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TheDiaryofaDork and the terrible, horrible, really scary honors thesis

A last-minute decision last December- and a flurry of advising appointments-  settled it; this is my last semester as an undergraduate. Since I had such a head start in my German classes and took on average 20 credits a semester, I have just enough credits to graduate a year early, so I am.

Of course, there was one hiccup to that plan; the honors thesis. Read the rest of this entry »


Of Changes

My finals are over as of yesterday. My grades are slowly coming back from my professors (four ‘A’s so far, cross your fingers for the last two), and I leave for Germany at the end of this month. I have a lot of work to do at my part-time job before I go so that I’m slightly-less behind when I come back in July, and I want to plan a few trips for while I’m in Europe before next week, because my roommate is leaving the country soon and I want to have things set with her before then. So far, we know that we want to go to Vienna and maybe Belgium. I received my renewed passport a couple weeks ago in the mail and already have a few things packed that I won’t need before I leave (my umbrella for example, which is entirely useless in Arizona). My mom asked me yesterday if I was excited or just nervous for the trip. I said that I was both!

Also, my sister is graduating from high school the day before I leave, which seems really weird because I feel like I just graduated myself. She is not staying home like dorky me did- she’s moving all the way across the country for college. I think she’ll do great even though we’ll miss her. (Maybe I could get her to post on my blog!) She also is excited and nervous about this next step in her education, and it’ll probably take a little while for her to adjust to being so far away, but I think she’ll have a great time once she gets used to it. The house will be weird without her, at least for me and my parents. My brother has been trying to kick me out ever since I started college, so maybe he’s looking forward to when we’re both gone and he can have the Playstation all to himself. In any case, I guess there are a lot of new things going on for our family in the upcoming months.

Also, to end this on a less philosophical note and because all things come in threes or something, I think I’ll mention a third change that is our new refrigerador, which currently two out of three dogs are terrified of. Exciting, right?


Hey look, a blog post!

Finals are over and I’m done with the first half of sophomore year!  (My last final was this morning at seven-thirty, so forgive the lackluster title- I’m a bit brain-dead.)

Taking this many German classes at once was a bit strenuous. So, of course, I’m doing it again next semester. I think I learned a lot though, so we’ll see how next semester goes.

One course that I just finished was probably the hardest college class I’ve taken yet, and I went into it thinking it would be the easiest (cue panic in the first week of September when I realized I was wrong, horribly wrong…) because I had the same teacher my first semester. I had more years of German than almost everyone in that first class, so it wasn’t very difficult. I assumed the same of the class I took this semester and ended up being wrong. The focus was writing in German, not something I’ve ever been particularly good at, and we have five in-class essays instead of tests and one take home essay for extra credit. I already wrote yet another essay for an honors project. Anyway, it was a lot of writing, and it gave me a lot of much-needed practice. Hopefully some of it sticks, since I’m taking two German Lit classes in the spring semester.

Since this blog is about being a dork, I should probably mention that The Hobbit came out last weekend and I want to see it. (And also Les Miserables, which comes out soon.) I decided to reread the book (The Hobbit, not Les Miserables (which is really, really long)) since the movie came out and ended up finishing it in a day, so I moved on to the rest of the LoTR books. Since I had so much free time while studying for finals. Haha.

I don’t understand how Peter Jackson plans on making this into three movies. There was a lot going on in The Hobbit, yes, and two movies, I could see. But three? As my brother would say, Jackson probably just wants to add an extra layer of carpet to his money castle. I mean, the three books in the LoTR trilogy were made into only three movies, so why make The Hobbit into three when it’s just one book (and the shortest!)? Apparently some fans are even afraid that he’s going to stray too much from the “spirit of Tolkien” to make it long enough. I guess I’ll have to make my own opinion when I see it.

It doesn’t really feel like Christmas yet for some reason, but I think that’s because I’ve been busy with school. We have family coming in this weekend (yay!) and I need to clean off my desk (not so yay!) and this post got ramble-y so I’m going to be done now and get rid of all these old notes to make room for next semester’s work!

Merry Christmas!

 


So It’s Been a While…

So it’s been a while since I last posted. Here’s a quick re-cap, which I’m sure you’ll find fascinating.
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Survey Courses

ASU offers certain classes called ‘survey courses’. Generally these are denoted by some abbreviation (like PHS) followed by the number 110. Survey courses are pretty self-descriptive- they’re a survey of whatever subject they’re for. I’ve taken a political science survey course and a physics survey course, for example.
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Computers and College

There are a lot of effects that computers and, more specifically, the Internet has on my current educational experience.
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Coupon Books and Welcome Pamphlets

It’s a new semester at college for me, and the second half of my freshman year doesn’t look too different from the first. I’m taking this first year to get all the general studies requirements for my major behind me, or at least as many as possible (mainly the lower division ones, the 100 and 200 level courses.) Read the rest of this entry »


How to Find a Student Club

One of the first events I attended at my university during the welcome week back at the end of August was a school-wide function to showcase all of the different organizations offered here. There, I visited the student union and the recreational center to explore a few of the many student clubs the university has to offer. The trip did not exactly go as planned.
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Wait, what? part 2

Or, A List of Ten Weird Things I’ve Seen While Walking to Class

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Wait, what?

Or, A List of Ten Weird Things I’ve Seen in my Dorm Hall

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