blather
not_studying
anne-girl I think school's excessively... inevitable
always at the same pace
the work and the deadlines pile up, you have to learn it by the end of the semester or take in the end
and I want to sit around with something and meditate on it until I learn to love biology
...
but I have a test friday so I'm reduced to studying [loathsome idea]... to sitting around trying to memorize facts and figures, meiosis, prophase II, anaphase nine, genetics, differences between the skeletons of alligators and frogs and armadillos and me

there's no time to care, they focus on marks and getting through [who cares if you forget it the day after the exam?]

and people look at me strangely for taking courses for fun.. they're all worried about marks, and careers, and that the university application deadline is coming up

and the courses I enjoy present no challenge... just kind of surfing through, wander in and out of classes

and nobody forces me to learn... they'll settle for me being mediocre, surfing by with a half-understood 84, my first and last biology class, the day after the exam it's all irrelevant... and my calculus tutees are drowning, they have no idea but they might pass anyway (i hope)

they don't have time to learn, to understand why cal is fun... the school system screwed them, they don't have the background or inclination for calculus, but have to get through anyway, somehow...

learning's reduced to a series of objectives (00UU, anyone?) and "is this on the test?"

maybe it'll get better next year...
goes back to studying
051130
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IGG i'm currently doing this.
i should be trying to make up my art coursework for my deadline oh....2 days ago.
but never mind that i was away for a goddamn week.
NOBODY gets an extension, NOBODY!!!

i don't think that's that good.
i also just found out that someone i really liked and was friendly with died yesterday.

maybe now i should get back to studying.
051130
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pete not studying, and not caring, the half digested 84% becomes the result of not doing the homework and skimping by by not missing the classes.

the papers are where the real fun is, the exams merely make sure the material has been properly stored and sorted for mass relocation from the mind to the exam page.

with the essays the information is all sorted and filtered through primary and secondary sources into opinion and theory until twelve pages sit nicely upon the screen of coherent, hopefully elegant, prose waiting for a (hopefully not) arbitrary mark by someone who (likely, unfortunately) knows the material less well than you.
051130
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pete that last observation was a bit out of place... doing detailed primary source based papers fosters an overbearing arrogance about a subject. in the end, especially if the professpr is marking, its almost always a fair mark, comments only make that clearer. 051202