The Finite

Oooookay, so. Not doing so hot grade-wise. This Monday I got my ass whupped by biochemistry, that bastard child of the natural sciences. It’s probably the whole 8:30 aspect that’s killing me. Similarly, my grade is falling in my 9:30 intro to statistics class. As always, the solution is drugs.

The building next to mine has one of those generic coffee machines. If we were to peer inside, we would see powder canisters and hot water hoses. It spits out a 8oz or 12oz cup of reconstituted tongue-scalding beverage in less than a minute for 65 or 75 cents respectively.

I get a cup there before my commute with some pocket change. I drop a couple of ice cubes in from a conveniently placed machine, and I trudge off to class, albeit slowly at first since the cup is nearly overflowing initially, and more so with ice cubes. Luckily, the adrenaline rush that comes from carrying extremely hot coffee a half-mile supplements the caffeine rush. Nootropic effects become apparent by the time I get there accompanied by a epinephrine-stimulated glycogenolytic alertness as well as a granola bar I eat every morning.

Alternatively, I can use a meal swipe to acquire an “On-the-Go” meal and get coffee that way. I also get more granola bars and a sandwich.

The problem this morning with the rain was that I couldn’t carry my coffee and an umbrella and a sandwich. These circumstances were the result of a really poor decision motivated by hunger, distant ATMs and a busted change machine.

The solution, as always, is duct tape.

I got to eat my Italian Club and sip a little joe while I walked to class marginally dry. That is, until a small gust caused me to spill warm coffee on my face and shirt. It’s fortunate and oddly self-fulfilling that I wore my black “I’m blogging this.” shirt today.

PSY 350: Abnormal Psychology
Oct 18, 2009

This recitation assignment entails a brief summary of a depressed character of your choice portrayed in literature, theater, film, and/or television.

    Marvin the Paranoid Android is a character from the 6-part trilogy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in all its incarnations (including books, radio series, and feature film). He is an artificially intelligent, humanoid robot that was originally employed to serve the position of ship robot on the starship Heart of Gold.
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This has to be my longest dry spell yet. But can you blame me? Life is pretty much school, club meetings and work. Work is cool, but I bet you don’t want me to rave any more about that. Let’s talk about my classes!

This is the blithe transitory semester between my old major and the new major. I’m taking Biochemistry 561, which is the only class that I can transfer into the PharmD program (assuming I ever get in), two psych classes to fulfill a minor and a statistics class that’s a requirement for my new major. I could sit here all day and type about what irrelevant topics I am reluctantly learning, but I bet you all want to know what celebrities my teachers resemble first.

My Behavioral Neuroscience professor sounds like Andy Dick and looks like a 50-year-old Andy Dick except without the creepiness. He also wears socks and sandals together. Okay, a little weird…

My Abnormal Psych professor didn’t look like anybody at first, but then when he took off his glasses one day (which apparently imbue some sort of Clark Kent-esque cloaking effect), I realized he was actually a young Borghoff (*History teacher from my high school days.)! He’s just shorter. A Mini-Borghoff. His voice is also not entirely unlike Borghoff now that I think about it.

Then there’s the “cake class” that brings me up to 18 credit hours, Food and Nutrition. My professor there could pass as my Biology lecturer from last year recast in a new role. She has that “Purdue accent” (which is basically a Midwestern accent interspersed with the occasional “y’all”).

Okay, stay with me here. My Biochem lecturer looks like Dr. Wallace Breen from Half-Life 2. But he talks as if John Hammond from Jurassic Park were doing an American accent and doing an impression of Paul Lynde. Try to imagine it, really. It’s worth it. Now try not to laugh. It would more interesting to me were it not at 8:30 in the morning and if I didn’t hate everything about everything at that point of the day.

And I think my Omni-hate is justified. 500-level classes suck! The material is hard enough. But the professor sees the class description and realizes it’s a 500 level class so he makes the exams ridiculously hard to justify that. How many Angstroms apart are the base pairs of a double helix? I really should have known that for the first exam. (AZN fail!)