Stand Still, Look Pretty

Maybe it's something someone said or did, or maybe it's the fact that my sister is kickin' it in AD for a full week and that means I actually have a life other than being her God-given-Chauffeur, or in the end it might just be a blessing that I should be grateful to Allah for (in any case I'm grateful for this cuz it's all utimately from Him anywayz). Whatever it is I've been feeling pretty much at peace for the past few days - light even. No noise in my head, no feelings of being stretched in every direction at once... I feel like I no longer need to understand "Why?" for anything anymore. True, I haven't changed my opinion that yes "life is a b!tch" but now I feel like as much as a person goes against it they'll only tire themselves for nothing, so in the end it's enough to know what life is and go on through it as best you can, preferably being a bit closer to "holy" so as not to have to spend the next lifetime in an "eternal mother of all B!tches".

In Academic English class we were assigned to write an argumentative essay. We had to submit 3 topics to the teacher and then she'd choose the topic that interested her the most, then we'd have to write it. Of my 3 topics she liked the one about removing math from the required courses in universities (for the majors that don't actually need it). I've been enjoying writing it. I made sure to make it very discriptive and all (turned out to be a whopping monster over 550 words and she only wants between 350 and 400 - means I'll have some downsizing to do before I can submit it next week). Surprisingly though, I find my opinion shifting. I was sitting in class yesterday and suddenly felt that yes, math is important to uni students and yes it has everything to do with MIS - But no, I still hate it despite those feelings. I hate it with every fiber of my being, but for the sake of being able to 'choose' the major I want to study and not the major 'choosing' me based on it's math content, I am willing to keep trying with math no matter how many semesters I have to drop it before finally succeeding (Pray I pass it next time around).

Bloody hell, my stomach is singing it's own off key tune - possibly trying to hint that it's hungry. I so feel like pizza! Papa Johns w/ bread sticks! I really love UoS - no exaggerations there, but it could certainly stand for a few improvements. Namely getting us a Papa Johns (ha), Proper un-restricted net (so Torrent sites could at least be accessible), possibly stop trying to turn our campus into the next over-night Dubai (new landmark buildings are constantly sprouting up on campus and it is seriously going to over-crowd if they don't curb their constructive obsessions.) Bring lounge rooms with sofa beds! (Ha ha HA.. yeah I'm totally dreaming, but hey if they bring the beds I'll at least be able to continue my dreams IN them ;P ) and lastly I wish for more western, or at least more interesting, professors (the current ones with a few exceptions are serious bore-fests).

I seriously don't think I can take the wait, I must hunt down my new found love, "Criminal Minds" and at all costs secure all three seasons (and then proceed to watch them in one mega marathon till I either drop from negligence of basic human needs - food, sleep or general rest - or finish out all three seasons in record breaking time.)

I make my departure leaving a clip for you all... THE HUNGER!!!!!

1 + 1 = -20

The pic is ironically true, least when math is involved. My lab partner (also MIS major) said she finished with accounting I & II and also took Business Math. She doesn't seem to be the study-holic type and I don't think she is. So I asked her how did she find them. She told me BM wasn't so difficult, but it wasn't easy either. I asked what her final grade in it was and she said she got C. I think "Wow" might have actually escaped my lips. I mean for me I don't even like to get B's much less a C but I'd be plenty happy if I managed to get even a D in it (C in the case of math would be totally great). I still feel pretty badly about the first midterm and call me crazy, but, I am thinking that if I do actually pass this semester (Inshalla I really hope I do, I want to take Business Programming in the summer but BM is a prerequisite for it unfortunately) I'd repeat it the next semester or after so I could have a chance at getting an A or *cough cough* at very least a B if it just isn't my destiny to get an A. My partner told me accounting was "very ok" though and that the professor was a really nice guy and all. The way she painted it was a bit reassuring though I can't say I'm actually looking forward to it. Why the heck does MIS have to contain so much math and math-related subjects??? Couldn't they just split it into two streams, like have MIS: math and MIS: non-math... I should just shut my mouth and "shid 7eeli" as I've been told to do.

The week before last I suddenly woke up one morning and felt the crappiest I'd felt in a long time. I'd get really depressed last year and even though I knew the reasons for my moods or partly what was causing them I haven't had it that bad in awhile and thought maybe it was something that just went away. Back then when it used to happen I'd feel like I was losing interest in things and couldn't handle being around most people. This time it was that and more, 10 fold. I didn't wanna see or talk to anyone and I was starting to hate them all, including ppl who are my friends. I was dangerously close to quitting uni, seriously, the place I've dreamed about for years and just like that would have quit. In the end I decided I'd just quit math, I was sure it was partly the cause for the way I was feeling anyway. I should thank my former class rival for not quitting in the end - her AND believe or not one of my tennis teammates who had been one of my least favorites (Coach really is a ________ - fill in the blank, but for the past few months she's been throwing me and that mate together on the same side of the court and inevitably we've been doing a bit of "bonding". Turns out she's actually pretty fun to be paired with and if I had any doubts of burying the hachet, they've been expelled now.). After all of that I went and found a math article and read it. Was interesting and made me feel a little motivated after I did some of the things that were suggested in it but now that I think about it 90% of it was crock-sheemot. It stressed that ppl who are good at math and love it aren't born good in math and it's not about having a brain that is predisposed to math and the ability to understand it. I believe that to be grossly untrue - unless of course I'm just uncommonly stupid when it comes to math - I'll leave that verdict for after I complete all my math requirements for MIS.

Enough talk about math. I think I may have finally found out what it is I need to do to finally be able to beat my original tennis rival again. Somewhere I picked up returning with really sick air or rather in tennis-speak "lobbing". It didn't bother me at first but now it drives me crazy when I go to return and the ball goes really high giving the receiver plenty of time to get comfortably in position and send back a perfect return. BW called me out to play last night. I was still feeling moody when she had asked but said yes - I mean seriously being a person that really hates sunlight, even in that mood it would have been impossible to refuse an offer to play tennis at such a perfect time like 7 (after dark). I'm glad she offered and I'm glad I accepted cuz it was fun and put the last of that mood behind me. Plus, I got two great things yesterday, a new shot (still needs practice) and I think I've figured out how to "lower" my returns - by holding the racket and hitting the ball similar to how I held and hit in baseball. It was working but needs practice. I also figured out what my underspin return needs to be unreachable.. of course that also needs practice. Gosh, it's so much more fun to go to tennis outside of the team practice. Team practice has become dead boring with nothing more than the coach barking orders and being a pain in the ass.

How tired am I! I think I am going to get a sleeping bag. Ha, with an inflatable pillow. That would solve the problems of this bed-less uni - for me anyways, lol. I'm sure by next semester it would have spread like wild fire and then everyone will be getting sleeping bags. Then the fashion war would break out, cuz after everyone has it's just too boring and someone has to go fan the fire. Bedlum would ensue with girls going to great lengths to out do each other with SBs being brought with outragous designs, by name brand designers, from every exotic corner in the world u name it and they'll go for it and at the bottom of all the craze will be me with my original cheap Carrefore (most likely, lol) SB sitting back and laughing like the devil I am at having started such a fad-war at uni. ::YAWNS:: In the end I'm still tired despite the lively image I've just painted.

I have class in a few minutes, so I should probably put my beloved Lt away, splash some water and hope I don't snore in his class.

How Far?

"How far can I go without turning back..?" It was the question Yuta Takemoto often asked himself during the series. It's a question I find myself pondering at this hour of the night.

There's no question as to what I want anymore, I love UoS, and yes I am fully aware of the fact that they have limited choices in regards to majors offered and the registration office and processes/procedures can be hectic and irritating little pains in the ass but despite that I still love the place and it's where I want to be right now - putting aside talk of Canada. Last summer I started feeling irritated and doubtful about my major, English, it was never something I had in mind to study and it was just a spur of the moment choice at the time the university application was placed in front of me. When I was 13 I had made up my mind that I had wanted to study Computer Science. As I got older that aspiration matured into wanting to study IT. That was my dream. I love computers and everything that pertains to them so that sounded like the most amazing thing. Somewhere down the road though, I got hooked on and obsessed with Psychology. It completely captured my heart and desires. Forgotten was IT, replaced by this new intriguing prospect. Sure it wouldn't have been as flashy or sophisticated sounding as a career in IT but hey Psychology would help me understand why the world is going to hell and ppl seem to be ok with that. While I was taking my sweet time finishing HS I began to realize that Psychology isn't exactly a major that is offered here - least not in the universities I wanted to go to and if the university had it, it was only as a minor and not major. I wasn't sure what I was going to do then but I knew I definitely wasn't doing a distance degree (online university). I contemplated the idea of going to Canada but truth is I really love UAE and feel a sorta "homesickness" when I leave (when I visited my sister in Kuwait for only 2 weeks I could think of nothing more than how much I missed my cat, Jassim, and UAE). Then one summer, BW gave me an anime to watch. She said it was interesting and from what she described of it, it sounded as such. It was the same Honey & Clover I mentioned at the beginning of this post. If you didn't follow the link and you haven't seen it before, it was about some students in an art university. I found the student who was majoring in Interior Design to be very interesting. I was drooling over his internship at an Interior Design company and from that point on I decided since Interior Design is a major that is readily available in almost all the universities here that was what I'd go for.

I'm not going to get into why I chose UoS but it was a major turn off to learn that the Fine Arts College there is Co-ed so I knew I certainly wasn't going to do Interior Design there. I had already made up my mind though that I was going to study in UoS so now it was only to decide what to study. UoS certainly didn't have Psychology nor did it have my first love, IT, as majors. What I saw when I opened the uni catalog to make my final decision was Computer Science. The study plan played a major role in the major I finally settled on, which was English - reason being it was the only major in the whole book that didn't require a single math course. Of course with a prospect like that I dived in head first without a moment's thought. The registration lady told me I had to write down two choices, so English went as my first and Computer Science as my second choice.

So you see, English was never something I had planned to study, wasn't anywhere on my wish list. Then going through a pretty boring semester of foundation courses and then finding out we didn't get internships in the English Dept. (Heck that was one of the reasons I wanted to GO to uni rather than do a boring correspondence university degree.) I scanned the university catalog over and over last summer after my first semester. I considered Visual Media from the Communications College and then Public Administration from the Business College but both turned out to be in all arabic. I kept going back to Computer Science, but the math was really no joke. Then I had a bright idea, and thought about architectural engineer. They probably get really interesting internships and then have interesting jobs later. Again MATH. I resigned myself to the fate of English after that and promised I'd have to go study Psychology elsewhere to make up for the boring English major. (I'd come back here every holiday I got and after graduating I'd have definitely come straight back here.)

Last semester there turned out to be a shortage in classes we could take (I was late registering and there wasn't really much left to choose from) so myself and two of my classmates went searching for courses we could take as free electives from the other colleges. One of them found a course called Intro. to MIS. So we all signed up for it.

I only got to attend 2 or 3 of the classes before I was called by the registration for a "violation". The registar lady told me since I hadn't taken Intro. to IT in my first semester I'd have to take it then and I had to drop Intro. to MIS because IT was a prerequisite for the MIS course. I was really upset. Even though I had only taken 2 or 3 classes I had already fallen deeply in love with it. Everything happens for a reason though... I was looking in the uni catalog to find a replacement course for the Intro to MIS that I had to drop and I saw that MIS was a major in the Business College. Freakin' AMAZING. I was imagining how interesting that must be to have it as a Major - just imagine the internships they must get?! I went immediately to the registar and asked her if I could change my major and what were the procedures. She told me I was too late and would have to wait till the following semester. I was bummed at first, then I realized there were like 7 math courses in the study plan for MIS majors. I thought and thought about that fact. Till this sudden impulse yelled "Screw it! Face your fears" One of my classmates said something similar to that and encouraged me not to let something like math hold me back from doing something I'd enjoy. I made up my mind I was going to go for it. Then during the semester I had serious doubts and wasn't sure what I wanted anymore, and as always I have BW to thank for being the voice of reason when my reasoning is being unreasonable. By the end of the semester I was 180% sure that I wanted to go thru with changing my major to MIS and that I wasn't going to let the fact that it had math courses in it keep me from it.

I was totally psyched about it and even got the text book for the first math course I'd be required to take. All my classmates laughed at me. I tried explaining to them that I brought the book so I could at least study it from then until the following semester, this way I'd have a headstart and would at least have some clue as to what I was supposed to be doing. Of course they didn't understand that. No one understands how far down below average my mathematical skills are. Last semester I opened the book once, read 2 paragraphs, shut the book and dropped it under a pile of junk - that's how frustrated I was with how much I understood from it, which was zilch. Despite that, I changed my major anywayz - a decision, I, in no way, shape or form, regret.

I promised myself I'd study really hard and pass math and if it turned out to be really hard - well, I'd just study harder. BW offered to help me when she can and I admit I was reluctant at first to accept that offer. All the previous times I had help with math or tutors for it they'd explain and explain and explain and no matter how hard I tried to follow I could never keep up. The last thing I wanted was to have her wasting her time trying to help me with the impossible when the end result was always the same; me feeling extremely dumb and supremely frustrated. I began to wonder - and even then it wasn't so much wondering as I was sure that I wasn't "normal" when it came down to math and that maybe there was a form of dyslexia that worked in the numbers department rather than the usual literary one it beseiged.

The first math class I attended, the teacher called on me to answer something that was on the board. It was a simple single digit answer I had to give. I got it wrong (of course) and I'm guessing my answer was so far off that everyone (They all turned around to see who gave that answer) was wondering if I was truly and seriously that stupid or just trying to be funny.

Then the first night I showed BW what it was I had to study, she went over it with me and explained it all to me in the simplest of terms and as I had feared; nothing sank in. I went home, opened the book and not long afterwards, closed it. I couldn't make sense of anything.

The second time she sat with me, I was so ready to call it off and contemplated dropping the math course all together.. Ha, she must have sensed that somehow cuz the things she said that night were enough to light a fire under me and get me motivated enough to really put my everything into trying to understand math.

By the third and fourth times I was surprised to find that little things were starting to sink in. Things I had never understood before and were now beginning to make some sort of logical sense. For that I have to thank both, BW and a (former) classmate of mine who sometimes helps me in the car on our way to uni in the mornings. That improvement, though I bet it was really small, in comparison to what I should know, felt huge to me and it was more than enough to make me feel like I actually wanted to put more effort into understanding the concepts. I started spending my breaks between classes solving equations. At first more were wrong than were right but the more carefully I worked the closer to correct my answers became until I started coming up with correct answers on first tries. I started practicing solving equations before going to bed every night and then one night it was way after 2am and I was tired but felt reluctant to go to bed. It was like the reluctance to stop when you're in the middle of watching an interesting show/movie/anime or playing a vid game and are on a high level... I was ACTUALLY "enjoying" solving equations - and not just solving but ending up with the CORRECT answers for the first time in a very long time.

That was two weeks ago - or maybe 3 by now. Last week I had become so totally obsessed with practicing and solving equations that I kept the book and blank papers beside my bed and equations were the last thing I looked at before I slept and the first thing I touched in the morning. There was only one problem; I was getting the right answers and all BUT it was taking me 40+ mins for each equation. The time we are allowed for the midterms is only 50mins and there was no way in hell that the midterm would only have one question on it so I was doomed, I thought. All my hard work for abso-freakin-lutely NOTHING. Give up I had, though shameful to admit.. BW told me to practice while timing myself and my prob would be solved. I did nothing that day but solve and note times and it worked! I felt confident almost to the point of being cocky and was actually looking forward to the exam. Scoring 3/4s of whatever mark the midterm was out of would have made my semester (though I wouldn't want that for any of my other subjects - that would be an amazing score for me in math.)

Gosh, I've gone on quite a bit haven't I? I'm trying hard not to rant, but those of you who know me probably have already guessed I am really upset at the moment. Does it still count as a "rant" if you are trying to keep it under control and not just write whatever angry thoughts come to mind???

Maybe I should just stop here and go to bed, it's already after 2am and the cursed math class is at bloody 8 in the morning...

Bless the one who came up with elevators..

This semester is looking brighter each day. I’ve finally decided to stop running away from things I find difficult and instead to approach them with an open mind (and breath held XD) and pray I don’t humiliate myself. I’m curious to see what would happen if I were to work hard and keep positive thoughts about my courses this semester.. Would I definitely do better than last semester? Would it be enough to get A’s? I really hope so…

I was late registering (as I usually am for everything, it has totally become my “unwanted” trademark) and had trouble finding open courses this semester. In the end of my first round I had four courses. Extensive Reading, Advanced Language Skills, Intro. to IT and Arabic II (Normal Arabic. After taking special Arabic 1 last semester I’d rather contend with Arabic for natives rather than suffer another special Arabic course.. If I stayed in special Arabic any longer I could see myself hating Arabic altogether.) I was very unhappy with only four courses. I had decided back in the summer that this semester I’d definitely buck up and register for at least 6 courses – though I was planning to try for 7 courses. It was the last day of Add and Drop period when one of my mates came around with her course schedule and showed me a course called Intro. to Management Information Systems (MIS). The more I found out about it the more I wanted to add that course – and not just cuz that would’ve brought my courses to 5 either.

Then it suddenly hit me. A major in MIS sounded really interesting. I spent the rest of my day at uni reading up on the major. The only thing that was dampening my urge to enter that major was a few of the “Math” courses. I felt pretty depressed that there are so many math courses in MIS. I still registered for the intro class though, I needed a fifth course.

By the time classes started and I found myself sitting in the intro to MIS class I had semi talked myself into just going ahead and changing my major to MIS and worry about the math courses when they come up and bite me. I really enjoyed the class. It was one of those classes that you don’t feel time go by and you just crave more of it. It shouldn’t be surprising that by the time I walked out the classroom doors I had decided I’d do whatever it takes to do well in that major, math or no math. After days of thought (optimistic thoughts of course =P) I decided anyone –even someone like me- could master anything if given enough time, practice and effort. Since it was too late for me to change to MIS this semester, I plan to collect the math books and study them from now. This way when I do change to MIS inshalla I’ll at least have an idea where to aim and won’t be completely in the dark.

After my second lesson of MIS I was called to the administration building. Once I got there one of the course registration ladies told me I had to drop MIS. I have a habit (sometimes I wonder if it’s good or bad…) of just going along with things and not asking questions. I was completely struck when she told me I had to drop the course. I had to know why and if there was anyway to avoid having to do so. She said I hadn’t taken Intro to IT and the MIS course requires IT to be taken before the MIS course. I asked if I could replace MIS with another course even though it was after the add and drop period but this dropping would be their fault after all. The lady was nice. She said yes, if I found something I wanted to take instead I could add it but I had to do it that day. Took me an hour or so but I managed to find two courses among the free electives of the English Major study plan that looked interesting.. AND they’d actually be a help when and if I change to MIS inshalla. I was very pleased to find out they are in fact among the core courses of MIS. The two courses were: Principles of Management and Principles of Marketing. I was a bit skeptical that she’d let me add two things for the one course I was dropping but it never hurts to try. She added both for me though alhamdilla. So now I have six courses, finally. I’m happy for now – and even though a few annoying things have popped up in some of those courses I’m going to force myself to remain positive about them even if I have to lie to myself till those lies become truth!