I Love Being a Psychology Major

Every student begs for extra credit at least once during the semester, usually after you bomb a test or write a truly atrocious paper.  You usually hope for a one page write up of some extra lecture someone is giving on campus, or an extra homework assignment or something.  Anything that will help boost your grade.  It doesn’t matter what it is or how long it takes, most students will do anything for a few extra credit points.

 

I am no stranger to the begging for extra credit thing.  I do it all the time.  It’s just a bit different for me, being a psychology major.  Sure, I’ve done the occasional extra paper or movie write-up, but most of my extra credit does not involve anything more strenuous than circling numbers on a survey.  Nearly every single psychology professor I’ve had will give us an extra credit point for participating in some sort of study another professor is running.  I’ve had my grade boosted an entire letter grade just for agreeing to be in a few studies.

 

Yesterday I got an email from my Animal Behavior professor.  She’s still sick and told us that if we wanted to get an extra point tacked onto our final grade at the end of the semester, all we had to do was show up to class today and fill out a survey.  Seemed easy enough, so I went.  The research assistant passed out the survey and it took me ten minutes to complete.  The class is an hour and a half long.  So not only do I get an extra credit point, I got to have nearly an entire class canceled.  Ten minutes for a point?  Yep, totally worth it!

 

I love being a psychology major.

Professor’s Away, Students Will Play

Today I walked into Animal Behavior and the Psychology Department’s secretary was standing in the front of the room.  My professor had canceled the last class and the one before that didn’t take place because of mid-semester break.  So we hadn’t had class in nearly two weeks.  The TV projector was on, so I figured the professor had given the secretary some sort of movie for us to watch.

 

I was right.  The secretary put the movie in, stood in the doorway for about ten minutes, and then left.  Then everyone took out their phones/laptops and started to go online, text, and talk.  Hardly anyone was really paying attention.  I was on Twitter and AIM on my iPod and was Tweeting about all of this.  About halfway through the movie, one person just got up and left.  Another girl fell asleep.  A few minutes later two more people left.  Then three more left.  It was really funny.  My friend whom I was IMing told me to leave, but I wanted to stay to find out how many people would leave.  No one else left and the girl who had been asleep woke up.

 

At one point the movie screen when blue and then it got really fuzzy.  Everyone started talking and when it fixed itself a minute later, everyone groaned.  We left as soon as the credits started rolling, though.  I was impressed by how many people actually stayed for the whole thing.  Only six of about 40 people left.

Dorm=Paradise?

Today in Fiction Workshop we were critiquing a story a girl wrote about someone who was stranded on an island.  The island was described as very calming and a sort of paradise.  However, the teacher felt like the story was more about the girl’s relationship with her mother (and I agreed).  He then suggested that the story could have taken place elsewhere, such as a college dorm.  The teacher then goes on to say that a dorm could be considered a calming sort of paradise for the student who lived there.  We were all giving him strange looks and then one girl goes, while giving him an incredulous look, “Have you ever lived in a dorm?” He said yes and the whole class burst out laughing.  Dorm a paradise?  Not so much.

New Phone

I picked out my new phone last night and it’s supposed to arrive sometime next week.  I took advantage of AT&T’s 3-day free Pantech Matrix offer.  I’m getting the red one.  It’s a pretty cool phone, although I’ve never had a Pantech.  I like the slide out keyboard, even though I rarely text on my phone.  I text on my iPod for free.  But it’ll still be useful.  I’m the world’s slowest texter, so for those few times I text with my phone, it’ll be nice not to have to take five minutes to send a five word text.

Apparently, At&T’s free upgrades aren’t really free.  The phone was free, but they’re charging us a $15 ‘upgrade fee’.  They always sneak a fee in somehow.

The Good and the Bad, Mostly the Bad

After a few weeks of not having much to blog about, I all of a sudden have quite a few things to blog about.  I’m just going to put them in one entry to make my life easier.

I woke up today to the lovely sound of my phone making a crackling noise that sounded somewhat like my alarm clock tone.  I hit snooze to see if it would do it again and it did.  Then I messed around with the ring tones and now my phone seems incapable of making any sort of ringing noise, choosing only to vibrate when someone calls me.  This really wouldn’t be the end of the world if it chose to happen while I was home and not while I was at school.  I’m long since due to a free upgrade and just kept this phone due to its excellent battery life.  However, since I’m not home I can’t get a new phone right away.  The phone’s in my dad’s name and I can’t just go into the AT&T store and get a new one without him.  So, he’s going to email me a list of phones that I can get for free and I’ll choose one.

I’m also sick, which doesn’t help matters.  Just a cough/sore throat, no fever, so that’s a plus.

The one good thing that happened today is that I discovered that I do not have to take anymore French classes in order to graduate!  Turns out only incoming freshmen needed to take two semesters worth of foreign language, not transfer students, so I’m in the clear after taking that one class over the summer.

Then I had to get my story critiqued in fiction workshop today.  The actual critique wasn’t bad.  My class seemed to like my story and had constructive things to say about it.  But then I got my grade.  C+.  Mostly due to mechanics!  It’s a fiction class, not a mechanics class!  He liked my story, just not the mechanics.  I don’t think mechanics should lower your grade that much.  I’m so pissed off about it.  It’s going to kill my overall grade which will then kill my overall GPA.

I’m so ready for this week to be over.  I wish mid semester break was this weekend instead of next.  I need a break.

It’s October

Where did September go?  Seriously, that month went so fast.  Seems like the first day of school was just last week.  But nope, it definitely wasn’t.  Mid semester break is in a few weeks, which means that, hence its name, it will soon be the middle of the semester.  Guess who hasn’t started her senior thesis?  Hehe, that would be me.  I really should get started on it.  I am such a bad procrastinator.

October also means that Nanowrimo starts in a month.  I have a plot and I’m excited about it.  It’s a futuristic story about what happens after scientists figure out how to cure death, and it becomes mandatory that people cannot die.  That’s the story in a nutshell, but it’ll be more complicated than that.  I just hope I’ll have the time to work on it.  After finishing last year’s Nano in a mere two weeks, I decided to up my word count goal to 75,000 this year instead of Nano’s standard 50,000.  I’ve changed my mind now that I’ve realized how busy I’ll be that month.  If only I could use my thesis for my Nano, that would motivate me to get it done!