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| As many of you may have surmised - from postcards bearing a US stamp and marked as posted from Cleveland, from seeing me in person, or whatever method - I am indeed back in the States. It's now the fifth week of the semester at Case, and there are way too many things going on.
I'm trying to be proactive. Do my taxes, find a summer job. All that jazz.
And the really important thing is that I came back from India with a need to do as much as I can to give back to society. Short of giving away all my money, 'cause let's face it: I'm still American and therefore want my money to remain mine (with the possible exception of the cases in which I spend it so that things become mine instead). What I am doing in that avenue is continuing tutoring elementary kids, only now I'm going to tutor high schoolers on a second day, and volunteer at the Foodbank Monday nights.
Last night eight of us put together about 350 bags in an hour and a half. The bags each have a can of spaghetti-o's, a can of cranberry sauce (no idea why), toaster pastries, rice-a-roni, a box of cookies, and two apples. They'll be distributed to school kids to take home. We got an assembly line going, and it just whirred along. It was great.
As for that job application alluded to in the title... I think I want to work at Pfizer this summer in Kalamazoo, so I can stay at Mom's condo in Allegan and commute. And I'll be able to come up to Grand Rapids on the weekends, to visit people and get the house ready to sell. Which would all be fabulous if their website would let me submit a resume. But it's rather on the fritz. Crummy servers.
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| Dear Cleveland streets,
You are not the Great Plains. Please stop trying to be them. The snow whisking across you was only amusing for about two seconds. Cut it out.
-A chilly pedestrian
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Dear atmosphere,
Please switch to the right temperature for snowflakes. Little pellets of snow really don't stick to each other so well. This leads to several problems, including the Cleveland streets thinking they are the Great Plains. Get with the program.
-A chilly and blinded pedestrian
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Dear metabolism,
Thank you so much for slowing down a bit the last couple of years. Given all the problems with the atmosphere and the Cleveland streets and sidewalks, the cushioning is starting to come in handy.
Love,
Your affiliated coccyx
***
Dear Hillel,
Being Jewish is about doing mitzvot, right? When somebody wanders in with news of a HUGE patch of ice nearby, is it so wrong to provide some rock salt? It's nice that you called the people who are really responsible for taking care of the patch of ice, but somebody could get hurt in the meantime.
-the coccyx's affiliated brain and speech capabilities
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Dear motor and speech capabilities,
There's another patch out by Starbucks. You were gonna get somebody to take care of that, right?
Love,
Your affiliated hippocampus
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| Wrong. There's been a flurry of vandalism in the upperclass housing complex. The card-access only upperclass housing complex. At first it seemed sort of bizarre finding the face plates of the exit signs hanging down by a wire, but really my only reaction was to think, "Huh, that's weird." Then I started noticing the destruction of the display boards... It all came to a head when someone pulled down and crumpled the circular poster on my suite door (that I borrowed from my mother, who had had it in her college dorm, thank you very much).
I have decided in retaliation to hang a new poster on the suite door. The new poster has no particular worth, however; it is printed on the ubiquitous 8.5" x 11" printer paper. I designed it myself as a parody of the sexual assault awareness posters with which Housing plasters our bathroom walls (not to disparage the importance of sexual assault awareness, but to grab attention more effectively).
My poster reads as follows:
You might be tested on this tonight.
What do you know...
About Vandalism:
Vandalism is defined as intentionally, recklessly, or negligently causing
damage to the property of the University or of an individual.
What does vandalism look like?
- Tearing up the display boards created so carefully by our GRMs.
- Pulling down the face plate on the exit signs.
- Crumpling the poster another resident put on their suite door.
Take a stand against vandalism in your community!
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| I was talking to Charlie this morning during breakfast, and he mumbled something about the weekend and it being over. So I inquired further (because I had rather got the impression that he'd said he wanted the weekend to be over, so I was a bit concerned), and he clarified that he did not want the weekend to be over. I suggested we could probably get most of campus to agree to this, including the faculty, over which he replied that the entire world would probably agree to this. We began brainstorming exceptions:
* People who work Sundays and get Monday off.
* People in agricultural societies where the day of the week doesn't particularly matter - they work anyway.
* People in jail whose sentences would never end due to it forever being the same weekend.
* Freaks who actually like their jobs.
And then I realized that we could probably get away with it being the weekend for a couple of weeks' worth of time straight, but then the nerds would revolt because the online comic artists would never post new material because it's still the weekend. And nerds need their webcomics.
So there you have it. This is why the weekend must end, and new weeks begin.
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| I am having Bureaucracy Issues.
You may have heard (or more likely read one of the comments on my Facebook profile which states) that I am travelling to India over winter break. I am very excited about this. Slightly less since I remembered/was reminded the other night while reading a travel guide that India has several species of poisonous snakes, but I shall be optimistic and expect not to run into any such pernicious reptiles while exploring major cities. Or the Taj Mahal (excuse me while I squeal for a bit about seeing the Taj Mahal up close...).
(As a side note, my daddy has offered to buy me a digital camera for my holiday gift. Let the debate over purchase of "omg batteries" or a foreign adaptor plug begin.)
Now this trip to India is not just for fun. It is being organized here at CWRU by the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences. This means the trip participants are going to learn all about the Indian system of dealing with social issues like non/compulsory schooling, poverty, HIV/AIDS, prostitution, etc. At the very least, I will be able to rattle off all of the issues by the end of the course. Well, hopefully by the end of the orientation session on Friday.
Now, one of the breadth requirements for any degree here at CWRU is a torturous little thing the administration likes to call the "Global and Cultural Diversity Requirement." As a logical person, you might expect my jaunt abroad to result in credit for this requirement. You'd be wrong. I have been following a circuitous path to change this fact, but it still a fact remains.
My journey began in September, when I thought to myself, "Hm, I'd better see a dean about this." (It would be quite amusing if I could instead see a Dean about this, for example a fiction Dean like Dean Thomas [from Harry Potter] or Dean Winchester [from WB show "Supernatural"]. But I digress.) So I wandered down to Undergraduate Studies and made an appointment for mid-October to meet with a dean.
October 19 arrived. I went to the Undergraduate Studies Office, met with a dean, and was told to fill out a petition that would be reviewed at a Thursday meeting of the Dean's Committee.
Cue two weeks later: tonight. I receive an email saying my petition has been denied: the Dean's Committee does not have the jurisdiction to apply courses to general education requirements. I am told to ask the course coordinator to apply to the Committee for Educational Programs.
I decide to be proactive. I try to find out what this Committee for Educational Programs is, who belongs to it, when it meets, what they do, etc. I find minutes from last spring, and the dates for this year's meetings. Also deadlines for submission of materials for said meetings. The next meeting is November 15th. The deadline for submission was LAST FRIDAY!!!
I am more than slightly peeved. You'd think the dean could have...forwarded the petition to the committee? gotten back to me in time for material submission? Does it take two weeks to realize that, "oh, she's asking for credit for a gen ed requirement, and we're not the people who grant it"?
*headdesk*
I want to get this all straightened out for a very good reason: if I'm ultimately not granted credit for this course, I may as well take it for 0 credit so I don't have to write a 7-10 page research paper. Also, I will have to find another course to take that meets the darn requirements. And I'm sure as heck not messing with bureaucracy again.
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