot what happened before christmas break was that trig functions or maybe rates but we did rates with every type of function but we had to learn it at some point wait wasn't there that thing with an h that equaled zero what if it's on the exam and I can't remember how to use it

This has probably gone on long enough for you to get a glimpse of how you just literally think things non stop and they run into each and overlap and jump all over the place. And that's just the main part, there's other things like the song you have stuck in your head plus maybe a part of you that's processing what's going on around you.

I really don't think a person could stay sane with all these intimate thoughts from so many people they might not even know happening inside their head. Would you even be able to distinguish your own thoughts amidst the foreign ones?

ALL the words

Not to be the party pooper, I was just thinking of how seriously unfun that super power would be when it comes down to the finite details that no one actually thinks to think about.

J Z

math teacher material

Y'all know or heard of Jay Z right? He's a successful rapper, married to Beyonce and all around G.

The reason I am describing this guy to you is not because I am so into his style and music and just want everyone in the world to hear about it, it is because my math teacher has the initials J.Z. and everyone calls him that, teachers and students alike.

I find it really, really, extremely funny because he is the furthest thing from Jay Z. First of all, he's a math teacher. Little different than a rapper.

SIDE NOTE: You don't even know how many times we have tried to get him to rap but he refuses so my theory is that he's secretly an amazing rapper and practices in front of his mirror into a hairbrush every day.

Next, he is so socially awkward that it's hilarious. Not to mention that he's already hilarious on his own, bringing up random facts and using weird examples in class every day. Not the same as the swag the real Jay Z has going on.

Some examples of his funniness:

"This homework will be 5% inspiration, 90% perspiration and 5% deodorant."

"Your presentation  needs fun-ness. Wear silly hats. Also I might look at the content."

"I have 2p....what's so funny?"

"There's no fire and I can't find it!" 

So he officially has the Best Nickname Ever because it came about naturally from his name and because it doesn't suit him so much that it does.

No Biggie

I have only realized that I have failed to share a pretty major milestone in my life. Seriously, it's all any conversation I have with an adult I slightly know or am just meeting is about. I need to go sit in the corner of shame for a while and think about what I've done. But first, the news.

As you can probably infer from when I straight up tell you I'm in my last year of high school, I'm in my last year of high school. That means I'm headed off for university next year which is a both terrifying and exciting thought. Terrifying in that everything will be new and you have to fend for yourself. I've heard many horror stories about how your prof doesn't care about you and that your final will be worth most of your marks. And then all the what ifs of me not being able to handle it and not finding a group of people that doesn't want to only party at all times going through my head doesn't help at all.

First though, you gotta apply. I sent in my applications about two weeks after we got our pins from OUAC, which is the website Ontarians apply through. No little than three days later, I got my first two acceptances, both from OttawaU. Maybe two or three days later, Carleton called in with news of acceptance as well! I actually worked hard in grade 11 so they liked what they saw I guess.

Here's a summary of what I got myself into: At OttawaU, I got in for mechanical engineering and physics while at Carleton I was accepted for engineering physics (I see a pattern here.) Both universities gave me a $3000 per year entrance scholarship (that's 12,000 bucks ladies and gents. Super helpful!) and Carleton threw in a $2000 eng. phys scholarship cause they like me. My final decision is to go to OttawaU for mechanical engineering and do coop because I hate the feeling of being in debt plus who can say no to a little on-the-job experience? Staying home is much cheaper so I went with that even though my dream school is the University of Waterloo where math and science are really big.


I'm glad I finally got it over with and have a destination post-high school. I'm still wavering over whether I made the right choice between engineering and physics since I enjoy my physics classes very much but haven't actually had the chance to try out mechanical engineering, I only know what I've heard. I REALLY don't want to be stuck with something that I don't enjoy doing. I guess it all has to be taken one step at a time.

One AWESOME thing that has come out of all this (besides getting in and getting scholarships) is that I finally have something concrete to tell people when they ask me what I'm thinking of doing next year. No vague answers, I can tell them what I'm going into and where and let them draw their own conclusions!

Summatives Suck

Microsoft Word doesn't even recognize it as a word because they suck so much.

Literally me.

But seriously, no one appreciates them. Yes, it's nice to not have 30% of your final mark be based on one exam (for some people) but adding a whole layer of stress does not help the matter. Literally no one has time for this. When they decided to implement summatives, they totally did not take into consideration that teachers are already trying to cram the last bit of the course into our heads after realizing we are very behind schedule PLUS we need to put in some time studying for this test that only covers, oh, everything we've done this semester. Why not add in a super project that is also supposed to cover everything learned in the course that takes up so much time to complete.

Absolutely everyone hates summatives, even some teachers. It's hard for them because they have to mark that and the exam all before the due date to have their marks in.

Overall there's just way too much stress. We should be enjoying the new year but instead, we're freaking out about keeping track of all the coursework we need to complete before we just lie down and let exhaustion overtake us.

This rant courtesy of my super stressed out brain.

Resolutions

Before we get down to the nitty gritty of me baring my fixable flaws before, can I say that I have never seen any jokes concerning picture resolution about New Year's resolutions. None. Whatsoever. It's weird cause they can't have all been invented this year. So here I am, laughing my head off at their sheer wit while all y'all are probably giving me hipster looks and telling me they've been around for ages. I must have figured out a way to avoid them until now because I am seriously not new to this whole internet deal.

This is the first time I've actually written something down for my New Year's resolutions, normally I just vaguely think something up. Here goes.

- Stay fit. Most people want to get fit but I am fit. I love sports and have high metabolism which both work to my advantage. But I won't have gym class anymore in university and I am not down to gain the freshman 15, thank you very much. So this is thinking long term to develop habits that'll help me come September.

- Learn a song on the bass each month. The bass is such a cool instrument to be able to play. I don't practice things very much so this might help me grow my repertoire.

- Do homework every night. Even if nothing is assigned. I am the queen of procrastination so this one is going to be a Herculean effort. That I will eventually fail at.

- Keep my room presentable. I am the worst at cleaning my own stuff. Other people's things I love to organize but my own things just get neglected. I've started keeping my bed made which actually makes a difference in how clean my room looks but I hope to get further along.


- Smile at one person I don't know a day. Because spreading happiness is fun. Because you never know how the person's day has been and what your actions do to contribute to it. Because what's the worst that could happen?

- Learn something new. I don't know what exactly but I want it to be a skill that takes time to acquire. Learn to write with my left hand? Take up handwriting analysis? Who knows! (You can tell I wrote the first draft of this by hand since both examples have to do with writing.)


- Be creative. My focus education-wise is all sciency and facts. I love that stuff to death but I really need to keep my brain entertained by creative things as well. So it may be making wall decorations or knitting something. Anything that lets me just release my creativity. (First on the list is find myself a synonym for "creative". I used it far too much in that paragraph.)


- Read 100 books. Easily accomplished seeing as I've done that for the past few years. But it's good to keep it as a goal.

I'm thinking at the end of the year we shall revisit this list and see how much progress I made on it!

ALSO: What do you think of my resolutions? Too ambitious? Too stereotypical? What are some resolutions you've made and do you think you'll be able to keep them?

My Holiday Life

I was supposed to make this post BEFORE all this stuff actually went down, you know, to warn you that I'm am out and about, going places and seeing people, and won't be online. Well that went very well. I'm so good at this.

Anywho, let me tell you about my life for the past couple of weeks!

We'll start with the last day of school.

Mine was less pretty

I gave and received my Secret Koala gifts. What were they, you ask whilst screaming at my through the computer screen in anticipation. Well, I gave my person a giant cupcake (it used a whole cake batter but definitely was in the shape of a cupcake. I was very proud of it.) and some mustache earphones. From my Secret Koala person, I got some nifty homemade bracelets and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians DVD. Can't say that I'm a fan of the movie but I adore the books plus Logan Lerman is in it which more than makes up for everything.
It was a snow day plus the last day before the holidays so all my teachers completely gave up on the idea of trying to stuff some information into our heads. So, in chem, we decorated our door, making a paper chain Christmas tree and modifying the title of the room to Chemis-tree. (I actually enjoyed that pun very much.) For math, all we did was watch Youtube videos. Cat Person, Dog Person was a highlight for me since the cat person was spot on in acting the way my cats do. Data consisted of us playing telephone pictionary which made for some major laughs, especially when our exchange students didn't know what some of the words were and just guessed. I usually have a spare last but I decided to drop in to my basketball coach's class where there was food and a movie. A good decision on my part, I must say.
And finally, on that same day, my school had our annual talent show which was pretty spectacular. The good ones were amazing and the bad ones still got lots of support from the crowd. I love my school.

A couple days later was Christmas. Now, I'm originally from Brazil even though I live in Canada but that means that most of my family is still over there. That means we don't do very big holiday get-togethers. It's usually just my mother, my younger sister and I. And I like it this way. Yes, I'm sad I don't get to wrestle in the snow with all my guy cousins but it does majorly reduce stress seeing as we don't have to prepare anything at all. With Christmas comes Christmas presents! Which I will tell you about in detail at a later time.

Finally, to end my holiday travels, my friend and I bussed over to Kingston to see another friend of ours from the summer camp I worked at all summer. Many ridiculous inside jokes were created and a total of 7 movies were watched in the span of two days plus one night. Don't believe me? Ask me anything about the following movies:
- The Hobbit (YES I shall do a review later on)
- Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Meh, it was okay)
- Pitch Perfect (Is there a more perfect movie?)
- The Odd Life of Timothy Green (Liked it more than I thought I would)
- Easy A (Oh Emma Stone, how awesome can you get?)
- What to Expect When You're Expecting (Very droll)
- In Time (Didn't like the concept too much)

 

We then all commuted to the very same camp for the staff reunion where our time was divided between eating that amazing food and collecting bruises on the ice rink while playing broomball. The New Year was counted down right on the rink actually! We paused it at 40 seconds to go, counted down, hugged a minimum of 7 people each then got right back to playing.

The night after I came home, I barfed. At least 11 of us that were at that Staff Reunion had the flu when we got home. Such close quarters would do that to a person.

That is the end of my saga! To be honest, it is one of the way more exciting Christmas break's I've had in a while seeing as I am not a social butterfly in the slightest. Thanks if you actually read the whole thing.

Poll Results: Favourite Season

The results are in! I put a poll on the side bar asking what people's favourite season was and left it there for the duration of November.

Only 7 people voted. Whatever, at least they did. Hopefully the numbers will increase as time goes on!

I have to say, I am extremely shocked with the results. They were:
Spring: 0
Summer: 0
Autumn: 3
Winter: 4

You can't look at this and tell me you're not also surprised. I expected the autumn votes. Even though I am not into fall at all, with all the orange and cinnamon and pumpkins and layers of clothing and dying leaves and coldness, lots of other people are. 

But winter? And enough votes that it actually wins? Did NOT see that coming. I expected spring and summer to be the more popular ones because the weather is actually nice out. Yes, winter brings certain winter activities but I didn't think it outweighed all the perks of summer.

I never cease to be amazed.

As for my favourite season, it's spring. Could be because I was born in it but seriously, all the plants are coming back to life, the weather is warming up, school is finishing up and everything just feels happier.

Congratz winter, people actually like you!

Fonts

I love fonts. Whenever I have a project for school, I always obsess about the fonts I'm going to use and any layout details in general.

So, at this moment, I have decided that I don't like the font I've been using so far. This post is pretty much going to be me figuring out which one of the severely limited selection offered I like the most and will be using from here into the unforeseeable future.

Arial:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Courier:
The quick brown fox jumps over that lazy dog.
Georgia:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Helvetica:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Times:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Trebuchet:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Verdana:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Well this is an easy choice. I really don't like the sans serif fonts very much. They look like they're missing something. And Times is a little too small so Georgia it is! Get really for a whole new level of fonts!

Isn't this clever?

Potato

I've noticed that while I'm fully comfortable with teachers and random people on the internet reading what I write, I am completely uncool with anyone in my immediate family with doing so.

I have absolutely no explanation to why. It should be the opposite, shouldn't it? I act like my true self around them that doesn't come out at school or in public. Well, I guess school is public but I like having multiple examples so whatever. So it should make sense that whatever I write down will be taken the same way as I act with my family.

But I just can't. My mom will read the same essay that my teacher just read over and thoroughly destroyed with the red pen (cause even though I've got a blog that I like to write in, English is not my strongest subject. My theory is that I'm way to funny in writing for my teachers to handle.) and I'll feel all apprehensive and all these other emotions I didn't whilst handing the essay in for class.

I don't actually know where I'm going with this, I've just noticed and decided to share. You can over-analyse me if you'd like and tell me about it in THE COMMENTS. Cause they exist. And you could totally post there. And make me feel better about myself.

Oh gosh, when I am a super popular blogger that gets ARC to review I'm going to look back on these first posts and be like "Wow, I used to have to beg people to comment on stuff. I was so pathetic."