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Apr. 26th, 2007 12:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
commotiocordisWorked at my dad's school all afternoon on Tuesday for some competition for all the middle school gifted students in the district. I didn't actually get to see any of them compete, though, which was somewhat disappointing as it sounded like a pretty cool thing -- they wrote skits a while back, memorized them, etc, and when they got to the competition they were given a character, a prop, and a line that they had to work in somehow and they only had a few minutes to figure out how. I believe that may have only been one part of the competition, though, as there seemed to be a lot of different categories that didn't quite seem to fit with what he had told me they did when Dad was announcing the awards. That and his kids (or at least one group of them, I'm not sure how many there were or how it exactly worked) won, so I imagine they were pretty good at it. Problem was that it took a while -- he said we'd be home around 6, we didn't get back until 7:40 at the earliest. And I hadn't gotten much sleep Monday night and had been standing up making popcorn and running things around for hours Tuesday afternoon, so when I got home I decided to take a nap. Nothing strange there. Until I didn't wake up until 3:30am. Ouch. And then I looked at my watch, figured screw it, and went back to sleep. So I didn't have anything done for classes today. Not that I would have done anything anyway, but I had to take two Spanish quizzes over parts of the play I hadn't read (one because I was planning to read it Tuesday night and one because I thought we didn't have to have it read until Thursday but probably would have started Tuesday night anyway had I been awake).
So I missed NCIS and House and everything. Not fun there. I'll have to get those some time.
Tonight we went to our credit union's annual members' meeting thing. Twas at some banquet center thing and I expected thusly the food to be quite good, but it was merely passable. Not bad, but nothing to brag home about. Still. You walk in the door and they give you one of those plastickyacrylic drawstring tote bag things and a magnetic memo board, then they feed you, then they talk for a bit (but it wasn't that long, thankfully), then they introduce everybody, then they do a trivia contest and draw door prizes. We were in first on the trivia the entire time until the music category (which you'd think I'd be good at, but it was all really old popular stuff; they'd give you a line and you'd have to give the next one without even having been given the song or artist) where we ended up down by one and got beaten in the STL Landmarks category (because it was all downtown, where I never go. Seriously, it's sad. I've lived here all my life and I know Chicago better).
Funny thing was, I had been joking the entire time about how the door prizes should have been cash instead of stuff at the credit union meeting (it was totally random-- some wine basket, a garden hose, potpourri and dish, fancy lotion, a container with a bunch of snacks, etc.), and then the trivia prizes were cash. So I made $5 for getting second, which was especially nice considering I knew virtually none of the questions (usually I'm passable, but these were obviously geared for the older crowd; after me and some of the younger bank teller types that worked there, the next youngest was easily my mom, followed by my dad, and besides them I doubt there was anybody under 60) and was of little help at all. That and two muffin tins and a box of blueberry muffin mix from the door prize. So. Five bucks, a bag and memo board, and muffins; I'd say that was a good haul.
Talked to my old US history teacher today and asked him if he knew of any political cartoons that I could use for this dumb research paper I've got to do for history. Because he always had cartoons to illustrate stuff (because that was what was on all the tests and he wanted to prepare us. Which he did well. Looking back, he was probably my favorite teacher that year for sheer volume of stuff learned) and I was having trouble finding a good one. As my teacher of this year strongly suggested that we have one as part of our bazillion required sources. The whole assignment is crap. It wouldn't bother me so much if he didn't insist on calling it a Document Based Question, which implies an essay with 5-8 sources given to you which you use to support your given topic that you should be able to write in about 50 minutes (as it was on the US History test and will be on the History of the Americas test), and not a research paper with a given topic and 5-8 sources we've got to go find. When he calls it a DBQ it makes it sound like it's okay that he assigned this big, high point valued paper to be done in a week right before the huge finals start.
On that note. Looked at my calendar thing today and freaked out. Evidently my math tests are only in a week and a half and chemistry in two. Holyfuck. I had no idea. I've been trying to keep my head above (as these next two or three weeks are frakking hell every year in every class) in my non-hugeassfinals classes and not really reviewing at all for the ones with said finals. So I'm going to go die now.
So I missed NCIS and House and everything. Not fun there. I'll have to get those some time.
Tonight we went to our credit union's annual members' meeting thing. Twas at some banquet center thing and I expected thusly the food to be quite good, but it was merely passable. Not bad, but nothing to brag home about. Still. You walk in the door and they give you one of those plastickyacrylic drawstring tote bag things and a magnetic memo board, then they feed you, then they talk for a bit (but it wasn't that long, thankfully), then they introduce everybody, then they do a trivia contest and draw door prizes. We were in first on the trivia the entire time until the music category (which you'd think I'd be good at, but it was all really old popular stuff; they'd give you a line and you'd have to give the next one without even having been given the song or artist) where we ended up down by one and got beaten in the STL Landmarks category (because it was all downtown, where I never go. Seriously, it's sad. I've lived here all my life and I know Chicago better).
Funny thing was, I had been joking the entire time about how the door prizes should have been cash instead of stuff at the credit union meeting (it was totally random-- some wine basket, a garden hose, potpourri and dish, fancy lotion, a container with a bunch of snacks, etc.), and then the trivia prizes were cash. So I made $5 for getting second, which was especially nice considering I knew virtually none of the questions (usually I'm passable, but these were obviously geared for the older crowd; after me and some of the younger bank teller types that worked there, the next youngest was easily my mom, followed by my dad, and besides them I doubt there was anybody under 60) and was of little help at all. That and two muffin tins and a box of blueberry muffin mix from the door prize. So. Five bucks, a bag and memo board, and muffins; I'd say that was a good haul.
Talked to my old US history teacher today and asked him if he knew of any political cartoons that I could use for this dumb research paper I've got to do for history. Because he always had cartoons to illustrate stuff (because that was what was on all the tests and he wanted to prepare us. Which he did well. Looking back, he was probably my favorite teacher that year for sheer volume of stuff learned) and I was having trouble finding a good one. As my teacher of this year strongly suggested that we have one as part of our bazillion required sources. The whole assignment is crap. It wouldn't bother me so much if he didn't insist on calling it a Document Based Question, which implies an essay with 5-8 sources given to you which you use to support your given topic that you should be able to write in about 50 minutes (as it was on the US History test and will be on the History of the Americas test), and not a research paper with a given topic and 5-8 sources we've got to go find. When he calls it a DBQ it makes it sound like it's okay that he assigned this big, high point valued paper to be done in a week right before the huge finals start.
On that note. Looked at my calendar thing today and freaked out. Evidently my math tests are only in a week and a half and chemistry in two. Holyfuck. I had no idea. I've been trying to keep my head above (as these next two or three weeks are frakking hell every year in every class) in my non-hugeassfinals classes and not really reviewing at all for the ones with said finals. So I'm going to go die now.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-26 11:10 am (UTC)Ugh, chemistry. Did you see my entry about the test I had to make up for on Tuesday? Well, I got it back today. 15%.
Let ME go die now.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-27 04:39 am (UTC)First period automatically sucks. Unless it's orchestra, because that's pretty cool. It wakes you up well. But when it's a dumb history class in which the teacher fails at life, it's bad. It was really cold in there today and so I'm alternating between struggling to keep my head up and shivering and it wasn't fun. I've actually got no tests tomorrow, thankfully, but that's only because I'm going to be on that mock trial fieldtrip thing during the hours I have tests. Which means I've got to make them up, grr.
Good luck with the tests, though. It's good that you think you know the stuff. I'm at that terrified stage of my preparation for the big ones in which I've realized that I know nothing and none of my review up to this point was anything nearing effective because I just need to learn it all again but I don't have nearly enough time to do so, so I'm just going to fail all of them. *breathes* Yeah. Panicky is the word of the rest of the year.
Well, I got it back today. 15%
Ooh. Shit. I got a 23% on a chemistry test a couple of months back, but that was because she had told us that she was only going to grade what we got done, so I did the bazillion parts of question one and then part a of question 2 and part c of question 3 because I could do those quickly right before time ran out. But then she graded me on the entirety of questions 1-3 because I had evidently started them all. Well, wasn't like I knew what the hell I was doing anyway. What subject was your chemistry test of doom over? If it was equilibrium you can just throw away the score because nobody gives a damn about that. Unless you're a teacher or a college professor, in which case they expect you to know it. But one of the equilibrium tests was my 23% one. Still, the class average was only a tiny bit higher for that test, so it wasn't my fault. Though I still don't know equilibrium and thus must learn it in the next week.