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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Class has been in session for over a week now, so I have sat through enough lectures to give you a sufficient opinion on my edumacation for the semester.  This semester is odd because only three of my classes have meeting times.  Besides them, I am working in a research lab and working on my senior thesis.

Class number one is Literary Analysis and is currently top pick for the semester’s most boring class.  It is a required class for every English major and minor, hence the reason I am taking it.  Right now, the only good thing about it is that my roommate is taking it with me and we get to rant about it after we leave the room.

This class involves reading five novels.  The first one, which we are currently reading is called A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe.  I will not recommend anyone read this book.  It is awful.  How it won a Nobel Prize I’ll never know.  I’m quite happy that we only have one more day of discussing it.

The professor is kind of strange.  He cannot stand still for more than a minute and spends class pacing in front of the chalkboard.  On the first day he freely admitted that he was the toughest grader in the English department and that he has favorites.  His favorites are those who speak in class.  I don’t really speak in class much.  Yeah, I’m kind of screwed.

Second class is Fiction Workshop and is currently holding the place of my favorite class.  A few of my friends from Creative Writing are in it, which adds to its awesomeness.  We each have to write two short stories and read a bunch of short stories from an anthology.  All of our stories get critiqued in front of class.  I’m already working on my first short story and I plan on putting it online once I’m finished.  The professor is very nice and seems quite normal.  Definitely an enjoyable class so far.

Third class is Animal Behavior.  This class is good so far, although we’re still learning about the history of Animal Behavior.  Then comes the research methods section, which is guaranteed to be boring.  I’m sure it’ll pick up after that.  I just can’t wait until we do the unit on animals and their desire to locate and consume food.  I almost wish we had to do a paper on that because I could easily write a 20 page paper about Benny and his insane desire for food.

There’s not much to say about my other two classes.  In the research lab I’ll be conducting research, but I can’t blog about ongoing research.  I haven’t really started my thesis yet, so there’s nothing to say about it.

Packing up the Uhaul for college went quite smoothly this year.  We did not have to turn around once.  I am currently in a hotel near my bro’s college and am quite impressed with their Wi-Fi.

I received an email from my college yesterday informing me about a project the town is starting.  They are replacing the sewer system on Main Street.  They could not have timed that better.  I can only imagine the meeting that decided the timing.  When would this project be the most irritating?  Move in weekend for the college of course!

It is time yet again to make the switch from the carefree summer to the chaos that is moving back to school and the start of a new semester.  I am moving back to school on Saturday, my brother is moving in on Friday.  Since our colleges are relatively close together, we’re going in the same trip and will be leaving Thursday.

I’ve barely had time to relax this past week.  I’ve been working nearly everyday and when I’m not working I’m shopping for something school related or packing.  Tomorrow is my last day of work for the summer, but since I get out at 10pm, it won’t leave much time for packing before we leave on Thursday.  I imagine I’ll be up part of the night packing last minute stuff.

All in all, I’m ready to go back.  Even though this semester will bring with it insanity in its purest form as I am doing my senior thesis, applying to grad school (still no idea what for, though), and then classes.  I miss my friends.  I miss going to see $1 movies every Friday night.  I miss going to Wal-Mart for the sole purpose of goofing off and putting off studying.

This past summer has been awesome, though.  I went on the best vacation of my life (LeakyCon) and met some awesome people who have become such good friends.  I finished one of the stories I’ve been working on, and nearly completed a second.  I got a new and very awesome MacBook.  But it’s time to go back.  Time to continue getting myself edumacated.

Yeah, I know I’ll look back on this post in two weeks and be counting down the days until Christmas.

I distinctly remember the last time I wrote something in cursive, prior to today, that was not signing my name.  It was the day I took the SAT, in junior year of high school.  The task was tedious, as I did not remember much cursive, which I had not used since elementary school.  Why I had to write a two line statement in cursive instead of printing prior to taking the SAT is beyond me.  How is saying I won’t cheat in cursive more trustworthy than saying it in printing?

Today, I took the GREs, the SAT of the college world.  I was taken back to junior year when the examiner handed me a clipboard in which I had to write a two line passage, in cursive.  I groaned inwardly.  Not again.  The task took me nearly as long as it took me to write the second essay (which was laughably easy).  The examiner even came out when I was nearly done and asked me,  ‘Are you done yet?’.  My printing is horribly messy and my cursive isn’t even legible.  It just barely fit on the five lines they gave me to write it on.

You all knew it was coming.  You know school is coming when I rant about textbook prices.  But you know what?  I nearly had to not have a rant this year.

I am only taking three classes that require me to purchase textbooks.  My other credits consist of my senior thesis and working in a research lab.  Two of those three classes are English classes.  I have discovered a great way to save money in college.  Take a lot of English classes.  Paperback novels are significantly cheapter than hardcover math and science textbooks.  The five novels I need for one of the classes don’t even add up to the cost of one math or science book.

I found all of my books really cheap on Barnes & Noble’s website, but shipping was $30.  They were all coming from different places.  Then I decided to just get my one psychology book from B&N and get all the novels from the school’s bookstore since there wasn’t a huge price difference and the school’s store had no shipping cost.

However, my school cannot guarantee you used books.  You have to give them your credit card number and they give you a total of what it would cost if all the books were new.  But you won’t know for sure what your total will actually be until you pick them up.

Cue the rant.  It would be fine if I wound up getting used books, but what if I don’t?  Then I’m stuck buying all these new books.  Why can’t the school tell you whether you’ll get used or not?  Shouldn’t they know how many used copies of each book they have?  I am not ordering any books from them.

I’m going to get my psychology book from Barnes & Noble and all the English books from Powell’s.  I have not totaled it out, but it will probably be around $130 or so.  Might I add that this is less than the French book I had to purchase over the summer, which was $200.  I’d say I did pretty good this semester.