This has been a strange week. I say “strange” because I can’t really bring myself to call it “good”. However, things have generally gone better than normal this week. I had a couple tests, one of which I don’t think I did too well on and the other (I think) went pretty well. I had my typical Monday lab experience, which basically means that we showed up to our programming lab and were asked to write some assembly based on knowledge we didn’t have. But this week was a bit different in that I told our TA (in no uncertain terms) my opinion of how the class was being taught, being careful to point out that it’s not his responsibility to teach the material, only help us understand it.
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A bit more background: our teacher is fond of saying things like “I won’t be around in two years to teach you everything, so I expect you to learn how to find it yourself”. This generally means that he “teaches” by giving us reference manuals (a few thousand pages of them, to be more precise) and telling us “The answers are in there”. I’m pretty sure that you don’t teach someone English – or any other language – by handing them a dictionary, but such is life.
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Despite the fact that I had the usual things this week that have been bringing me down so much lately, it didn’t totally suck… and that confuses me. Perhaps things are getting better, or perhaps my ability to care is just being drained, but I am going to hope that the scale is tipped more toward column A than column B in that equation.
Things that went well this week
In order to have this not be a passive-aggressive “bad” post, I want to acknowledge that some good things did actually happen this week. Yesterday marked exactly 1 year until I finally get married! It feels really good to finally be getting close to the big day. Becca and I have been waiting a long time for this, and we are excited that it’s finally getting close. I also made the last payment on the deposit to have Abe & Jake’s Landing as our reception venue for our wedding. We still owe the remainder of the balance, but we are making awesome headway with planning getting contracts signed and paid.
Genuine Imitation performed last night and will do so again this evening, and singing always brings my spirits up. On top of that, I spoke with the manager of Abe & Jake’s, and it sounds like they will be willing to let GI have a concert there in the Spring, free of charge! The though of performing at A&J again is really exciting.
Lastly, I think I just might see some light at the end of the tunnel with regard to my academic situation. I did some back of the envelope calculations, and I think that I now have a better than even chance at being able to continue taking classes. Considering how much I have left, I am hesitant to be too optimistic, but it certainly looks to be an attainable goal at this point.
So there you have it… my first non-crappy week in months, and I don’t even really know how to react! The good news is that I have the new Assassin’s Creed game at home, waiting for me to tear open the shrink wrap and sink hours into some serious gaming time over Thanksgiving break next week.