Saturday, January 29, 2005
AU: still not making it easy
Okay, I may not be able to force myself to cheer up at the moment, but I'm really hoping it's just a matter of having too much time to myself, and things will look up when I have a little structure again. If that doesn't happen, well, worrying about that right now isn't going to help.
On a more positive note, I figured out today that the University of Aberdeen is slightly less evil than I believed 24 hours ago. The new semester starts on Monday, and yesterday I decided it might be a good idea to figure out where and when my classes were meeting. I know, I am the model student. Unfortunately, the way things are set up, you have to do all kinds of detective work just to match up your course code, course title, the day of the week, which tutorials you will or won't be attending, which weeks it will be meeting, etc. It took me 45 minutes to put it all together into a coherent schedule, and only then did it become apparent that I was scheduled to be in two classes at the same time 4 days of the week. But that's not all! Both classes were apparently taking place in the same classroom at the same time.
Anyway, the happy ending is that Marianne told me they must be 6-week courses instead of 12-week courses, so one would finish up as the other started. It's still really annoying that I had no way of knowing that, because meeting times and places are located exactly nowhere on the official department website and there is no such thing as a time schedule at this university. I don't even know which class is happening first. And I have an inherent distrust of 6-week courses because that's what I thought my Celtic class was and we all know how THAT turned out.
So, I have a clearer idea of what the next 12 weeks are going to be like now. That makes me feel better.
You know what else makes me feel better? People here say the word "tortoise" so that it rhymes with "more toys." The same goes for the word "porpoise." I just think that's awesome.
On a more positive note, I figured out today that the University of Aberdeen is slightly less evil than I believed 24 hours ago. The new semester starts on Monday, and yesterday I decided it might be a good idea to figure out where and when my classes were meeting. I know, I am the model student. Unfortunately, the way things are set up, you have to do all kinds of detective work just to match up your course code, course title, the day of the week, which tutorials you will or won't be attending, which weeks it will be meeting, etc. It took me 45 minutes to put it all together into a coherent schedule, and only then did it become apparent that I was scheduled to be in two classes at the same time 4 days of the week. But that's not all! Both classes were apparently taking place in the same classroom at the same time.
Anyway, the happy ending is that Marianne told me they must be 6-week courses instead of 12-week courses, so one would finish up as the other started. It's still really annoying that I had no way of knowing that, because meeting times and places are located exactly nowhere on the official department website and there is no such thing as a time schedule at this university. I don't even know which class is happening first. And I have an inherent distrust of 6-week courses because that's what I thought my Celtic class was and we all know how THAT turned out.
So, I have a clearer idea of what the next 12 weeks are going to be like now. That makes me feel better.
You know what else makes me feel better? People here say the word "tortoise" so that it rhymes with "more toys." The same goes for the word "porpoise." I just think that's awesome.
