Sweatshirts, Summer, and Square Knots

Summer is almost here!!!

One more final (ASL- Tomorrow night) and I will have completed my first year of college!   HUZZAH!

I'm not too worried about my final. I almost have my summary of The Sound of Music memorized, and then I just need to go over the Culture and Grammar sections on Blackboard, that wonderfully confusing tool that colleges love to use.

Looking back on when I started my first semester at College, I wasn't sure how it would go. I wasn't sure about anything at that point. This school year put me at a totally "clean slate" time and it was both thrilling and terrifying. God has totally gotten me through this first year and I know He's got a lot in store for me in the upcoming months and next year.
I've proved to myself (homeschooler that I was)  that I can study in a classroom setting and pull good grades, so far I haven't gotten a C grade in a class, so I'm happy. I aim for As in everything, but I've still got a few things about college and studying that I probably need to learn to make the straight A thing happen (and find all of the math and science classes for people who are not very adept at those subjects).

So what did I learn from my various classes?

English 101- 101 classes have a lot of slackers and half your class won't show up or even care half of much as you about the assignments. Especially English 101. You are at college for yourself.
ASL 101- All the crazy people take ASL, you make friends and almost all of the people who take ASL are prepared to study and take the class seriously, unlike other "foreign" languages.
Psych 101- There are no rules, recipes, or formulas when you deal with human beings. Also- we have no idea what we're doing when we diagnose mental disorders. This was possibly the most scary part of my Psych class.
English 102- If you get a good teacher who knows what he/she (in my case, she) is talking about, you will learn a lot, especially if you do things HER WAY. Also, respect the teacher and show her you care about the class, it's not kissing up, it's called being responsible about the money your parents are paying to give you a higher (and very expensive) education. Also- get the teacher with the wickedly sarcastic and slightly dry sense of humor, you will love this semester and be able to ignore the people in your  class who are wasting their parents money by not doing their work and are sassing the teacher.
ASL 102- Is a lot like ASL 101, except that we can now speak in "complete sentences" and carry on simple conversations in Deaf Culture.
Pilates- IS THE BEST! 
Yoga- Is is a lot harder than I thought, but even though it wasn't my favorite I still learned some stuff that I can use. I did get a lot stronger this semester and I think part of it was the exercises I did in yoga. It still isn't my favorite thing though (see Pilates).

Something about my college- it's freaking cold in that palace ALL YEAR LONG. Hence, the sweatshirts. Plus, I got a hand-me-over sweatshirt from The Doctor (my 哥哥 (ge ge)). Plus he introduced me to FIREFLY and I'm now learning a small amount of incorrectly pronounced Chinese. I'm very happy.

Plus, The Doctor helped me learn several knots after yesterday's Square Dance. I love Square/Line dancing so that was tons of fun! But maybe better was my face while trying to figure out a Monkey's Paw Knot. I'm getting better at it already! However, you should head over to my Anne-Drew blog to read about that (the post should be up later tonight).

Just a quick update- look for my Jim Henson post on Wednesday!

Slipping. (Warning- not positive)

Another frustrating day, and it's not over.

I got a B on my psych test. Ok- before any goes saying "a B is not a bad grade" yes I know.
However, with my prof. anything under an A means you're just being lazy.
According to this professor you should be able to get an A because he has made this class easy to understand and he's given you a study guide with EVERYTHING you need to know for the tests. It's not rocket science...just psychology.
6 stupid little questions. If I had gotten 2 of them right, I would have had an A, TWO QUESTIONS!!!!!
Looking over my mistakes, they're really stupid ones.
This happens every time I take a test. I hate tests. I can know material 100% and still get questions wrong. It's just that this weird mindset takes over and I can't think properly. Then I get my test back and look over the corrections and go "DUH!"

Also, I got a 3/10 in my paraphrase/summary paper for English 102. I didn't label the paraphrase and to be honest, I forgot to attach the summary, and the article. I forgot to document the places where I used my source.
This doesn't sound like me. I'm not this scatterbrained. I should be able to do these things without any trouble at all. Thank goodness I've been keeping my journals for English, those points are going to save my butt. I'm praying that I get a good grade on my persuasion paper.

Why is it that I love my classes, but seem incompetent when it comes to the homework I'm required to do? I was talking to my mom about it on the phone (still at school, waiting for a yoga class to start ((by the way, I don't like my yoga class but I needed another credit)) and I almost started crying. AGAIN!!!
I swear I'm sick of being close to tears on a constant basis. I'm sick of this stress that DOES NOT LEAVE, EVER!!! You'd think after a week of crying about pent up frustrations from the past 6 or 7 months would help, nope. You'd think having a pretty good audition for Bristol would help....actually that kind of adds stress because now I have to wait TWO WEEKS to hear from them. It's only been four days.
I wake up stressed out, I go to bed stressed out, I live my days with a slight nausea from waiting to hear from Bristol. I write crappy papers because my brain is so tired. I forget the simplest of things on these papers and feel like an idiot when I get my results back.

By the way, if you talk to me about Bristol, I don't think I'm going to get in. I'm trying to convince myself that I won't get in so that I won't be disappointed when I get the call saying I didn't make it.

Until today the week was going kind of ok. Now I want my little burrow of covers and Carol Burnett Youtube clips.