Today's rambling: Baby, you got it
Written on Wednesday, Feb. 04, 2004 at 8:09 p.m.
while feeling a bit

My Temporal Media class was canceled yesterday because the professor (Mary Beth) had the stomach flu. She was back today, and obviously since I'm her work-study student, I was in her office. If I end up getting the stomach flu, I'm going to come to work every day wrapped in a plastic bubble. I'd start taking vitamins again, but literally every time I've started taking them, I get sick. No lie. Therefore, I'm going to trust to my already-hardy immune system and hope that the virus totally passed me by. My body is a no-flying zone. Or something like that.

I'm still typing up old free press thingies for her, which is really boring. I spend more time paging through the rest of the newspapers, reading through old articles and chuckling softly to myself at certain excerpts. This particular year (1986) marked the centennial anniversary of the university, so every issue has a "Then and Now" section. In one, they showed a past/present picture of one of the buildings on campus, and the little blurb that came along with it was saying something along the lines of "What will the students of 2000 think?" For them, 2000 probably seemed like an eternity away. It just amuses me for some reason. You'd think I should have been a history major, considering my complete fascination for university history...but my interest only relates to things that are personal to me. You'd think US history would be personal, but no, it's not the same.

Anyway, back to the free press thingy. Back then, the advisor likened it to a park, in the middle of which was a soap box where people could spout off about anything every week. The advisor, ironically enough, was my first advisor (the one that I hastily got rid of in favor of my current one). As it turns out, while he seems to have a gruff and sometimes caustic exterior, all the students who have ever taken his classes just love him. Mary Beth, who worked for him when she was an undergraduate, absolutely loves him as well. She says that he and his wife keep her and her husband younger than any of her younger friends do! I was shocked. Anyway, that had already helped me see this guy in a new light, but reading his entries at the beginning and end of the school years really changed my view of him as well. At the end of the '85-'86 school year, he wrote about how the park was going to be closed for the summer for renovations, and just completely created an image of this tiny little park with rosebushes surrounding it (they were sort of trampled by all the people who observed from the edges), and how the soapbox was sort of worn after two years...I can't even explain it that well, it was just the neatest sort of thing. The Free Press, as it's called now, has a chilly, sterile formality to it. Its former name, when it was likened to a park, just seems to invite you to write in and say something. It seemed more welcoming somehow.

But hey, that's the past, and as much as I might like the past better than the present, it's not like I can actually go back there. So let's move on.

I had my first Macroeconomics exam today. I feel really confident about it, which is scary because the first time I studied was today...for an hour. I'm not lying to you, Diary; I have been so wretchedly lazy this semester that if effort was all that decided grades, I'd be failing. Kristen's been doing homework like a madwoman every day, even on weekends (she actually has to set aside time for 'relaxation'), and here I've been just sort of...taking up space. And yet after that hour of reviewing my notes and the study guide, I felt about as prepared for the exam as I'd ever be. Jess scared me at first, telling me that her friend said the exam was really difficult (she'd taken it earlier today), but when I had the exam in front of me and looked down at it...I just couldn't believe how well I knew 99% of the questions. The only bit that really threw me off was the last page, with all this graphing stuff...and then my problem came more from the way he'd worded things than anything else. I guess showing up for every class and forcing myself to pay attention is paying off! Either that, or this is just the calm before the storm. X_X

That class is boring as dirt, and as I'm always exhausted by the time I get there, it's really difficult to stay awake, let alone pay attention! But I love that professor for some reason. His voice is droning and monotonous, but there's a cuteness about him, a sense that at any moment if someone said something amusing to him, he'd hunch up his shoulders and grin shyly. There are times when I just want to run up and hug him, lol!

Anyway, that's about it. Another night at the TV station, unfortunately, and I won't get out early like last night 'cause there's a show after the news. But oh well, I need the experience, right? Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I had a car and didn't have to walk there and back every night...and didn't have to work with those people...