As per the title, why isn’t anyone working on this!?!?!
I don’t quite remember how many pills I have taken in the past 24 hours, but I am acutely aware of the many types of pain and discomfort dispersed throughout various parts of my body.
Someone please make it go away.
As we all (probably/maybe/do not) know, my current position for the University of Toronto China Conference is something like “VP of External Relations and Strategic Development and [insert 295829408023432 words here]“, and I have taken/will take measures to promote this event as best as I can. (http://utcc.ca!!!) However, I ran into a little problem today with regards to classroom etiquettes. I found out after some email communications that:
It is not okay to use Blackboard to make email announcements.
Okay, I find that acceptable although rather annoying.
It is not okay to make class announcements “before or after the lecture” with regards to student-run conferences aimed at the student body because, I quote my professor’s exact words: “The university is a public institution funded by tax payers money. There are regulations concerning the use of classroom time.”
It makes me wonder what kind of an institution we are exactly. I had always been under the impression that we receive subsidies in the form of tax revenue because higher education is a societal as well as individual good. Promotion for a conference that invites prestigious speakers from across Canada and in China to discuss relevant China-Canada issues with interested students and faculty members does not seem to me in any way conflict with such taxpayer interests. For one, I am not spending hundreds of hours of my time (with which I could be further my personal achievements) to organize a conference just so I will have something impressive to display on my resume; I am truly interested in some of the issues (for which I have drafted descriptions and key questions) that will be presented, and I believe a large portion of the student body will also be interested; the conference, then, is also a public good, and so should be considered part of our university education, in which resources and opportunities provided by the institutions we attend are invaluable. In fact, obtainable at relatively low cost ($35/person for a two day event, for which the locale is a local four-star hotel, for students), the conference is a much better bargain than some two-hour long lectures with similar costs. This kind of inexpensive availability was made possible not through the thoughtfulness of the university but through back-breaking lobbying and sponsorship work on the part of the organizing committee, all students. Of course, here I give thanks to those faculties and institutions within the university kind enough to co-sponsor our event and provide with us resources and insight.
I applaud my colleagues with whom I have toiled, yet for those who insist on making their lives harder either for personal reasons of spite or ignorance - I simply disdain.
1. Cultural differences are after all, cultural differences… I found the following link and description while browsing through Renren: “Avril’s Lavigne at the Vancouver Olympics Closing Ceremony - I love anything by Avril!” and comments underneath such as “What a shame I couldn’t watch the live broadcast.”
I think I died a little inside. I think all people who can call themselves Canadian died a little inside.
2. Energy-conserving elevators do not conserve human energy. Today I waited for five minutes (initially the three elevators for my side of the building were respectively at floors, 7, 9, and 11) while the middle elevator traveled through floors 9->12->18->14->10->6->4->2->Parking A->Parking C and then finally back up to the first floor where I had sighed more than a few hundred times, while the other two elevators showed no signs of life and stayed up during the entire time.
This smart circuit needs to be ground through the design process for improvements.
Somehow my sister’s only reply to my email consists of some sort of paraphrasing of “I am sad”. It is often saddening that little girls should be sad.
Little girls should be happy.
I’ve recently become interested in “happy pills”, apparently made to flush away depression.
I think I’ve seriously become bipolar, on top of pretty serious depression, making me oh-so-attractive-and-gregarious… but then again, who knows how many people are driven crazy in this school? Sometimes I feel like an ant crawling into my hill before the rain, soon to be drowned out. It’s a feeling of martyrdom. What a relief.
Most unfortunate, my other blog is down. A server that refuses to load just when your mind is freshly bubbling with daily trivialities is one of the great tragedies of modern life. If only my Twitter wasn’t linked to my Facebook account, I think I’d give a few Tweets. Who was the last person to talk to me about Twitter? I remotely remember a nice lady in a blue sweater, or something.
I haven’t seen interesting people in a very long time. Shame…
Since budding childhood, I had been taught to be responsible and accountable for myself. Coincidentally, I happened to cruise through that period of my life with perfect ease, without much to account for, constantly being praised and merited for achievements shadowing those of my peers. The boundary between youth and adulthood, however, was marked with rough patches upon which I found my steps faltering. My smooth sailing was no longer, and in applying the principles of responsibilities, I quickly learned to accept blame and seek intrinsic faults for the sake of self-improvement.
At age twenty, I am a mediocre student in the third year of undergraduate studies at a fairly reputable university, and it is with much awe that I record my current observations. Having finished reading two articles (courtesy to the Kansas State University), named quite to-the-point as “I know the material but when I take tests I go blank” and”Stressed out over studying?” As if by magic, these two articles charismatically pinpointed some of my fatal flaws academically that I had failed to recognize, such as an inefficient method of studying, and the inability to maintain poise in taking tests. I had simply assumed that techniques enabling me to do fabulously in elementary and secondary school would carry over well into post-secondary, and my reluctance to admit that there was something wrong with the way I was studying (which, a friend had spoken to me about a rather long time ago - but of course at that time I refused to accept the argument), quite possibly contributing to my very mediocre academic achievements. It always pained me to see peers who had previously been so obvious less competent achieve at the same level I did. It never occurred to me, however, that this may simply had been because they had always needed to study throughout their lives, while I seemed to excel without the least bit of effort - as much as I hate to admit, they may now simply be more accustomed to studying, with hardened methods, while I am like a duckling floundering in the water attempting to stay afloat for the first time.
I had always been of the mentality that if I “tried hard enough” by exerting enough hours to study, this would effect better grades. Yet, as months and years dragged on, I never really improved. Why? Because I was lazy? Because I was less intelligent? I refuse to believe any of these claims as they are simply factually false. I devote my life to my studies, but I do not obtain the appropriate results even though I boast an IQ of over 140 and commendable maturity as demonstrated by my personal habits. There must be a missing link here, somewhere. What am I doing wrong? Pride and self-preservation for many years prevented me from setting out in expedition of this missing link. I had always been the best, so maybe if I focused just a tad bit more, I would be able to improve my current situation - this belief kept me half-afloat and struggling for breath as I continued to despite and beat down myself. Sentiments of self-pity and injustice surrounded me. I hated to see those that tried less hard but got farther. I became bitter, and shied away from others’ company.
It was not acceptable that I could not overcome the problems in my personal life with my current methods in order to focus and succeed. I mildly entertained the idea that perhaps stress and emotional instability were problems, but did little to amend the situation. I often wish for a happy family that makes me feel safe and wanted, but my own I dread seeing, and bestows me with a deep and unspoken terror that even today I cannot quite describe. The images of my immediate family flash before me bring impending doom as if all sources of joy, however scarce, will be ripped away from me. I long to fly away from those that I supposedly love the most, to a haven of tranquility where I can blossom and flower, where I will receive warm applause instead of sardonic snippets. I envy other families, and hate the fact that my own makes me unhappy. This, consequently, makes me immensely guilty and troubled. Why can’t my family understand that I want my love to be simple and enshrouded in kindness? In the back of my mind, the choice between abandoning possible reconciliation and possible peace tears me apart. It is quite difficult to express that kind of despair. What if others see me as selfish and unloving? There is darkness in the heart, a web of frightening outcomes, and I do not know how to overcome it.
This “problem” is a part of me, and whilst I feel that it is important, I also feel as if I need to move on quickly with my academics and career. It is not acceptable to stop at this one hurdle and lose the rest of the race. So there is no choice but to stumble on forever in these chains of gloom, all the while yearning to fly up to the blue skies.
I have come to admit my weaknesses; I have come to recognize what I need to change, but among these, there are some which I will be able to accomplish on my own, and some with which I desperately need help. I am a vast, completely, unhappy person. In the dark, I fumble for the window latch - wherefore it my candle?
- Thursday, February 18, 2010, Orlando International Airport, FL
I don’t remember the last time I found a series of lecture notes mildly relevant to real life. I think managerial econ, aside from the awesome-like-every-other-ECO-class-set-derivative-equal-to-zero-ness, has something here…
[Courtesy to: Gerstein Library's ability to make me very hungry, Prof. J. Serrano's couple of sentences about density economics in his lecture notes, and THE INTERNET] Here are a couple of scribbled lines I found in my new notebook (Shopper’s Drug Mart, $3.99):
Wal-Mart and Economics of Density
Wal-Mart has a dense network of stores. stop. This network facilitates logistics of deliveries as well as the transfer of personnel much more efficiently, and also adds ease to the promotion of the “Wal-Mart culture”. (I think we can correctly assume that the consumers are unable to see this team spirit…)
Contrast Wal-Mart with Kmart: Wal-Mart structured its store network from the centre-out (see Holmes’ work), and focuses on logistics such as delivery and communication technology, while Kmart simply does not. stop.
Kind of sick and stressed and wish that people would stop bothering me.
Take us back in time for twelve months, if the same number of things were wrong back then, I would have long jumped out of my sixth floor window, regardless of the expected outcome.