care-tags.org

forcing myself over break to sit down and write lengthy scholarship essays is proving much more difficult than expected

also, the prompts for the boren scholarship seem incredibly repetitive, both within one prompt and when you consider them both as a whole:

1.

2.

i'm on my 3rd re-write already SIGH

on the plus side my grades came in and i got exactly what i hoped for, and my GPA is still in phi beta kappa territory

writing my personal statement for grad school is excruciatingly difficult

waiting for decisions is 100% the worst part of the grad school application process.

going to meet with the director of grad studies at UIUC though!

My resolutions are:

Study. seriously I need to study, I never do and it's starting to become more and more difficult to get by without.
Pay attention in class instead of browsing the internet.
Set aside time for creative stuff like writing, drawing, and maaaybe some fashion stuff.

And my classes this semester are:

(Intro to??) Digital Design: heard this professor is good, but not really sure what it's all about.
Principles of Programming Languages: Yeah I dunno I feel like this should be pretty easy... taught by my dad's MS advisor who he says is great. (my dad's def of great and mine are probably different tho)
Game Design as Art: babby's first Art class, first class in the Art building. Hype as fuck about it.
Intro to Game Programming: again, really excited about Game stuff. Probably the only thing that truly excites me about CS. Feel like this should be easy-ish, generally do very well in programming classes anyway and this is more interesting.

Resolutions:

-Save money.
-Become inactive in my fraternity. Dues are way to expensive for someone in my financial situation.
-As a result: use my free time to meet new people and study more.
-Keep my GPA above a 3.75

Classes:

-Sophomore Engineering Clinic II
-Math for Engineering Analysis II
-Fluid Mechanics
-Principles of Chemical Processes II
-Industrial Organic Chemistry (basically all the parts of Orgo II relevant to chemical engineering)

last semester i fucked up big time. lets just say my gpa was on life support. this new semester i NEED to get my grades up. since i never had to study before i kept doing that and it totally screwed me over.

goals for this semester:

- actually go to class. i only have class 3 days a week and my earliest classes start at 10 am.

- STUDY. It's so difficult for me to start and stay motivated throughout. will be a challenge, but need to persevere.

- use professor office hours and labs. i need to learn to ask for help.

classes:
Principles of Athletic Training
Statistics
Anatomy and Physiology
Kinesiology
Intro to Health Care


goals related to school:

- talk to people in class and be friendly/approachable

- study with other people

LETS GOOOOO

Educational goals for 2015:

Don't fail any of my courses so I can graduate in May.

last semester of school leggo! like rbjman i too just want to graduate.

goals:
either use my current new job as an internship credit, or find some bullshit internship to use for my required credit so i can graduate.

figure out what the hell i'm going to do for my final thesis installation and make something baller.

put in work, been super burnt out of the design school and school in general lately. need focus and hunker down and design good things.

not fail my 1 credit career and internship class again (aka actually go to it).

make my schedule and adhere to it. this semester is extremely busy, work ~20 hrs/week in the mornings, then class until 6 most days (not friday), indoor (then outdoor) training for the cycling team M/W/Th nights and Saturday day. Then travel meets every weekend starting Mid-March.



classes:
Web and Interface Design - more coding and design of websites/interfaces. grad level class. basically what i do for my job already just more in-depth.

Thesis Studio - show up and fuck around / talk with my professor/classmates about our projects and how we want to go forward. also planning sessions for senior show.

Portfolio Studio - show up and work on old (or new) projects expanding them into pieces worthy of being put into a portfolio. also building my site if i don't have it up by then.

Intro to Marketing - good business prep. want to go more into advertising/marketing/brand management after school so hopefully this helps.

Career/Internship prep - lolz.

goals:

- eat healthier
- waste less money
- not leave all work to the last minute
- get my dissertation finished asap
- find a university where a master's degree is vaguely affordable
- work 9-5 each day instead of just chilling during the day and then working into the early hours of the morning


also, really looking forward to a class i'm doing this semester, which involves, amongst other things:

- using a map of Amsterdam to get around an unfamiliar area of Birmingham
- making the usual journey from campus to your house by walking backwards (with someone watching out for you)
- spending twenty minutes walking around campus with a blindfold on (again with someone watching out for you)
- and doing a subversive 'performance' of some kind (e.g. having a very serious group study session at 1am in a nightclub)

School resolutions:

* B- or higher in both my CS courses

* Go to bed earlier on the weekdays... this means coercing my roommate to go to bed earlier too

* Work harder, play harder

* At least once or twice, if I'm ahead, say "fuck it" and just take off the day... probably including work...

* Keep up the pace and get a tad ahead if possible

* Head a successful convention for my club

* Cosplay(?)

* Give myself more than 20 minutes to wake up, get ready, and walk across campus to class

* Utilize my Thursday afternoons more than just slacking off for two hours before work

* Get that A+ certification

* Do the application to stay on campus for work

Classes:

* English poetry workshop

* Communications rhetoric

* Computer science game design

* Computer science introductory graph theory

My Programming Lang's Professor made me feel conflicted today. I've been thinking about moving away from like Computer Scienc-y stuff in the future, veering more towards either design or writing. But he pitched getting a Master's in CS so hard, I started thinking about how much Rick Owens I could buy with 90k a year...

opposite of senior-itis here:

have done completely mediocre (barely passing in all core classes and only A's were electives) all high school, now i suddenly want to really work and put in the effort for the last semester of my last year of high school. all a's baby.

This is what i've been missing out on! Dammit it feels good.

AP studying begins.

Not worried about Physics, Calc BC, Psych or either Economics.

AP flaxy and AP Chem are stressing me the fuck out though. AP Chem is what nightmares are made of.

Godspeed.

wrt college

My honors college application essay got me $1,000 to my college account, can use it for room and board/books/food plan. Currently working on a scholarship through my work (Cinemark) and I'm hoping to get at least $1,000, my manager said kids with similar applications to mine usually got upwards of $1,000 depending on their essays.

Still looking at getting a double degree, Graphic Communication and Electrical Engineering are the two most reasonable yet interesting fields I'm currently looking at.

I'll have quite a bit of credits from all of my clep tests and AP tests, then I'm doing this summer program that I also got a scholarship to cover the cost. Right now I'm signed up for three different cultural study courses and I'll complete them in a month. I'll get to spend that time on campus touring different places, getting a feel for the town etc.

Excited.

My school's administration is starting to irritate me. I received a merit scholarship that covers ~90% of my education (tuition, books, room & board, meal plan). Housing isn't guaranteed for juniors and seniors, and I was told that if I move off campus my junior year (not by choice, but because I am not guaranteed an on-campus dorm), I have to pay for housing out of my own pocket. It's like they're just taking away half of what I worked so hard in high school to earn.

I went to this school because I was going for next to nothing, and now I'm going to have to pay somewhere around $500/month for up to 24 months? Beyond frustrated.

met with my adviser yesterday and he wants me to rewrite my scholarship essay and wants it redone by... monday

sigh

I was just accepted into UCLA's Ph.D program!!!

the campaign against austerity measures and budget cuts i helped organize is really starting to take shape. 5 months ago we had about 10 people in our room, tomorrow we expect several hundred at our first rally. and our petition will be at thousands of signatures soon. for those of you in proper cities with established left wings that might not sound like much, but im excited for the future - the thought that the midwest may not remain apathetic, and that students here can be motivated to action too.
also my grades are steadily improving and i wish i cared more earlier on because my gpa could be better. im really loving school lately.

starting pre-med in a week
super fucking nervous
clases from monday to friday, 7 am to 6 pm with half an hour for lunch

Currently taking a class called "Bad Boy Byron," and it's everything I ever dreamed it would be you guys.

Any tips for applying for research and internships? Mostly research, not sure where to look for resources as far as composing a personal statement (ironic, I guess to look for outside help on that) but any general advice on things is appreciated.

somewhat frustrated that universities make you take irrelevant gen-ed courses before you make any major courses. I did horribly in all my pre-requisites and its a crazy difference in my grades now that I'm taking courses that actually interest me and relate to what I want to do with my life. I wish I could re-do freshman year and actually put some effort into it.

I'm required to take a Chem course for my major and its confusing the hell out of me. Fashion and chemistry?? I pretty much failed high school chem....how am I supposed to understand it at college level? I'm horribly bad at math and science isn't one of my strong suits either, so I'm worried about how much it'll affect my GPA and the level of motivation I have at the moment. I'm probably just going into it with a bad mindset. sigh.

I don't complain much and i'm generally a stress-free kind of person but I have to do an internship for my last year and so far, i've probably sent something like 30-35 resumes and gotten maybe 5 answers, all negative obviously.

But there's an offering at MMM for exactly what I'm doing and I want it so fucking bad.

really stressing rn because i can't use my current job to fulfill the internship requirement to graduate and i have no time to pick up a "real" internship because i'm either working or in class all day every day. and i'm just mad that we need to have this stupid requirement when i'm gaining more valuable work experience by staying with my current job.

really close to breaking down and begging my advisor for any way to exempt me from the internship credit so i can just fucking graduate this semester.

Starting the 4th week of the semester and we've had 6 snowdays (tomorrow incl) and I still haven't had my Monday night class -_-