Hair

Well it's been raining for about four days in a row now, and that can only mean one thing. My hair has reached about four times the frizzyness level as usual. It's somewhere between Frankenstein's wife and someone who just got electrocuted.
 

You know those people with straight hair who say things like "Oh I wish I had curly hair! Straight hair is so boring. You're so lucky." Lies. They know it too, those liars. If a person with straight hair just happened to come across a genie who's only magical powers are to change people's straight hair into curly hair, straight haired people would pass on the opportunity. Why?
 

1.) You can't just roll out of bed with curly hair without it being painfully obvious that you have just rolled out of bed. You shouldn't even bother changing out of your PJs because curly hair looks so crazy after it has been slept on that, everyone knows that you literally just woke up. Sure, everyone has that morning where they were a little slower than usual and didn't have time to shower before classes, but it's your job as a member of society to hide this fact as best you can. Unfortunately curly haired people just can't have those days.
 

2.) Unlike straight hair, curly hair is completely dependent on the weather. Aka 90% of weather types are incompatible with curly hair. For instance, rain, humidity, wind, snow, sleet, hail, thunderstorms, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, ect.
 

3.) Even on the days where it just happens to be 0 humidity, absolutely no wind, and is sunny, your hair still may look a mess anyways because curly hair has a mind of its own. I've given up all attempts to try and understand it. One day I'll put in gel in my hair a certain way and it looks fabulous. The next day I'll attempt to do the exact same thing and I end up with a weird look of part frizzy hair, part 50's male greaser.
 

So sure, I'll have days where I put effort into my hair, some days where I don't. What I love to witness are the crazy girls in the girls bathrooms who sit and fix their hair for over 10 minutes. I've actually watched, on more than one occasion, girls move single pieces of hair around, trying to get their hair perfect. Whenever I see this I have to resist two very strong urges. For one thing, I want to get my hands wet from the sink and then go up to them and shake their hair all around. I would do this if I weren't afraid of a possible law suit. Even more than this I want to go up to the girl and say, "You know that piece of hair you just spent two minutes putting in an exact spot? It's going to move as soon as you start walking again. Have a nice day!" Well it's true.

To one of my best friends and roommate who's having a bad day: You are amazing and don't you forget it! I mean it!
 

On my ipod today: "Slide" by the Goo Goo Dolls. "What you feel is what you are, and what you are is beautiful." Best. Line. Ever.

Walking

People walking. I just don't understand. People have been doing it there whole lives. In fact, people have been doing it for so long, that they don't even to think about it while they are doing it. Then why do so many people walk so slowly?

I mean really, daily I am forced to go around people who act like they have leaded stones tied onto their feet. The worst part is that slow walkers are never alone either. No, they have joined with their fellow slow walkers on campus in an attempt to make every normal paced walker extremely pissed off. They use many highly skilled techniques in order to achieve this. First, they make sure they stand in a line, evenly spaced enough so that it's difficult to get around them. Then, they will randomly pick up their pace at points, in order to trick you into thinking they are going to start walking normal now. Don't fall for this, it's a trap! I have no idea why they randomly decide to pick up the pace every once in a while, but just when you start to get comfortable, they will slow down again.They always chose inconvenient spots to go even slower than the pace of a tortoise walking in molasses, such as around corners or up stairs. It drives me crazy. 

Then once I actually find the opportune moment to pass by them, I can always feel them staring into my back. The social judgment can be felt in their air. It's as if I'm branding the word NERD right onto my skin in front of them. I have no regrets though, and I will continue to pass by every snail paced walker in the world. I've already accepted the fact that I am a complete dork, so I figure why not go all out? I'm not going for any popularity prizes here so there is no reason that I shouldn't walk my naturally not slow pace. 

There is one other thing I hate about other people walking. It's when they drag their feet. I have no idea why it is such a difficult thing for people to pick up their foot completely and put it back down, but it seems to be an extremely difficult concept for some people. Particularly lazy people. Maybe if we explained how to walk properly very slowly to them, we can end this issue. "No no, you've almost got it. It's just that before you start to move your foot forward, you have to make sure your foot is actually off the ground first. I know, it's difficult to understand. Would you like to watch a video on how to walk non-annoyingly? Notice how there is air between the person's foot and the ground. That is the correct way."

On my ipod today: "Hello" by Martin Solveig & Dragonette. Why is this song so catchy?! I can't figure it out!

 

Meetings

Once a week I have to meet with my professor for the the class I am a TI for. I dread it every week. It's amazing how relieved I feel once I walk out of that meeting, knowing I don't have to have another meeting with him for a whole week. Suddenly I feel all energized and I walk back to my townhouse with the idea of completing a lot of my work that afternoon. This energy is lost in the two minute walk back to my townhouse. Maybe if I sprint out of his office and back to my townhouse it will last long enough so that I can actually complete something.

It's not that I don't love the professor I'm a TI for. It's just well, he's not the greatest at holding conversations. For instance, literally every meeting we have starts off with him commenting on the weather. Then I say something in response. Then he looks up the weather for the rest of the week and says something like, "Well it looks like it should clear up by Friday," and I say something like "Oh that's good," because nothing more can really ever be said about the weather. The weather is just the weather.

I've often tried to use my bubbly smiley nature to try and spark some sort of real conversation, but he seems completely immune to it. I'll comment on something and laugh, expecting him to join in, even if he's faking the laughter. Instead he will just stare at me like I'm a child entertained by the fact they can drop their spoon on the floor. The conversation is so uncomfortable though, that I still attempt to make the situation lighter by saying random things and laughing at them. This enviably leads to it being more uncomfortable. It's a horrible spiral of awkwardness.

Meetings are worse than classes because unlike a class, there is no fixed end time. There's just that weird "well I guess we don't have anything more to talk about so I'll go now," end period. What's even worse is when I think everything we need to talk about is done, so I get up to leave only to have my professor look at me and say, "Where are you going?" At this point I have a choice: 1.) I can lie and say something like "Oh my leg was just falling asleep, I had to change positions. It's better now." or 2.) I can shyly something like "Are we not done?" Neither are ideal. Both add to the awkward spiral.

Sometimes he will just end the meeting suddenly by turning his chair around towards his computer while saying, "I guess we're done. See you next week!" I'm always cut off guard when he does this, and for some reason I feel the need to gather up my things unnecessarily fast like I'm being thrown out of his office or something. Unfortunately, when I get nervous like this I make more mistakes, so I end up dropping my things all of the place or tripping on his rug on the way out. He probably thinks I'm on crack. 

I watched this kitty video four times in a row. I think I will watch it some more before the day is done. Kitty! Video!

On my ipod today: "Deutschland" by Die Prizen. Okay, so I know it's an 80's German rock band, but give it a shot! The song is oddly addicting.

Hearing

So I'm actually partially deaf. It used to be more of an issue for me, but as I've gotten older I have become much more proficient at figuring out what people are actually saying. For instance if I hear one of my friends say "And then my mom starting running after the squirrel!" based on experience, I just generally assume they actually said "dog" instead of "mom."  As you can see, my mis-hearings actually make some stories more interesting, so it's not always a problem. I mean what is more fun to think about, a dog running after a squirrel, or your friend's mom? I think the choice is clear. 

As a child I had to sit through a ton of extremely tedious and time-consuming hearing tests. Basically what happens is they put you in this tiny white room that has a chair and baby toys in it. The room is soundproof so the walls are about a foot thick and the door kind of works like an air-lock type thing. In other words, it's freaking creepy. I often thought about how if a bomb went off right outside the building, I would have no idea. I can't describe why, but I found this fact to be extremely unnerving. The very building could be burning down and I would be stuck in a room raising my hand when I hear a beep.

So they leave you in this room by yourself while the person running the test goes into an adjacent room that you can see in through by a window. After about a half an hour of telling whether or not I could hear certain tones in beeps, my head starts ringing. I start hearing beeps even when the test isn't running. Every time I remember trying to tell the person running the test that I wasn't sure if I was hearing beeps anymore because my head was ringing so much. They would always tell me "okay, well there is only a few more," even though the test would go on for another 10 minutes.

After the torture of the beeps, I had to sit through another overly long test where I would repeat words back to a recording. An extremely masculine voice would say something like "dog" and I would have to say "dog." I have no idea how many words I had to say back, but it felt like a hundred. I got so bored during this test one time I started to count the holes in the wall. Repeating words back to a person doesn't require much cognitive effort. But wait, there's more! After this recording was done, they put headphones on my head that had what they called "background noise" playing. I would describe it as a SHshshshSHSHSHSHshshshshsSHSh type of noise. Then I got to repeat back another set of different words! At this point I was so bored I started to make a story in my head out of the words I was hearing. For instance:

"Through"

Our car went through the tunnel.

"Pass"

We also passed by a cow.

"Borrow"

We asked the farmer if we could borrow the cow for a while. He said no.

"Animal"

It was a shame, cows are such cool animals!

The stories generally got weirder as the test went on because I had to include many more seemingly unrelated things into it. Luckily I was a very imaginative child and this wasn't too much of an issue.

On my ipod today: "Better Man" by Pearl Jam. It's another one of those songs that has slightly depressing lyrics with an uplifting melody, but it still just works.

Eye Doctors Part II

Well I actually had my eye doctors appointment today like it was planned to be all along! I'm slightly worried for what new glasses will actually look like on me. It's not as if I could sit back and see how they looked on my face. All I could do was press my nose up to the mirror and then turn to my mom with my eyes all squinted, asking her how they look. That's another thing that scares me- my mom likes the pair I picked out. From as early as I can remember me and mom have had the most opposite taste in clothing and fashion as you can imagine. She likes clothing that reads more "LOOK AT THIS SHIRT! IT'S EXTREMELY BRIGHT WITH LOTS OF FLOWERS!" and I well, don't.

I'm not overly worried because the lady helping me to pick out my glasses said she had a flamboyantly gay guy come in yesterday, and he said the pair is "Geek Chic." I didn't know it until that time, but I guess that is exactly what I was going for. Plus, you can always trust a gay guy who knows what's in style. Wish I could have actually met him.

Anyways, after I picked out my new glasses, I had to have an eye exam. As silly as I think the whole part where the eye doctor goes "Is this any better? Better still? How about now?" is, I kind of find it entertaining. I like to try and guess the times where he's actually just showing me the same lens, asking me to pick between the two.Of course I have no idea whether I'm winning this imaginary game, but I can't help thinking like that the whole time."Hmm those two looked different. He's not messing with you. Oh man those two were to similar, it has to be the same lens! I win!"

I've had the same eye doctor since I was a child, and since I've had glasses since 1st grade, obviously by this point he knows me pretty well. Since he knows me so well, he knows there is one part of the exam I dread every time. The eye drops. I hate them. They are freaking freezing and when they hit your eye it causes your whole body to involuntarily spaz out. Plus, I know all the drops are supposed to do is make your eyes dilate, but I swear my whole body gets a little dizzy for at least an hour. Actually it's probably all in my head, but that's what happens.

Each time I go, I try and find a way out of getting the drops. Here is today's (failed) attempt:

"So you have any questions for me today?"

"Do I have to get the eye drops?"

*laughs* "Yes, just like every time."

"But what if I sat here and looked really sad about it?"

"Still have to get them."

"Alright, how about if I looked really cute and smiled like this."

I then smiled really cheesy. I was going for a "how could you give eye drops to this cutie pie" look. It failed.

On the plus side I got to wear a pair of the mad cool disposable sunglasses they give all the way home, because although it has been raining all day, the exact 30 minute drive home it was sunny. Then it started raining again. It's alright though, I got to pretend I was part robot in the car ride home. I was totally rocking the rolly disposable sunglasses underneath my glasses look.

On an unrelated note, I reached 200 views today! Granted it's mostly the same people looking at my blog everyday, but still! Woot! And according to my view tracker thingy, 8 views were from Russia, and 3 were from Germany. How or why these people got onto my blog, I have no idea, but to them I have two things to say: 1.) Welcome to my blog! Or in case you are hopelessly lost and never intended to end up on this site, follow this link because it will take you where you need to go: Where You Need To Go  2.) I'm sorry that my blog is only in English and I speak no Russian. I took 6 years of German, but I don't really speak any of that either. My apologizes. But stay unnormal all the same my overseas viewers!

On my ipod today: "Hangin' Around" by Counting Crows. Story of my life.

Review Sessions

Currently I am a TI (teaching intern) for one of my professors and part of my job is to hold review sessions for the students in the class. Basically all I do is go over what I feel are the most important issues of each chapter and what I think they should focus their studying on. It's really nothing special. But to some of the students, I am God.

All I have to do is mention the simplest fact and they will ask me to repeat it five times, word by word, extremely slowly, so that they can write it down. It should be noted that I am saying absolutely nothing new. Literally all I am saying is something that my professor mentioned in class. I find it to be quite entertaining because it's not as if I am giving them some sort of insider tip. All I'm doing is picking out random facts and testing their knowledge. Take for instance this exchange:

"Can anyone tell me what co-rumination is?"

*blank stares*

"Okay it's when two or more people, typically girls-"

"WAIT slow down! Who's it between?"

"err two or more people, usually girls, and what happens is they talk over and over-"

"What are they doing?"

"...talking over and over about what they are feeling. Generally it focuses on negative feelings-"

"What kinds of feelings?"

"Negative. It's considered to be a maladaptive strategy because- "

"Mala-what?!"

"daptive. Maladaptive strategy. It's a maladative strategy because it solves nothing and can possibly lead to feelings of depression and anxiety."

"What does it lead to?"

*sigh*

I've held two review sessions so far, and this one girl has gone to both of them. Each time she asks me first, if I've seen the test (no), and then whether I have my old tests to look at. Now as I explained at the first review session, he doesn't let you keep the test because he gives basically the same test each semester. By this time she should understand this, because she has already taken one of his tests. Does that stop her from asking me again today if I have my old tests? Of course not. Each time she looked severely disappointed. Poor her, actually going to have to study all of the information like everyone else.
 

The worst part of review sessions is when you don't know an answer to a question. I mean my professor told me not to worry about it, it's going to happen. However, clearly he is forgetting something. I'm God, remember? God knows all the answers.

The fact is though that I really haven't read through the book since last semester. I have better things to do with my time than re-learn every single detail of the book for a test I'm not taking. However this does not stop a group of review session students from completely turning on you. You can see it in their eyes. One minute you're the all knowing guru that can lead them to the path of eternal happiness (or an A), the next second your the saddest excuse for a human being that ever walked the planet. The good news it's easy to get back on their good side. Just mention another completely random fact they are unlikely to remember and they will start hastily writing down your every word once again. It's a powerful feeling having everyone write down everything you say like it's of the up-most importance.

Today, I had a bunch of questions up on the board of what I thought could be potential short-answer questions. I asked them to try and answer them from memory, because you know, that's what they will have to do on the test. Each time I would try to get them to answer something, but each time they would just stare blankly at me like they were suddenly on Jeopardy, but they realized they don't know anything so they have no chance of winning. So much for testing their knowledge. At the very least it should have been a lesson to them all on how much they don't know and how much they still need to study. I'm sure I will get blamed for their poor grades in my evaluation. "Her review sessions didn't help at all! I still did horrible on every test!" Of course, because my one hour of review is supposed to magically make you know everything. 

One other lovely moment that I found particularly enjoyable:

"I have a question? What are the effects of the different parenting styles?"

*looks at board because I literally just wrote that down*

"Ummm everything that we just listed a little while ago."

"Yeah but on his review sheet he has the question, 'What are the developmental outcomes of each of the parenting styles?'"

"Yes. They're listed right here."

"So that's the answer to that question?"

"Well yes. Remember- (I then proceeded to go over what I literally just said). You got it?"

"Well yeah, but on his review sheet it says-"

Another Student: "Yes, that's what she just answered! Anyways, I have a different question."

It took a lot for me not to start laughing at that point. The girl looked both confused still and slightly angry that she was cut off. It was about ten minutes later that I saw the light bulb go off in her eyes. Better late than never I suppose.

Click Here For a Brillant Sign

On my ipod today: "Run-Around" by Blues Traveler. I always feel the need to belt out the part "Well I like coffee and I like tea!" I have no idea why, but I just love it so much!