It's Done

It's done.



Dreamlocked is finally complete.







Finally.












Finally.










I finished the art last night, and my partner finished all the InDesign work today. We met at the library to print it all out, and of course something was messed up that we had to scramble to fix at the last minute, because nothing is ever easy, but we managed to fix it and get it turned in with time to spare.

And if I ever stop being mad at it, I'll put the pages in order and put a copy in my online portfolio so y'all can see the finished project.

But for real. In order to finish on time, I penciled and inked six pages in five days, on top of all the other final exams and essays I had going on. Considering an average page with pencil and ink took me 3-4 hours to complete... Yeah, it was not fun, and I did not sleep very much. And THIS, kids, is why you should NEVER leave projects to the last minute.

And with that, ladies and gents, I am a free woman. I am completely done with finals! Woohoo! Time for Christmas!

Lost Thumb Drive: Finals Shenanigans Part 4

Somebody left a thumb drive in the computer I'm working on right now, and I'm really tempted to see what's on it. I don't think I will, though. I wouldn't want somebody rooting around on my thumb drive if I happened to leave it plugged into a public computer (that is, if I used a thumb drive, which I don't). Leaving it alone just seems like the polite thing to do.

See?! I can behave well! I still belong on the nice list!

I feel really bad for the person to whom this thumb drive belongs, though. I hope they're not desperately looking for it right now, with five minutes until their paper is due...

"Slaying" Song: Finals Shenanigans Part 3

Have you ever considered that the word "sleighing" sounds a lot like the word "slaying"? They're practically the same word.

So there's that line in "Jingle Bells" that goes "What fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight!"

Sometimes I imagine a big, huge, warrior-type guy, maybe like Thor or Beowulf, skipping across a battlefield, whacking people at random, singing, "What fun it is to ride and sing a slaying song tonight!"

That's not Christmas-y at all. I'm definitely going to be on the naughty list this year.

You guys, I promise I have Christmas spirit! Lots of it!

$1 Coffee: Finals Shenanigans Part 2

I was sitting with two friends in the computer lab earlier, but they both just left. How rude!

Before they left, we discussed the free hot chocolate and coffee provided by the Honors College for people working in this lab. My friends told me I should prepare cups of coffee for everyone. I agreed, saying that I would deliver cups of coffee to everybody who walked in.

Then one of my friends told me I should sell the coffee and make a profit.

I think that would definitely get me kicked out of the Honors College, but it does sound funny.

A few more ideas like that, and I'll end up on Santa's naughty list. How terrible to go the entire year with good behavior and mess up at the last minute...

Sometimes when I'm writing papers, I get bored and lonely, and I start posting on Facebook every five minutes. I decided that I'm going to post all my random thoughts here instead. I'll keep it going throughout finals week and see what other shenanigans I get up to.

Finals week, man. Anything goes!

Fleece Navidad: Finals Shenanigans Part 1

I'm pretty sure someone's already made this joke. Sorry, not trying to be a copycat!

But I'm listening to Christmas music on YouTube while writing this paper and doing other finals things, and I came across a version of "Feliz Navidad" in which the singer literally sounded like he was singing "Fleece Navidad." So I had to do this.

Oh, I'm up to no good. I'm getting into all kinds of shenanigans in this computer lab. For example, I just discovered that my spinny chair has a lever thingy that makes the seat go up and down.

If they wanted me to be serious, they shouldn't have provided me with unlimited hot chocolate.

Finals and Frisbee

I took the oral half of my French Pronunciation and Phonetics final today.

People always tell me that, since I studied in France for a month and I've been taking French classes for years, the oral exams should be a piece of cake for me. And I would be inclined to agree, except for that the exams don't just include talking.

There are way too many rules about how to pronounce things in the French language. I mean no offense-- I love French a lot, but I'm getting rather exasperated with all this nitpicking.

Like, the rules for liaison. In some instances, you're supposed to squish two or more words together so that there's no break between them and the sentence flows more smoothly. In other instances, you are absolutely forbidden to squish two words together and you must let a break exist between them. And in still other instances, the squishing together of words is completely optional.

That part bothers me the most. Why is it optional? If you're going have all these rules, why not just have a right and wrong way to say things? At least I can't get the optional ones wrong on the exam, right?

Wrong. We have to read most sentences twice, once with the maximum number of liaisons possible and once with the minimum.

There are plenty of detailed rules about when the liaison is obligatory, forbidden, and optional, and naturally, there are exceptions to the rules. The rules are hard enough to remember when I'm scrutinizing sentences with a pencil in my hand, marking all the different types of liaison. They're much harder to remember when I'm reading aloud.

I feel like my oral midterm was kind of disastrous (I don't know because I'm too afraid to look up my grade). My problem, aside from having not memorized all the liaison rules, was that I launched into each sentence without looking at it first. It's like sight reading a piece of music for an audition without taking your given time to look through it first- not a good idea.

This time I forced myself to slow down and think about each sentence before I read it aloud. There's really no room for error because I was speaking into a microphone and my professor will be able to listen to the recording as many times as he wants. I'm not sure if I did any better than I did in the midterm. I felt okay as I left the office, but you never know.

It was a fantastic day. The weather was between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit all day, which is definitely NOT supposed to happen in December. I wore shorts and a t-shirt. It was awesome. As I exited the foreign language building and let the beautiful outside air wash over me again, I felt a sense of complete freedom, and I suddenly knew exactly what I wanted to do next.

I wanted to play Frisbee on the quad.

If you've followed this blog for a while, that probably doesn't surprise you. If you're a newcomer, then suffice it to say that Frisbee is one of my favorite pastimes ever. We have a big, treeless area on our quad that's perfect for tossing the old Frisbee around, and I take advantage of that perfection pretty frequently. I have a light-up Frisbee so that I don't have to stop playing when night falls. I brought a Frisbee with me to Europe and played at least once in both France and Ireland. It all started in high school, where there was always a Frisbee flying around the band room. It just makes me happy.

You know how they say "It takes two to tango"? Well, it also takes two to play Frisbee, and the combination of my busy schedule and my friends' busy schedules has led to very little Frisbee this semester, which is a crying shame. I'm so glad I found someone to play with me today. It was such a good way to unwind from my final exam, and it was good exercise, too!

Maybe I'll have Frisbee therapy sessions on the quad next week so people can unwind after their finals.