OK. So, here. I'm sitting downstairs, in the lounge chair, reading poetry (Pope, not necessary for any of my classes,) drinking one thing or another, some scotch, I believe. And, I get to thinking - I would accomplish much more studying English literature if I was allowed to spend, as I see fit, the $35k that Cornell is paid on my behalf. Being that, while I worked overnight at a local gas station this most recent winter break and summer break, I chewed through a pretty extensive amount of english literature, and, being that now that I'm in English classes, I've found them to be too cursory, too slow, or too fast.

I would find a three room apartment, located somewhere quiet. One room would be a bedroom. A second room would hold videogames, RPGs, room for other people, bar, kitchen equipment, so forth. The third room would be an office, oak-paneled, oxblood leather furniture, mahogany, a globe, all that. Money would be set aside for food, drink, and all books necessary - important reference library stuff that I would want offline. I would be paid $10 an hour to sit in my office and read. At some point, if I felt up to it, I'd start writing imitations of things that I liked. Any real writing would come later. The $10/hr payment would be allotted towards the purchase of video games.

Once a week, I would have an interesting, traditionally-minded English professor come to argue with me (ask questions, talk, whatever) for a couple of hours about whatever I'd been reading. The professor would be aggressive and competitive, and for one reason or another, I'd want to impress him/her (maybe she's brilliant and attractive, or he's some older guy who's cool and judgemental).

OK...so, looking at all this, I think I could pay for this on $4k a month... 8 - 9 months out of the year - if not, I could lower the amount I paid myself to say, $6. That would be $36k...which is less than this school spends on each person. I would follow through with the reading, because it interests me, because I was being paid, and because I felt the need to impress the person I would speak with at the end of each week. I wouldn't feel burnt out or tired, as my weekends would be free - it'd be a much more natural education process.

I'd lose out on the college atmosphere, fine. When I have kids, it'd be nice to offer something along these lines as an option to them when they come of age, if this interests them.

Stone

Well, I don't know why im calling this about elementary school.. I moved to the US in the middle of second grade.. it was a jumbled time of my life, and I didnt actually experience school until third grade.

Third grade at that time meant a different school. The town contained a few (three or four) K-2 schools. Sliney was for 3rd and 4th graders only.. and all of the kids in town went there together. I was not the new kid anymore.. everyone was. I was still the foreign kid and I still had a strong accent.. but at least I wasnt the new kid.

My third grade english teacher was a fat fat woman who contracted pneumonia early on in the year (I still remember staring out the window at those late summer thunderstorms in the first weeks of school..). Anyway, right before she got ill all of the third grade teachers were supposed to pick kids to be tested. My teacher was the only teacher who sent two children.. the rest sent five or more. My class contained a lot of the "trouble makers". Anyway, all of the test subjects were herded into the cafeteria area where we were given a test. An IQ test. Nothing was explained to us, and to this day it feels like some weird governmental thing to pick guinea pigs for odd experiments.

A couple of weeks later, by now my fat ass teacher was in hospital and we had a perma-sub, I was sent to some room upstairs. It was eerie walking in.. the sun was shining and there were no lights on in the room. There were some tables in there with a couple of kids sitting around. One of the girls I knew from sunday school (eromteW), and she was a loud little thing with a bit of a temper... I took the seat farthest from her which happened to be next to Stone.

I had never really seen Stone before. It was a little weird because no one seemed to really know why we were in the room, but Stone had this look on him... it was hard to describe. It wasnt exactly psychotic, but it wasnt sane either. It didn't make me understand anything, but it didnt make me want to understand. He was distant, yet not. Words would come from his mouth, but not like other people. He was aloof.

People arent generally aloof in elementary school. Stone was always writing with dull pencils, always loosing them.

It was odd because he wasnt a nerd, I don't want you to get that impression.. few folks in BOP were actually nerds. I only really noticed that when I saw Malcolm in the Middle.

This entry is making less and less sense the more I write.

I'm still not entirly sure what hte point of BOP was (or MORE in middle school). When I look at the kids that were in it, perhaps I see one advantage... take kids that are somewhat responsible (or wont get caught) and let them leave class when they feel like it, to go do alternative things. Being allowed to make things different meant not having to do things the faculty wouldnt like. More kids would benefit from that type of thing probably.

I still don't quite understand grades tho. The kids in BOP and MORE pretty much always got As without doing a bit of work, unless you pissed off the teacher one way or another. This sort of thing doesnt only apply to BOP/MORE students.. many kids just get that, while other kids can try try try and never get the teachers to be even slightly happy.

I am a horrible student, and with the amount of work I did in elementary school and middle school I should not have been getting the grades I got.

Today was my first day of classes for the Spring 2001 semester. I hope it ends before I have to take my own life. Already, I have a deep hatred for certain professors and classmates.

Two professors have proven themselves to be extremely boring. I mean, all these professors do during the breaks are travel, admittedly. Both of them described very interesting european vacations, but when the time came to start class, the were boring as fuck. Couple that with the fucking sow who sat behind me in Psych who kept fucking kicking my chair, and I was ready to go on a killing spree. Thses professors weren't even loud and boring, they talked as if the class was one person sitting directly in front of them. And as it turns out, kiddies, Major British Authors means high school english class. So be sure to brush up on your goddam Beowulf.

Good lord. I can't believe what I've had to go through all fucking semester.

Think of the last time you had a large fat black man's penis in your mouth. Okay, get that mental picture a bit clearer. Picture the throbbing veins and most importantly the taste. Hold onto that image now. Add to it, the taste of your own feces.. since his penis was just in your ass. Okay.. now.. work on that image a bit more.. make it crystal clear.

That is what the 'standard issue' desk is like at school.

I hate my desk at school. I can't fucking believe I went so long without my nice desk. I am absolutely bring this up in spring. GOOD LORD ITS SO MUCH NICER.

peace.

You know, I do enjoy not having to live in a dorm anymore, but commuting and living on campus both have their pros and cons. I mean, if I lived on campus, I wouldn't have to tell anyone where I was going, I could eat ice cream for dinner and not come back to the room until monday morning. But, when and if I did come back, I couldn't sleep because of the noise in the next room, or an idiot roommate has decided that it's 'Vacuum Day,' or something. But commuting does have some big good things going for it, the shower is always clean, there are people here to give me money if I run out, I can sleep when I want, and there's always good food around. If I lived in a dorm, the showers are always kinda suspect...the people there don't have money themselves, and the chances of there being good food around are very slim, unless you have a George Foreman grill. Then food is always George-Tastic. But, I know for myself, if I don't have someone there to nag me to pick up my room, I won't. (Sorry Pappy, you're absoutely right. That room WAS a fucking pigsty.) Also, if I went away to school, there's a lot of new things I have to learn. Where classes are, tons of new people, how to get to the mall...etc. And I hate having to do shit like that. It's probably a fault of mine, but I don't particularly care for large amounts of change. And now that I commute, and it's the end of the semester, it feels like i should be doing something...everybody gets to leave and come back, but I don't go anywhere, which I miss. What was the point of this? I have no idea. No one forced you to read this.

Man, listen to all of us. I don't think I've seen a bunch of stressed out, whining, complaining, bitching, moaning, sons of bitches (myself included) since we graduated from high school! Really, this time of the year sucks, and I think we ALL need a huge, large, motherfucking vacation with nothing to worry about besides having fun and maybe working to earn some money.

After this FUCKING semester, I'm looking FORWARD to freezing my ass off for 50 hours a week at a hardware store. At least my talents (whatever they might be) are semi-appreciated there. Oh, and unlike school, I'll be taking home some benefits in excess of $400 a week. So Speaks The Gatekeeper.

And as far as school, goes, I've had one hell of a semester...and one hell of a past couple of weeks. All in all, my classes really aren't that bad. After the chemistry teachers I had in high school (Mrs. Fazzino included), the chemistry class I'm taking now is best suited for people with IQs of

But of course, I have to have at least one "required" course, a 6-credit monster called "Integrated Business Functions", used to replace 3 separate courses in Finance, Operations Management, and Marketing. I regret taking this "experimental" course the first time it was offered. Oh well. I'm not going to talk about it any more because then I'll get pissed and not write my final paper.

So basically, we all need a fucking vacation. I'll see you all at the MegaKegger. Try to stay alive.

OK. This is not a good school that I go to (Cornell). This is pure self-absorbed ranting, and I've discarded my ability to discern the relative merits of things, ok?

I have two classes that really suck(ed(thank god)) shit. Swahili and Syntax. I'll start with Swahili.

Last Thursday in Swahili, we get our final exam assignment. We have to take a 28 page exam on Sunday, an hour long oral on Tuesday, and then hand in essentially an 8-10 page essay on Thursday/Friday. The essay has to be in Swahili. I've taken 14 weeks of this class, 28 classes. Even accounting for the stupidly fast pace of this class, isn't having to write a 10 page essay in a foreign language in your first semester of the language bullshit? I study like 8 hours for the 28 page exam on Sunday- I've virtually memorized everything taught to us this semester, and it still takes me 3 fucking hours to do the exam, just in order to write the information down. My hand was numb for a few hours afterwards, I was scribbling so quickly. The oral exam is nothing- I do spend about 5 hours prepping for it, only to find out that 1.) all my preparation was worthless because the topic I get is something I couldn't have possibly prepared for and 2.) the topic is so simple that I don't really need to prepare. And, now this essay. Takes me a good 8 hours or so. If not for the online Swahili dictionary so I could look up words (I don't have 150 Swahili words in my vocabulary, much less 1500) I would've started shooting motherfuckers. Another bastard thing about Swahili is that the words themselves are fucking long, and they express a lot, so one word in Swahili is a lot more than one word in English. Sikujasikulize = "I shouldn't have listened to myself". So 1500 words in Swahili is like, 3000 in English. Then, this essay has to be about myself, 10 pages about myself, so I start writing about all this painful/annoying relationship failure shit stuff from high school that I never talk about, and I have to figure out how to express all this shit in Swahili, while not sounding like shit, while not writing fucking pap, blah blah fucking bullshit. So, you say, "Well, my good man, that's what you get for taking an intensive language course", right? Man, this isn't fucking intensive. This is what this fucked up school passes off as the easy language. I have to take two goddamn years of Swahili just to cover half of the language requirement (most languages take 1). Grr...it's bullshit. Oh, and the other ass thing is that, at most schools, (at least at Brandeis), the nice profs were nice when handing out work, and the cock professors were cocks. But, here, all the professors are cocks, whether they're nice or not- my Swahili mwalimu is a king motherfucker, and he still dicks me for exams.

OK, so, yeah, Swahili is ass. In any conglomeration of worst fucking classes ever, Syntax would be the crown prince. My French class in high school is Syntax's sandwich bitch. Imagine a class where you get graded like you were in a math class, where even the slightest, most miniscule lack of specificity = point loss. Then, imagine you weren't in a math class, but a linguistics class, where it's impossible to be specific enough, because syntax doesn't work like fucking math. Then, imagine that the TA of the class was wrenched forth from the bowels of Satan for the specific purpose of tormenting a bunch of hapless linguistics majors with her complete misunderstanding of every single fundamental rule or precept of grading that has ever been established, ever. And then picture this class, and fuck up everything else that could be fucked up about a class. There you are. Extra credit is worth half as many points as the test combined, someone in the class got a problem wrong, and lost more points than the problem was worth (yes), people openly bitch to the professor and the TA about their shortfalls as teachers and as human beings, and they laugh it off. My girlfriend, who is the smartest/hardest worker in the class, gets 50-60% on homeworks...I tend more towards the 30% range. The takehome we had to take on Tuesday (in the midst of that Swahili shitstorm, and all due during the study period (3 days where according to university regulations, work is not supposed to be due)) consisted of almost half new material, which we had to teach ourselves in order to even begin to understand the problem. It took me a good 6 hours to complete the exam, and that's with corner cutting and Jessica's help - she took maybe 10+. The Prof is a nitpicky fuck, yet there were at least 5 typos on the exam, each of which merited a separate corrective e-mail to the course listserve. She in boldfaced letters wrote "I WILL NOT ACCEPT EXAMS AFTER NOON DEC 7th, (which she would do) and GRADES MUST BE TURNED IN BY DEC 8th". The latter part is rampaging, cock-smashing bullshit- she has a week to turn them in- she lies in order to justify her bitch stance on late exams to herself or something?

And I had to go to the house of this woman, and drink her fucking cider (which was good), just because the final grade in the course is going to be so entirely dependent on whatever random whim happens to be coursing through her brain as her pen passes over my ID number that I can't dare offend her by not showing up.

This is all done, though...so now I'm set. And, listen, I know Engineers and Premeds go through this all the time, but I haven't yet been indoctrinated into some sort of bullshit work ethic which would compel me to study 12 hours a day (like 2 of my housemates do), and liberal arts professors aren't supposed to be robotic work dispensers. So, whatever... I really wish I was at UMass, or Brandeis, or fucking whatever - coasting with an A GPA at one of those schools would get me into a better grad school than the B-/B I get coasting here- and truthfully, the academic advantages aren't that great. I learned more about literature sitting at Thornton's reading DH Lawrence because I love his shit than I do being forced to read stuff (which I still enjoy) here.

And, all of the housemates work way more hardcore than I do, or are taking easier classes, and they "can't" drink beer, or play Bond or SF with exams going on - so I've been drinking soda for the past two weeks, and it sucks. All in all, soda is weak ass fucking shit. I don't know how I drank the shit for so fucking long.

Alright, that's it, apologize for the length, for all grammar mistakes, I'm entirely aware of how foolish bitching about things like this is, I do realize I'm well off, and all that shit.

Stone

Why, in the name of the Lord, would a professor assign a paper that he is not going to grade? I'll tell you why. It's because he's a sadistic little weasel, and I don't like it one bit. My poetry professor has told his class to write a paper on the style of poet, we were told to read a book of poetry. So we read the stupid thing, and get ready to write the paper. (four page minimum) So, last class, he reminds us that our paper is due Tuesday, and, ih by the way, I won't be grading it. WHAT?!? Then why are we writing the stupid thing? I didn't enjoy the book of shitty dark poetry, and I'm definitely NOT enjoying writing this paper. (see earlier rant) So just what the fuck am I supposed to do with this? If I do a really good job on it, all I'll get is a smile and a 'Good Job' written on the paper. If I do a shitty job, he'll give it back to me and tell me to do it again! Exactly what the fuck am I supposed to do? Either way, it's a gigantic waste of time, which is something that I don't a lot of to begin with. And now I have to spend it reading an incredibly trite book of poetry by some depressed fuck up who ended up killing himself, and then writing a fucking paper on the 'Music' of the asshole's poems. And mix that in with a Philosophy paper, which is an entirely different rant, and a 'Group' project, consisting of 7 or more people, 3 of which only show up to the meetings, and you have a kid sitting at his computer trying to stay sane. At least the Yanks are winning.

This is what usually happens (or what i wish happened) whenever im around my roommate for more than 30 min. Somehow he always manages this.

I am accustomed to a bad penis-vagina ratio wherever I go. Whether it's friends, parties, classes, dormitory floors, or whatever. It's always a "sausage fest" as Caniprokis likes to say. It sucks having 90% guys in a class at university, especially since it really is the only place for me to meet new people each semester.. well, the easiest place. I don't want to make friends with comp sci students, etc.. I know enough already. I want different, and it's nice if they have boobs and a vagina.

Somehow I have lucked out with teh whole situation this semester. My floor is mostly female (and not only female, but ATTRACTIVE female). And while three out of five of my classes are 90% male, I have one class that is close to 50% female and another that is more than 90% female. That class is linguistics, recommended to me by wilson, who took it last semester. You would have to pay me to drop the class.

Now.. there are a few added bonuses here. For one, the class involves group work and everyone shows up to class early. See, it's no good to be around females unless you have the opportunity to talk to them. This class I do have that opportunity.

There is another bonus, but I need to hear a female opinion on this observation: Girls seem to be much more agressive when there are lots of other girls, but few guys. It is early in the semester, freshman girls don't really know too many people, and in my linguistics class, I didn't see any two girls that seemed to be friends. You can never approach a girl when she is with a group of friends.. but its different when they're around strangers.. brings out their aggressive competitiveness. Now, I am not the best looking guy at all, but for some reason I got the feeling there was a lot of something (god knows what) in the air.. one chick was staring at me at one point.. that was a little too weird, it was like she was an animal staring at some meat. That sounds weird when I type it.. its just the feeling I got.. it is very difficult to describe. Eck, just weird I says.

There are some girls sweatpants look hot on. I figured out a basic rule for wearing sweatpants: They must be worn with a belly shirt or sports bra. Similar rule for track suit pants (the ones that go whiss-whiss-whiss when you walk), except those should be tight around the ass.. baggy track suit pants just look weird.

I am still trying to understand the way girls act in my class situation.. I'm bad at picking up signals when I'm involved.. well.. bad at reacting to them, I'm usually a bit slow.