On Junior Year

Or "Why Does My Ideal Schedule Look Like A Space Invader?"

I thought I'd take a page out of Larkin's blogging book and go with the Rocky and Bullwinkle-Style double-title. Let me just cut right to the chase. This is what my ideal schedule looks like for Fall semester of my Junior year :

I've been suspicious of the shape of my schedule since my very first semester, when it looked vaguely like some kind of handgun.

Second semester was a bit of a stretch, but I always thought it looked like the blood-spattered teeth of an infernal beast.

Third semester takes a little imagination, but it's vivid. Imagine you are me, and that you are shown to a room. The person who has shown you there opens the door and says "Here is where you will be working for the next four months" before leaving. You walk into the room and the first thing you notice is a little lump of feces in the middle of the floor. While you are looking at this lump, more feces lands on it. You look up to find an improbably massive mountain of dung suspended from the ceiling by some unknown force. I cannot express to you how much this resembled my Fall semester, the feeling that I was laboring under an upside-down stack of shit that could cease adherence at any moment and crush my efforts under crap.

This semester doesn't look like anything, aside from pain. I wake up, go to class with either two 30 minute breaks or no breaks at all, and then go back to the Suite. There's a reason that nobody ever looks for shapes in thunderstorm clouds; you don't need an imagination to know it's going to suck.

But next semester, Fall semester Junior year.... I'm a little miffed by the way the schedule turned out. Here I thought that after two years of having of 50% of my schedule dictated by requirements and prerequisites, I might finally get to choose (albeit from within my major) classes which are specifically appealing to me. It appears that I anticipated my liberation one semester too soon:

I plan to take : Argumentation, which will fulfill my required "Writing Intensive" credits and assist with my Writing Minor.
Language And Gender because it's one of the only Social Differentiation classes that fits within my PNP Major.
History Of World Cinema because a film history course should prove an easier Cultural Diversity option than a lit class.
Experimental Psychology because PNP/Psych Majors aren't allowed to study abroad until they've taken it.
Philosophy Of Mind and Cognitive Psychology are the only two classes I had a reasonable amount of choice over. I'm bummed because POM coincides exactly with 20th Century Russian History, which I was going to take to complete my Language and Arts cluster.

An additional concern is this : if it takes me five semesters to get through all the red-tape and bullshit, and I decide to go abroad my sixth semester, then will I spend my Senior year fulfilling Major requirements? Will I even be able to finish my major?

It's something I have to look into, but not right now.

-Alan

I Want You All To Do Something

I want you all to do something, for me and for yourselves.

I want you to get high. Wake-and-bake, morning thunder, a lit lunch, an afternoon doobie-break and a big bowl for dinner. I want you to get ripped, torn asunder and baked.

And then go to the bathroom, but listen to Aaron Copland's "Fanfare For The Common Man" when you do it.

Take a piss; it's never looked so glorious, so patriotic.
Brush your teeth; they'll never be cleaner than they are now.
Wash your face; but be careful if you're wearing headphones.

And then just try to tell me that marijuana isn't the best drug around.

-Alan

A Bridge O'er Pacific

This day snuck up on me. When Winter Break ended, Bridget's departure was a far off thing, easily three months in the future (of course, I returned on Jan 17th, and she left today, March 21st, so I must have rounded up to the full length of all three months). Now it's gone, and I feel like the kid who slept through New Years' and woke to find all the snack foods eaten, half of the couches sporting an inebriated human drapery, and mother asleep in father's lap with one strap her dress on the wrong half of her shoulder. I knew, as I fell asleep, that the New Year was coming, but closed my eyes and fell through the hole to China, where the New Year had already come.

I'm upset that I'm not more upset about her leaving. Why can't I ever feel straightforwardly?

I've spent the last week and a half embracing the role of the stoner. The hemp messenger bag, the long hair, spontaneous smoking of joints, an androgenous green tunic and embroidered stars on a pair of denim flares. I could get used to this, but only if St. Louis warms up a little bit. There are stories to tell from my week in Florida, and the road tripping it took to get there and back, but I haven't got it in me tonight. I'm kinda mixed up, and I should be writing a short story instead of a blog post. And my armpit hurts.

-Alan

KingOfRod

We're t-minus 3 hours and counting. 8.5 hours to Atlanta, 6.5 hours of sleep, and ~8 hours to St. Petersburg, FL.

I'm incredibly anxious about driving for so long, and my cohorts remind me (again and again, sorry guys) that there will be driver switches. My parents have taught me well, such that I don't trust Belinda in the hands of just anyone. What an insurance nightmare. What a nightmare in general, to have a near death collision in the backseat of your own car. Just thinking about it makes me all shivery and sweaty. I've made the drive alone without problems, and I figure having people around will only make the trip more bearable, but I'm still quite nervous. Body, mind, don't fail me now.

There's not much time for a post, and not much post content at the ready. I've got my fingers crossed that I'll have access to the internet in FL (especially given the composition of my cohorts, mostly engineers with a deep love for computing and readily accessible information), but if I don't, this will be it until next weekend.

I'm glad I decided to go on this trip, as anxious as it's making me. There are reasons why home just isn't the place to be right now, and I didn't have it in me (or my checking account) to make another solo trip to a great American city. Having 10 co-vacationers will take the pressure off of me, as far as ideas and activities go, and I hope to write one or two stories while I'm there. Also hoping to read a good book, or at least start one.

Peace?

-Alan

twohundredandfirst

Here is a joke that I made up about 90 minutes ago, while really high :

So there's this cop chasing a Mexican drug lord through the deserts of south Texas.
and this drug lord, he's the worst. He rapes, he kills, he sells drugs to kids,
and so our Cop really wants to take this scumbag down.
but they're getting close to the border
and they eventually cross the border, and the cop catches him and drags him back to Texas
and so this results in a lawsuit
This cop, he's all american, so he's also a lawyer
a good lawyer, one of the best
like Law and Order, real professional.
so he takes the case for the prosecution of this drug lord
and he presents a marvelous case. and the defense has a terrible lawyer, because no lawyers in Texas accept pesos as payment
The jury, by some freak mistake, is composed of complete idiots
and they hear the cop-lawyer speak, but they don't understand a word of what he means by it
whereas the defense lawyer speaks like one of them, like an idiot
and so the jury lets the drug lord go
so our Cop-Lawyer asks the judge, afterwards,
"Hey, your Honor... I don't understand. That was the best case of my life, and I lost? I don't understand. Why did I lose?"
and the Judge says "You were outside of your juror's diction"

Scheduled For Termination Pt. 2 : Cage Block E

A new layer of intrigue has fallen upon Rat #85; just like Reality TV, he has now been pitted against one of his own for a chance at survival.

I was watching Rat #91's lackluster performance in the condition for which he was trained, and I attracted the attention of my PI. The new condition has seven subjects, who must decide between a small amount of food at a small delay and a large amount at a longer delay. The small amount changes from day to day, based on their preference the day before, but the large amount is fixed at a rather large 32 pellets per trial, with sessions lasting 24 trials. Necessarily, 8 of the trials are "forced choice" which means the rat must accept the larger-later amount at least 4 times in a single session.

Rat #91's problem is, he gets full. He continues performing the task, but doesn't eat any of the food he's given. After the trough fills up, he stops performing the task. 32 pellets is just too large an amount for him. Still, I heard my PI tut-tutting over my shoulder, and when I explained the situation (#91 has done this four days running) he sighed and suggested that we might need to destroy him.

But wait, he had an idea.

At present, we're preparing a version of the experiment which uses liquid rewards instead of solid food. We are in the process of training 7 rats to perform this task, and one of those rats is #85, the Death Row-dent. We need at least six rats performing the liquid task, or else the results are meaningless. The success of training is somewhere above 85%, but there's always the chance that one of the six well-behaved rats will just 'tard out and not learn to run the box. If that happens, then #85 and #91 will be vying for the position. #91 will have to get over the issue of small stomach capacity, and #85 will have to get over the fact that he lives a meaningless and monotonous existence, only allowed to express his will in an experimental context. And they'd both cross their claws that one of those liquid-runners suddenly decides he's not interested.

And so, we have a showdown.



Who will emerge victorious? Who will lose their head? Will they both perish?

I'll keep you posted.

-Alan

Scheduled For Termination

Today, while working in the lab, I overheard a conversation about a very angry rat: Rat #85.

"He's just terrible, isn't he? Sometimes I just don't handle him. He hisses, and his hair stands on end."

"Oh, we'll have to call animal card and have him destroyed."

"Yeah."

This is the first euthanasia of an animal that I've known about before it happened. It happened once, last semester, but I only found out when the bird disappeared. "Oh yeah, she injured her foot and we had to put her down." But this is the first time it was a rat, as well. And I had to look at him, knowing his fate but with no way of telling him.

I'm not too torn up about it, though. He really was a bastard. Rat.... bastard.

In other news.... there is no other news.

-Alan