"What are you reading?" "Parry Hotter"

I just got back from seeing the last Harry Potter movie. 10$ well spent.

Today I submitted my last exam. School is officially out for summer. Nature decided to celebrate by snowing on me.

So, I am a third year who still doesn’t have one of the required second year courses. If I don’t get it in fourth year, I don’t graduate and will have to take a fifth year, which, depending on how my life decides to roll, may be necessary anyway.

This year I’m having Abnormal Psych and Psychological Research all year; computer data analysis (oh god), health psychology, and intro to forensic psychology first semester; and psychology of interpersonal behaviour, psychological trauma, and gender and society second term.

I’m glad that I got abnormal and forensic, but I’m really disappointed that I couldn’t get the psychology of sexuality. It may be offered during the summer though, so if it is, I’ll take it then.

First semester, Wednesdays, I have an eight-hour day. I get a one-hour break in the middle. The day after that is six hours with two breaks. They both begin at 8:00.

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Yes. Failed to deal with it for as long as I possibly could, then eventually did my part to end the friendship. Yes. Yes.

FUCK MANDATORY GROUP WORK RIGHT IN THE EYEBALL!

This is freaking amazing. I can actually kinda identify some parts too! I finally actually understand the sylvian fissue; diagrams and the small pictures in our text didn't do it justice.

I think it's lovely.

Last year I started university. I had no friends there, and, with my social skills, I couldn’t reasonably expect to make any.

In place of any actual human attachment, I decided that I’d spend my time with a certain tree. It was lovely and huge. It reached out of a little courtyard and up so that its branches hung over the roof that I’d run across to get from class to class. It was so thick and tall that I thought the university had been built around it, and perhaps it was.

This summer it was cut down to make way for an organic farmers’ market.

That pretty much describes my year so far.

I spent hours planning my schedule for this year. I began months early. I outlined the courses I would take not just for this year, but for all that follow. The week this year’s class times were announced, I organised everything. My schedule was optimal.

On the day that registration for my year opened, I stayed up all night. It began at midnight, and although I attempted to log in at five minute intervals, the server was too overloaded for me to get on until half an hour had passed. Even with this setback, I knew I was ahead. How many others would be neurotic enough to start registering the moment they could? Well, enough to shut the servers down, I guess, obviously… but still, they must have been as delayed as I was. I was one of the forerunners.

And yet… the most important course… full. The others I’d wanted… scattered. Some were full; those that weren’t were full on the times that I’d planned to take. All of my carefully laid plans had to be cast aside. I grasped at anything I could, but came up short. I have only four full credits, rather than the five I was aiming for, and my schedule is awkward, with painfully long gaps. I managed to get into Lifespan Development, Personality and Individual Differences, Perception, Fundamentals of Social Psychology, Introduction to Criminology, and Law and Societal Justice, which I wanted, as well as The Social Psychology of Social Issues which I was not planning on. The only other thing I could get into was Introduction to Brain and Behaviour, which is technically a neurobiology course, and not really my bag, baby – though it does look interesting, I’m afraid it may be a bit much for me.

I believe that the courses were filled by third years. They get to choose courses before we do, and some of them chose ours because when they had needed them, the third years of that time had filled them. I’d heard a lot of people from higher years in a variety of majors and departments complaining about it last year. It’s a problem with the system, but I’m not going to revolutionise it.

That’s fine. I’ve got enough courses to be a full time student and just enough to get the scholarship renewed. I’ll be taking the main course during the summer – that’s cool, because it keeps me from doing nothing but Warcraft (I hit 80, by the way) for four months like I did this year. It also means that I’ll have to spend an extra year in school, because one of the courses that I couldn’t get into is a prerequisite for another course, which is a prerequisite for another course and so on. I’m down with that actually. It’ll cost a lot more, but I’ll be able to take some interesting courses that I wouldn’t have had time for otherwise. Also, it’s another year in the warm embrace of Academia before I’m cast out into the cold wilderness of The Real World. Maybe “warm embrace” isn’t quite accurate, but it’s what I need to hear right now.

The main thing now, is that when I went to school to scout out my classrooms, I noticed that I have a class on one side of the school fifteen minutes after a course on the other side of the school. That’s fine; I can make it. I’ll buy running shoes, and a jet pack. It’s all good. Problems arised however when I noticed that I also have a class on one side of the school that is fifteen minutes apart from a class that is not simply on the other side of school, but also across a parking lot, a busy street with lights that I would have to walk down to, another parking lot, and in a plaza. I don’t think I can make that one, even with a jetpack.

I phoned the school, to see what to do about this, and what I’ll have to do is ask the professor for the class in which I have a seminar if I can transfer to another seminar. As it stands now, they’re all full. I can only comfort myself with the fact that I only took that specific seminar because it was the only one available, and I really needed the course so that I could get the tuition paid. The tuition is now paid, and the way it works is that if a student drops out, even if they drop out before school begins, they don’t get any money back. The cash game is done. So, if worst comes to worst, a replacement seminar can’t be found, and I have to drop one course, I won’t lose the part of the tuition that the scholarship paid for. I might not be able to renew it, but we’ll deal with that when it comes to that. In such a case, I would have to drop either Brain and Behaviour, or Criminology. The former looks fascinating and would probably be very useful, but the latter is better as far as moving ahead with courses is concerned. Of course, if I get really torn about it, that extra year raises its head.

I guess the best thing to do at this point is to just go with the flow. The bookstore doesn’t even have the neurobiology textbook in yet. I’ll attend all the lectures for the first week, and I’m sure whatever happens will be for the best.

The dog and the cat keep playing a game which may or may not actually be sexual harassment. I think it's an "arrgh, I'm going to stand over you and nibble on your neck because I want you to play with me!" from the dog, and an "OMFG! No! GTFO you perv!" from the cat.

I've been having to wipe gobs of dog slobber off of Étoile's back. He usually likes that, I think it's because he thinks I'm cleaning him affectionately or something - he likes licking us, so evidently he thinks it's a nice gesture, and not just to claim us, or because we taste good.

It would be nice if they got along. There are some moments where it looks like they could, but those moments tend to end with me yelling, "Do not crush/bite/harass my cat!" or mother yelling, "Do not scratch my dog! Claws stay in!"

Bre-an, as it turns out, is persistent in the same way that Edward was brilliant. This means that where Edward would find new and interesting ways to get around any obstacles, Bre-an just keeps pushing through those obstacles until he overcomes them. This has caused problems because even when he gets hurt, he keeps on trying. He's watched the cat, and thereby determined how to get over the baby-gates, but there are some parts of the gates that he can get stuck on, painfully. I have had to extract him when he gets stuck, because he doesn't try to get unstuck, just to get all the way over.

It has also caused problems in house training. He seems to believe that he'll keep defecating wherever he wants, and eventually mother will stop scolding him for it. Edward appeared to feel shame when he had an accident. Bre-an has no accidents; he pees with intent.

Well, my minor came through, so that's great.