unexpected adventure time! what are some things to do in denver when you're not dead?

things i meant to say in my don rag but forgot to

okay, yes, i DID set the apparatus on fire but there were TOTALLY extenuating circumstances!

i was only being 'polemical' because of the dude who came to every class stoned and kept complaining that the scientific method was stupid.

this school has some serious problems. but its weakensses are also its strengths, sometimes. i'm still working on a way to understand that. you guys have any ideas?

HA SEE I KNEW I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THAT POU! SEE MR CAREY JUST SAID SO

mr harrison is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being i have ever known.

i promise i will do better in math next year, because next year hasn't got any euclid in it and i don't like euclid. ptolemy, however, is rad. so is apollonius.

i'm not an angry person, i'm just exciteable, and if i yell about something, it's probably because i'm intrigued by it.

i don't think i want the year to be over yet. i was having fun.

in my mailbox

MEMO

TO: Students, Faculty and Staff
FROM: Safety and Security Office
RE: Bears

...and they wonder what keeps happening to the koi in the fishpond...

the more i think about it, actually, the more pissed-off i am that i paid them dues. playing cowboys and "indians" is not cool. it is not cool at all. and yes, i get where the joke was going, but it really is not funny.

that was an unfortunate choice for a Reality theme, i must say.

DONE DONE DONE DONE DEAR LORD IT IS FINALLY DONE

MY PAPER

I HAVE DONE IT

and it sucks. and i hate it. but, you know, it's six pages with ink on them and i talk about atoms and stuff and i think it'll do. i've found writing this paper ridiculously stressful. i don't know why, but it's been the hardest one to write. at last it is done, though. now i can start fretting over my oral, which starts three hours from now, and then cope with having seminar three days in a row, and then skid my way through the last day of classes! whee!

might want to change your tagline. dick.

wil wheaton: sexist douchebag. if only i were an educated member of the Creative Class, i'd understand how making a sexist joke and then peevishly stamping my foot and saying "that's a stupid straw man I AM NOT A SEXIST" somehow magically negates actually saying something sexist. but i better shut my mouth, before wesley fucking crusher points and laughs at me. my fragile girl-ego can't take rejection, after all. and i am sure to either cry hysterically or become completely unhinged and desperate to win back his respect.

come to think of it, wil, you better be careful. i'm an unstable female, after all. clingy. mad with the need of male approval. if you do something to hurt me, i might just snap. like glenn close. and do something just terrible. us bitches is crazy that way.

it's a molecule, and it's here with us!

i always forget what a fun band Troubled Hubble is, and then something from Making Beds in a Burning House comes on my iPod and i remember. and then i hit repeat several times, and spend the next hour or so bopping along happily. and then i feel all nostalgic for summertime shows at the Black Cat. sigh.

at least *someone* can see molecules, though. stupid atomic theory paper.

also sudoku on the back page!

hey, an issue of PreMed Today appeared randomly in my mailbox today. is it a cosmic sign? it is, at the very least, a sign that Career Services actually did something with those surveys we filled out early in the year.

it's got mini-quizzes in it! it's fun! and it's distracting me from working on this horrid atomic theory paper, which means i should put it away until i've written something substantial. GRAGH WHY MUST PAPER ASSIGNMENTS BE SO MADDENINGLY VAGUE AGGHRRGH "four pages on atoms" IS NOT A PAPER TOPIC

rarrr.

it's not arson, it's SCIENCE!

delight of the week: mr franks got himself up in an ill-fitting frock coat and a powdered wig to deliver faraday's Chemical History of a Candle in character. many things were set on fire (with mr donahue standing by, armed with a fire extinguisher) and a delightful time was had by all, and i want to get my hands on some copper oxide, because it's AWESOME.

when i was in middle school, i wanted very much to go into the sciences; physics was my main area of interest. when i was in eighth grade, though, i was told that i'd never manage it, because i wasn't good enough at math.

i changed schools between seventh and eighth grades, and was put into pre-algebra. i didn't do terribly well at it, but at the time i wasn't doing terribly well at any subject. i'd transferred on the advice of a psychologist after an academic assessment, who for some reason thought that public schooling would offer me more freedom and flexibility than i'd been able to find in public school. "more heterogenous learning environment", i think she called it. that was some shaky fucking logic, but i was 12 at the time, and learning that gym was not a required class at the public middle school played a big part in my agreeing to transfer. (naturally, of course, the only real difference between the schools was scale: there were just as many bullies, proportionally, even though they had more targets.)

so anyway, toward the end of the school year, we were filling out our schedules for our freshman year of high school. we were encouraged to think about what subjects we'd like to focus on through all four years, and i decided i liked science best, and found physics intriguing.

the high school advisors sent over to meet with us, however, informed me that i would not be taking the classes that i wanted to take. i had been tracked into pre-algebra, which meant i'd be taking algebra I as a freshman. which meant that i'd be taking geometry as a sophomore, and algebra II as a junior, and pre-calc as a senior. which meant i would never get to calculus, let alone AP calculus. which meant i would not be majoring in physics. ever.

they laid all this out for me, right then and there. i had just written my big end-of-year research paper on quantum mechanics. i was obsessed with carl sagan. i was already looking at colleges, looking specifically at their physics and astronomy programs. i read every pop-science book i could get my hands on, and pestered my mother into subscribing to Popular Mechanics for me. i dreamed of going to a real school, studying things i loved. that was how i got through every day. i was thirteen. and they told me that i'd never be a physicist, ever. because i hadn't taken the right math class in eighth grade, and besides, my grades were too low anyway.

i cried through the entirety of my lunch period, that day. and i gave up. on school in general, really. i had no incentive to apply myself more to my studies. i'd apparently already failed.

i'm only just starting to realise that i can do science. and not only that i can do it, but that it's fun. and not only that i can do it, and that it's fun, but that i'm good at it. that i like it more than literature and more than philosophy and more than art and more than communications and more than all the other things i've ever thought about doing when i grew up. and i'm remembering that i've felt that way for a long, long time.

so when i get out of undergrad, that's what i'm going to do. fuck you, Mrs. Gionowitz, wherever you are, and fuck all your colleagues as well. i'm twenty-six years old now, and no one gives a shit what classes i took when i was thirteen. no one ever fucking did.

attack of the 50 ft berzelius

i was good. i did not dismember the party kids. i merely pointed out to them that they'd spelled 'debauchery' wrong on the sign they'd put up pleading for donations, and then i was on my way. i heard the two bickering as i walked off: "i TOLD you it had an A!" "what? whatever. wait. it has an A? where?"

(my frustration did break loose in lab, though, after an hour-long derail from the kid who hasn't come to class sober since september. but even there, all i did was point out that his argument basically boiled down to "wah! but there are so many books in the world and they're hard to read, and i can't bullshit with science like i can with philosophy!"

which it did. sadly.)

in my mailbox this morning

Dear Freshman Class:
We all remember the events of Symposium and the ensuing debacle with the administration, and we are unfortunately still dealing with the consequences. As members of the college community and dorm residents, we collectively miss the Upper Common Room that used to be our home. In order to repair the damage done to that room, we must as a class raise $600. It is easy to ignore a letter such as this one asking for money, however keep in mind, that this is your school, your community and at least partially your responsibility. In many respects, the freshman class has made a bad impression on the college administration. Let us unify and show the administration that we can fix the damage we have caused. Essentially, all that is needed is $5 from each freshman. Members of your class will be collecting money outside the dining hall during lunch periods on Thursday and Friday of this week, as well Monday and Tuesday of next. We would appreciate any donations that you are able to contribute.

Thank you,
Fellow Members of the Freshman Class

what do you mean "we", kemosabe?

some backround:

Symposium is, thankfully, a tradition exclusive to santa fe. back in the day, when drinking ages were lower and class sizes smaller, some tutors began the practice of bringing a bottle of wine to the second seminar on the symposium. the tutors and students would share a glass of wine or two, sometimes during the seminar itself, but generally as part of a small gathering after the seminar concluded. when the drinking age went up, this practise ended.

sometime in the late eighties/early nineties, students decided to revive this tradition, holding a small gathering after the second symposium seminar and inviting freshmen. conveniently, the second symposium seminar always falls on a thursday on or near valentine's day (also the thursday before a long weekend) so this small gathering eventually grew into a party. because it was a party involving freshmen, it inevitably metastisised into an excuse for upperclassmen to get freshmen girls drunk and try to sleep with them. each year it got larger and rowdier, and the whole "small gathering to discuss the idea of Love" got thrown aside in favour of "let's get shitfaced on Two Buck Chuck and break shit!"

last year's Symposium evidently featured a wine fountain, and led to small fires and general destruction of Lowers Commons. since the party, by dint of timing, always takes place during the last weekend of Senior Writing Period, there were also lots and lots of noise complaints from irate seniors trying to finish their papers. after that incident, the administration decided to end Symposium, and the commons were closed for most of the rest of the year. they'd just been refurbished, so the administration was understandably less-than-thrilled by the wine stains and cigarette burns and broken chairs.

but, of course, Symposium is now part of some great Party Tradition as handed down to entering freshmen, and the partiers among our class were not about to let a little thing like the administration ruin their fun. our class already had several black marks against it; one incident in particular, still unresolved, involved the vandalisation of multiple cars parked in France only two weeks into the semester. (they got fucked up on cocaine and thought playing hopscotch on car hoods would be a good idea, apparently. they have yet to pay damages. they were not penalised. one sophomore lab ass did get kicked out afterward, but it was for a separate incident. i am sure, though, that his being caught by Security while fucking one of the freshmen on the hood of someone's car did not help his case, though.) broadly speaking, our class sucks, although the other classes suck too.

but so anyway, the substance-abusing asshat contingent of Uppers decided they were going to have a Symposium. at first, they went about this in the proper way, seeking a party permit. a party permit would have notified Security about the party, and would have ensured that people were supervising the party, that alcohol was being distributed responsibly, and that the party ended at a reasonable hour. of course, after the events of last year, the administration had already decided against permitting a Symposium, and the party permit was denied. and, of course, a little thing like a lack of a permit was not going to stand in the way of my fellow jackholes. so they threw a party anyhow.

two people wound up in hospital with alcohol poisoning. a lot of shit got broken. the quad was described as "covered with vomit", and the hallways and bathrooms were even worse.

the party planners tried to explain that they HAD TOO been responsible, because they'd called ambulances when they found people bleeding and passed out in pools of their own vomit, hadn't they? see? RESPONSIBLE! and they had NO IDEA that the laundry room had been filled with cartons of box wine! how were they supposed to know? they were too busy being RESPONSIBLE!

at any rate, i was given to understand that the administration was refraining from punishing those responsible for holding the party, on the condition that they would raise money to pay for the damage done to the common room. this was supposed to be a good-will gesture to the community as a whole. this course of action was decided upon in february.

only now have the parties responsible gotten around to trying to raise funds. and they've decided to do it by fobbing the responsibility off on the rest of us.

this is not in any way my "responsibility". no, not even "partially". i chose to abide by the administration's decision. i did not agitate for a party, i took no part in planning it, and i did not attend. except for Prank and Faust, both college-sponsored events, i have attended no campus parties at all. Uppers Commons is not "our collective home". the ones missing it most are the ones who live in Uppers -- the ones who planned this stupid fucking party in the first place. they are the ones who set up a band in Uppers, with amps, during Writing Period. they are the ones who set up the laundry room in Uppers as a speakeasy. they are the ones who spilled red wine all over the carpet and all over the table. they are the ones who broke the chairs and burned the floor. they are the ones who got so drunk they puked all over the quad. (the juniors and sophomores had some role to play in that as well, mind; the two who ended up in hospital were sophomores. a lot of freshmen, at least half the class, didn't even attend.)

"we as a class" do not need to raise $600. the shit-for-brains entitled little twats who were responsible for the damage need to raise $600. this was THEIR PUNISHMENT FOR IRRESPONSIBLY THROWING AN UNAPPROVED PARTY. it is not my responsibility to save them from the penalties for their own fuckheaded actions. hell, the amount the two ringleaders of this debacle have blown on nose-candy this semester alone would cover damages and then some. in addition, the twenty little snots who signed a petition back in february to protest... something, i'm not sure what, could also put money where their whining little mouths are. so i find myself less-than-sympathetic to this letter. i am not going to ignore that letter; far from it. i am going to walk up to these addlepated jackholes at lunch and explain to them how ridiculously insulting this letter is.

i'll be damned if i'm going to "unify" with those snotnosed little bastards. one of them still owes a friend of mine $3000 in damages to his car. did she pay it? no. will she ever? probably not. can she afford it? judging by her coke habit, i would guess her parents probably can.

and in a way, this is the responsibility of the college administration, too. they need to start kicking some of these motherfuckers to the curb. i don't care how many of them start ranting about the freedoms of our founding fathers and threatening to call the ACLU and/or their stupidly wealthy parents. (seriously, one of my "fellow freshmen" thought he could go up against the dean when he felt he had been wronged by an unlawful! and unfair! search of his room.)

i understand that the college can't function without money. i understand that at least some of the idiot rich must be kept on, in order to subsidise the less-rich. i just wish so many of them didn't have to be in my class, and i really, really wish that the privileged little motherfuckers didn't start looking to ME for money when they find themselves in trouble. surely there must be some solution to shore up college finances other than admitting an assload of moron trustafarians.