Today's rambling: I want to quit everything.
Written on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2003 at 7:58 p.m.
while feeling a bit

Apparently there's only one computer in this little section that has AIM. And I never get to go on that one. I ought to just download it on THIS computer, but with the way things have been going I won't even be back at this computer tomorrow. Every night I've been at a different computer, and each time I start typing in Notepad only to have to click the Format button and choose "Word Wrap". :P Not a big deal, of course, it's just one of those little things that gets to you after awhile.

Today was overall just a crap day. Not TERRIBLE, but just irritating and depressing. It started in Math. I'm about ready to drop that class, and I'm not usually the sort to just give up right away...but this teacher is not all there upstairs. The purpose of being a teacher is to TEACH, right? And I understand the importance of letting the students learn things on their own. However, on the first real day of class, one would think that she'd try teaching us some stuff instead of just putting us into groups and giving us problems to work out. Just reading things out of a book doesn't work for everybody. None of the people in my group really knew what we were doing (though thankfully the one girl figured it out by the end and I somewhat got it)...and this professor is just...AUGH! She doesn't even explain things! She told us today that she'd been thinking a lot about our class and how all of us said we were taking the class only because we had to, and otherwise we definitely wouldn't be there. So you'd think that would make her decide to explain things a little better, right? Instead, she said it was going to be more interactive.

Fine. The best way to learn is to do things. But there needs to be some instruction thrown in there too, or else we have no direction!

On the way out the door, she asked each person what they learned today. When she got to me, I took the homework paper she handed me and said, "I'm afraid of numbers." She kinda laughed (hesitantly) and then, looking up at me, asked if I'd learned anything. I should have said no. It would have been the truth. Instead, I just told her that I learned how to do that one problem we'd been assigned.

Damn Bostonians. Ha ha, just kidding. She actually seems to be a nice person, she's just not a terrific teacher.

French was an equally crappy class, and for the first time since my junior year of high school, I want to quit. This is another professor who doesn't know what she's doing--and unfortunately, I'd been warned ahead of time about her! Not just from students, but from my French professor last semester! This woman is almost hesitant in the way she teaches, and she's just not enthusiastic or anything. She even spells words wrong, which of course is a GREAT way for us all to learn... X_X

What gets to me the most, though--and it's a stupid thing--is the fact that there are several students in there who speak much better than I do. During the last class when we were interviewing each other and then introducing our partners, this woman bragged about how her partner could conjugate everything in subjunctive. Whoop dee froo ha. Maybe I could conjugate subjunctive if I'd been taught more of it last semester! But besides that, I just feel really intimidated. Last year, I was one of the best speakers in both classes I took. I'm not saying that I liked them better because I could brag, because that's really not it at all. It's just that I didn't have to worry so much about embarrassing myself, because I wasn't the only one making mistakes. In this class, every time I stumble a little bit I feel like all those good students are chuckling silently at me.

It was like this in my senior year of high school, too. I and two other girls had been skipped from Level 3 to Level 5, and when it was just the three of us I felt really comfortable. But then midway through the year, the teacher started bringing this other boy in every so often. He was only in Level 3 at the time, but he did all the throaty 'r' sounds and seemed to just speak with an enviable flow. The teacher noticed that whenever he was around, all three of us girls suddenly became very sloppy in our speaking. I would start using the American 'r' sounds, and none of us were all that eager to volunteer. I just get so intimidated with this stuff! I mean, on the one hand I want to be surrounded by people who are eager to learn and want to do their best. But, contradicting that preference is a need to...well, not embarrass myself. :P I know this should push me to become a better French-speaker, but in the end it's probably just going to push me into my shell and I won't do as well this semester as I've done in the past.

The thing I dread most is the fact that we're going to have to do a 10-minute oral presentation about some reading assignment...and of course it has to be completely in French. Do I know enough French words to actually stand there and speak for 10 minutes? I quail at the thought of it. If I didn't have a French minor, I'd consider quitting that class, too...though unfortunately, I'm only taking the bare minimum amount of credits for the semester, so I can't really drop anything.

Intro to Images, at least, seems like it'll be an okay class. Today we all had to stand up in the front of the room and show one image that we felt conveyed meaning well, and another one that was ineffective (that had been our homework from Monday). I was one of the last people to go, only because I was so certain that my images were stupid, but it all turned out okay. Later in the class, the professor gave us a word or phrase and we had to write down an image that came to our mind. One of the phrases was "musical groups" so I ended up choosing the little Jethro Tull icon (the one of the long-haired man playing a flute...I know Lisa, at least, knows what I'm talking about, LOL). There were a bunch of different images flashing through my head, but that was the one I picked. Anyway, he asked us later to give our answers, and the first guy said "The Beatles...the best band ever" in response.

"Are you trying to get an A in my class?" the professor laughed. I raised my hand after that and gave my answer, and he asked if I was a fan of Jethro Tull.

"Well, classic rock, period," I said.

"You're trying to get an A too!" he exclaimed. "You're all naming my favorite bands!"

Someone else said Pink Floyd, and another said The Grateful Dead. Of course, they were all guys. :P It seems like the only people I can find who like classic rock are guys. All the girls in the class were naming folks like the Dave Matthews band (*gags*) and then high-intensity pop like 'N Sync or O Town or whatever. I'm not saying I've never listened to those bands, it's just that (with the embarrassing exception of BSB) I've never really LOVED them. They're just something fun to listen to sometimes.

So that was the highlight of the day. Later on, I had to chase a yellow jacket out of my room, and that set me off because I was having flashbacks of last year when I got stung on my second day of school. I went to the radio station for the Exec Board meeting, and that went pretty well except that the programming style is apparently going to change and I'm just hoping I'll be able to do it. I've already said that I'm a creature of habit, and I'm afraid that I won't understand the new way the other execs want to do things. Besides that, it's going to be a HUGE hassle because the idea is to program around the DJ's format. So if a certain DJ likes R&B stuff, we'd have to go to the R&B Top 40 list and pick songs off of there to put in their playlist. No more "shuffle the index cards and plug the songs into their proper places"! *cries*

Oh. And then finally, after the meeting, I went up to Bill and asked about NBS. Apparently, Misty (the current president) and Marissa (the previous president, who'd been forced to quit 'cause her brother died) approached Bill either yesterday or today and said they wanted to have a meeting. Lovely, no? I was named the frickin' vice president last year, but neither of them...no, Misty didn't have the courtesy to talk to ME about it? The best part of it all, however, is that if Marissa wants to come back in as president, she can. Which means Misty will be Vice President again, and I'll be left with nothing. I should have protested, but I'm too nice. Oh, Marissa left because she had to, not because she wanted to, I thought, she ought to be allowed to have her old position back.

The more I think about it, the more it just pisses me off. Part of me wants to just quit THAT right now, but I'm going to go to that first meeting. And maybe a few more, to find out if those two incompetants will actually DO something this year instead of playing all their games. Last year, we did not do A THING. Every meeting was spent discussing the same exact things, yet nobody actually did anything! Of course, Misty was half the problem with that. She'd volunteer to do all sorts of stuff, and yet she'd never come through with it...which then hindered the rest of us.

I hate coming into these things with so much enthusiasm, and then getting shot down. All summer, I had these plans of going into heavy recruitment, starting up some fundraising stuff, and then trying something completely new (with the whole "Whose Line" type of show). I know I don't have enough knowledge yet to be the president of NBS. The only reason I would have wanted Misty to quit (other than the fact that she's a brainless idiot) is because as president, I wouldn't have my insecure "Well, I'm not really in charge so maybe this won't work" thoughts. And also, I'd have been able to take complete charge of the things I suggested. I'm not a terribly strong leader, but I have this need to do the important things myself (or at least mostly by myself) because then I know it'll be done as I want it. And that's selfish, I know. But when it's my own little brainchild, I don't want people to come in and ruin it, you know?

I could cry. Well, maybe not cry, but I'm certainly not happy at the moment. I feel like I've got this exec position on WCUC and yet no one's really letting me belong there...and yet I'm only one of several new folks! It's all in my mind in that respect, I know. I guess I'm just having one of those days where I feel like absolutely nothing is going right. No, I'm having one of those weeks, because I feel like everything's been really shitty ever since I got here. I'd been looking forward to the radio and NBS stuff to keep me busy and give me an outlet for some new creative ideas, but it looks like all that's falling apart! My only option left now is the TV station, whose general meeting is tomorrow night. Puh-LEASE let that go better than I'm anticipating! I know I've got a lot of high ambitions for that, too--like starting up some new shows so that the station isn't such a complete joke anymore--but my ambitions have to pay off somewhere, don't they?

I should start looking into internships for the summer. Maybe that would be fun.

Now I guess I'd better go, since Kristen's over at another table studying. :P She was nice enough to come down to the library with me, and at least she has work to do, but I feel bad leaving her alone all this time! I'll go see if she's ready to leave. ^_^