dear isobel

I tried to lessen my work load by splitting all my final presentations/papers/studying into equal parts over the next two weeks so that I wouldn’t cry.

It’s not entirely working.

I did finish about 2/3 of my math portfolio and the rest of my final speech for Public speaking today. Yesterday, I did section one of my Modern China paper and about 1/3 of my French paper.

I just can’t find the energy to finish section two for China and the the next third of the French paper. *sniffles* My French paper is planning a vacation to a French speaking country in French, so I chose Tahiti. It is not cheering me up to plan the dream vacation I won’t be able to afford for another decade. Evil. I should have chosen Luxembourg or someplace else I’d never want to go.

Between sleeping, lectures and homework, and the occasional night out, I find myself with very little free time. I miss being in high school if only for the fact that I had fewer responsibilities.

Now I have to go clean my room and start my laundry, because I’m pretty sure the article I need for my speech next week is hiding under my bed. Good grief. And *then* I have to translate the Hunchback of Notre Dame from French to English to have any hope under standing what the frick I’m listening to on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And if there’s time before my Conquerors lecture tonight, I have to figure out the different bases for math class, so I don’t have to hand in another blank quiz.

And possibly lunch, but I guess that’s optional at this point.

I got accepted to my fall transfer to Rutgers-Camden! I’m super excited about this, mostly because I hadn’t really planned on a back-up school. Heh.

Back to figuring out how to balance chemical equations. (Bring back very bad memories of T and Chemistry class.)

As an Ipod addict, I’ve been a fan of the Itunes Podcast directory for a few months. I’ve been able to keep up on my Bill Mahr, my Anderson Cooper, my MSNBC crew without having to clog up my DVR too much. The podcasts are wonderful — both video and audio and they’re free.

Today, I was browsing Itunes and clicked Itunes U…and found nirvana. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a sucker for history. I’m a history major, I want to teach history when I graduate and I have stumbled across a huge repetoire of History lectures and features from universities and colleges from all over the country. From STANFORD, for crying out loud.

Very awesome. There are tons of categories, which I will continue to peruse. However will I get through them all?

I have come to accept that I will not always have a competent teacher. I’m just taking too much classes in too many areas to expect that, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to expect that your teacher is not bat-shit crazy?

I’ve had boring teachers. Mr. Sheehan in the eighth grade was okay, but I honestly don’t remember anything about the class. He had a long neck and a small head. But that’s it. I’ve had incompetent teachers as well. Tommarchio in my junior year didn’t do a lot of teaching, but I should have known I wouldn’t do well in chemistry class, so that’s a failure on my part too.

I’ve had really excellent teachers like Professor Blass and Professor Howard, whom I have this semester. And Mr. DiSibio and Mr. Higgs in high school.

So one would say that I’ve been somewhat spoiled. I’ve had more good teachers than bad certainly, but until this semester I’d never had an insane one. So far, he’s insinuated that Barack Obama is a Muslim and associates with terrorists. He remarked today that he doesn’t think he’s ever had a student at our college break 1000 on the SATs. (I find this hard to believe….I had an 1150 but chose CCC because my grades in high school were kind of crappy and it’s a cheaper.) But yeah, insinuated that our class was stupid.

I wish it stopped there. We have been in class for a month now, eight classes. The subject is US History I, except I’m not sure how much history we’ve actually covered. Today we talked about abstinence, how we shouldn’t vote for the bailout package and…a lot of other stuff I stopped listening to. I could literally feel my brain cells dying inside.

In fact, in this class, I have done something that I haven’t since chemistry (and I had T’s cooperation because we both knew I was hopeless)…I have pulled out a book for the last three classes and I’ve read. And after he called Obama a Muslim last week, I listened to Ipod. I’m actually kind of disappointed in myself because I’ve never been driven to that place before.

But I figure…when he starts teaching the subject I’m paying to learn, I’ll put the book away.