Audiology Observation

We have to do either a Speech-Language or Audiology observation for my Communication Disorders class to pass. I chose the Audiology one, just because I understand the tests and everything better. I signed up yesterday, and went into the clinic today for the observation.

First off, I got lost. The clinic is in one of our buildings at KU, and half the buildings at KU are insanely difficult to navigate. The receptionist pointed me in the right direction, but I still got lost. Thankfully, one of the professors actually showed me where to go, so I wasn’t too late.

The scheduled client, an older gentleman, of course didn’t show. While waiting, the audiologist, the grad student and I had an interesting conversation about said grad student’s dog and his ear surgery (had to have his ear drum removed.) Eventually they both apologized and said I could come back next week, or the grad student could evaluate the audiologist’s ears for me to show me how the evaluation would normally go.

Since I’m supposed to have this evaluation done by Friday, I elected for the grad student to do the audiologist’s ears. It was SO COOL. They let me look in her ears with the otoscope, something I definitely would not be allowed to do if it was just some random person. I also got to look at all the equipment while she was being tested, and the grad student explained to me in great detail everything she was doing… which also probably wouldn’t have happened if it was an actual evaluation.

We ran through the tympanogram, acoustic reflexes, speech recognition, pure-tones, and bone conduction testing, all of which were normal. Of course, an actual audiologist was being tested so that’s not too surprising. =) It was just a great experience, though, because they were both so friendly; plus, I got to see the first time the audiologist has had her hearing tested in awhile!

Kind of makes me want to be an audiologist. Except I’d be in school for a million years. And I’d have to look in some nasty ears. So maybe not.

Damn Parking Tickets

I have a new hatred for the KU Parking Department.

My dorm’s parking falls ridiculously short of parking spaces. Unless you try to park at noon (earliest) or six at night (latest), you will not get a parking spot. I’m sorry, but I do not wish to live my life around being able to get a parking space.

We have an overflow lot, in the football stadium, that normally would be only for a certain permit, but is allowed with our permit because of the dorm parking issues. I mostly park there, since I get SO frustrated with trying to park at the dorm. This is perfectly fine, as I found the permission in the handbook.

Last week, I get to my car after a midterm, AND in the pouring rain, to a bright yellow thing on my windshield. Oh good god. At that point, I wasn’t actually completely sure that it was okay to park there, as I was only taking the word of my RA. I decided to appeal the ticket, even though it’s only $20.

It’s a really good thing I did, because in my research to back up my point, I found the part in the handbook that states students with the dorm permit I have are allowed to park where I am. However, also in that research, I found last minute before sending in the appeal that the lot number the officer said I was parked in wasn’t even on the parking map.

I wrote a scathing appeal letter to the parking department. They wrote back this morning, saying they had cancelled the ticket, but that the lot that was specified on my ticket was actually there, just not yet on the map because of construction. I was told to make sure I wasn’t parking in that lot from now on.

I got that email back RIGHT before I drove up to campus this morning from home for class. I looked for the lot they said WAS actually there, and realized that the dumbass officer was wrong, and that I HAD parked in the right place when I got the ticket.

Class comes and goes. I walk back down to my car, get in, start out from the parking lot when I see this pink envelope on my windshield.

JESUS CHRIST.

The SAME officer wrote me up for the SAME thing. I WASN’T PARKED IN LOT 92, I WAS PARKED IN LOT 94!!!! AGAIN!!! WHERE I ALWAYS PARK!!!!!

I again wrote another scathing letter to the parking department, informing them that this certain officer is an imbecile and needs a new parking map. We’ll see how that goes.

Principal’s Office

So I’m sitting here at the rink, and fourteen-year-old Elizabeth said she got called to the principal’s office today.

That got me thinking about the times I got called to the principal’s office. The only serious ones I can remember are from ninth grade, courtesy of my wacko photo teacher. The class was a friggin’ joke. It was combined with eighth and ninth graders, and we all laughed and talked and threw things through the air on a daily basis.

Well, one day, we had been working in groups when crazy photo teacher decided to abruptly try and capture our attention and try to lecture us. Alyson, Kaitlin, two other people and I would not shut up. Said photo teacher just could not get us to stop talking. She eventually broke down and yelled at us all and ordered us to the principal’s office.

The principal herself was a joke. Is a joke. The assistant principal, though, is awesome, and I knew him because I used to be an office aide. He (and the receptionists) saw me come in and was smirking. He asked us what we did, and we just said we had been talking while she was trying to teach us. He basically said to apologize to her, but he knew she was a little off her rocker and to make the best of the situation.

HAHA.

What was some of your guys’ principal’s office moments?

In another story with the same class, my phone once rang LOUD while it was dead silent. I look up with a stunned expression on my face, since usually it was on vibrate. Photo teacher stared at me, watched me pick it up and turn it off. She said in a rude voice, “WHO would call you at THREE O’CLOCK during a SCHOOL DAY?!” I was like uhhh, lady, you’re fucking crazy. I seriously said, “well, I have FRIENDS in WASHINGTON DC who are ALREADY OUT OF SCHOOL!” She told me that they should know better than to call me during school.

What the hell.

Turns out it was my security system to my house. The power had shut off and I was on their call list.

 

-Another note: Today is Chili’s 100% donation day to St. Jude’s. PLEASE GO!!! SUPPORT CHILDHOOD CANCER AND RESEARCH.

My Awful Procrastination

I have known about this paper for English since last Friday. Yes, last Friday. Six days to write a freaking four to five page paper ROUGH DRAFT. So hard, right? Not.

Today at noon, I realized umm, hello Katie, you have class at ten AM tomorrow morning. Let’s get cracking on this paper.

Today at 8:30pm, I realized umm, hello Katie, you have class at ten AM tomorrow morning. DO YOUR FUCKING PAPER.

Today at 10:30pm, I realized I am finally done with my paper.

It actually really is quite stellar, if I do say so myself, for a rough draft cranked out in about an hour. (Facebook, texting, and iTunes got the best of me around 9:15pm.)

BAD procrastination. BAD, BAD!!

Smile

Quote of the Day:

Gwen (age five) to me: “Every time you smile, it makes me want to smile!”

=)

Totally made my day.

Reviews of the rest of my classes, eh?

History~ My 360 student class. Ya, holy shit. We are not required to go to the lectures though, just the discussion once a week so we’re split into about thirty students then. I have yet to go to discussion, the first one is tomorrow.

Seminar~ This is my learning community seminar, in which I currently have no idea if I will continue to be a part of since I dropped sociology, the required course for the learning community. But since I’m one of nine girls in the LC, I’m thinking Aryn and Dr. Storkel won’t care too much. The sociology class, I think I wrote about it, was a cool sounding class, but the professor really made me mad. So I switched out to a computer class.

EECS~ I have absolutely no clue what the actual title of this class is, but it’s in my dad’s department and the TA teaching was one of his students or something. I went to it for the first time today, and it was really sweet, not many people with the lab only taking like twenty minutes of an hour and fifteen minute class. Yay!

So tying up the title of this post… SMILE! You never know who really pays attention and sees it! =)

Woah, College Classes?!

Today was the first day of classes. =) I had three of my six classes today, and I shall break them down for you all. *Side note: This is not going to be a regular occurrence; I have absolutely zero intention of this blog becoming like my Xanga of middle school, where you would write a play-by-play of every class of every day. This is only happening to let you know my first impressions of my classes and to let you know how they seem!

Mkay. So I had Precalculus first, a fifty minute class. Basically, it’s your typical math lecture type class. The professor is young, and hallelujah, she speaks English, well! (Supposedly that’s a problem with math professors here at KU.) Today we covered a section of material, easy review, in thirty-five minutes.

-My realization for the day: College professors don’t bullshit around and keep you when you’re done material in class just to “fill time.”

I had awhile between math and my next class, so I found a nice bench and wrote in my journal… and texted my friends, hehe.

Sociology seems like a neat class, with little busy work; personally, this rocks my world, I hate hate HATE busy work. The only downside to this is that the work that we actually do is expected to be excellent, and the professor expects critical analytical responses. I suppose he’s quite similar to my English teacher last year, and I did do well in that class. The thought of analyzing always scares me even though I end up doing just fine. We ended up taking the whole hour and fifteen minutes of this class, with introductions and such. My whole learning community is in this class (all eight of us, haha.) Besides that, there is a mixture of people, from freshmen to seniors, more girls than guys, but the actual class size is only about twenty.

Thennn, my last class of Tuesday/Thursdays is Communication Disorders, a Speech-Language-Pathology class. The two women professors that split the class seem wonderful and fun, so I’m really looking forward to it; plus, we get to work with kids and observe the SPLH clinic! Four girls from my LC are in this class too, and I think I saw one guy walk in. This is a bigger class, maybe thirty-forty in it. We took up thirty minutes of the hour and fifteen allotted. =)

I got out early, so I rode the bus in a circle since I got on the one going in the wrong direction. No big deal though, since it’s not like I had anywhere important to go anyway. I just picked up my little brother from school like a nice sister so he didn’t have to ride the bus for an hour. (Yes, it takes an hour for him to get a mile and a half home riding the bus.)

Clearly, it’s only the first day, but I’m already enjoying college. With six classes, a social life, skating, family, babysitting, and my own downtime, I anticipate some rough spots this semester, but I know I can get through them into next semester. =)

Time Abounds

Okay, after all my bitching about how time flies, suddenly time has been shoved in my face. I mean, obviously classes have yet to start, so that would be why I have so much time, but wow. I don’t answer to my parents anymore, so I basically have the freedom to do whatever the hell I want. Which is nice, but I only have so many ways to fill my time!! I kinda just want classes to begin so I have something to DO.

I learned a few things today. I had a meeting with my learning community, Careers Working with Children, with a total of eight girls in it, including me. The peer educator, Aryn, was holding the meeting. I showed up, Aryn clearly showed up, and that was it. Apparently three girls were rushing, one had marching band, and the other three didn’t care enough to let Aryn know they weren’t coming. We had a nice conversation, she explained the seminar class and my communication diseases class that she took last year, and what activities she was planning on having us do this semester. I’m really glad I was there, just because I have more information now, and I got to know her. (Tofu, Mary, EOI, she has all the seasons of Friends =P) Anyhow, to the point of what I learned: I not only should go to class (durrrr,) but I want to go to class to get more information and to get to know my professor and other students. My history syllabus that I already have since it’s on Blackboard, explicitly says I don’t have to go to the lecture on Mondays and Wednesdays, but whenever my discussion day is, I have to go; of course, the lecture is highly recommended, and I mean, I’ll see how everything goes, but since I hate history and am so terrible at remembering things, I would rather go to the lecture and get more information to help me and to get to know my professor during his office hours so I can get help, because I can guarantee you right now, I’ll need it. I’m in the class that does after the Civil War, and I don’t even know when the Civil War was, so I don’t know what “after the Civil War” encompasses. Clearly I need to go to class… but I WANT to go to class! This is such a shocking revelation to me, so I’d thought I’d share.

So I suppose that’s what I learned today- I have a lot of free time, and I want to go to class.

Yay!

Now, whosever car alarm that is, PLEASE shut it off!!!!!!!!

Moved In

I really need to get cracking on writing blog entries for this month. We’re already halfway through August and I have what, five? That just won’t cut it!

In real news, I am all moved in! My roommate is from China, she seems pretty cool and very nice, so I think everything will be okay. Classes don’t start for another four days or something, so I’ll have some free time to get adjusted before being thrown into a new routine. Once I have nice things like rugs and posters and the beds the right way, I’ll put some pictures up of our room. I suppose it’s pretty big for a dorm room, it’s good enough for a place to crash which is really all that matters.

I am totally drained of energy at the moment though, so I think it is time to sleep.

The Longest Two Days EVER.

Orientation SUCKS.

We had to check-in at one in the afternoon yesterday and stay until eight at night. First of all… WHAT?! Eight o’clock at night. Are you KIDDING me?! But wait, there’s more. We had to come back today from eight a.m. to as late as six p.m.!!!!! Thank you god I got through advising and enrollment quickly, so I got out around three… that only happened by a stroke of luck.

I had to go to one building for advising. I then had to go to another to the first floor to get my learning community group stuff figured out and enrolled in those three classes. I then had to go enroll in three other classes alone in the computer lab. Then I was to run up to the third floor to talk to the Honors woman about getting into Honors English (which, thankfully, I did, and I am quite excited about it!) Then I had to go actually enroll in Honors English, sending me back down to the computer lab, which now had about a hundred students out the door waiting to get on a computer. My stroke of luck was that the building we were in was an engineering building and my dad happens to have an office there and was with me today for orientation, so I went up there to use his computer and get the hell out of dodge.

Enrollment is SO STRESSFUL. Orientation’s mostly blah blah, listen to people talk to you like you can’t figure anything out on your own (although one girl did ask, “If I bring my own printer, do I have to pay to print stuff out?”) Enrollment is the hard part though, because at KU classes fill up FAST. So you are literally racing the person on the computer next to you to get that seat in that class because there’s only maybe two left (no joke.) It is a race to who can click, read, and figure out scheduling fastest.

I am now done, though, and an official student at KU!

My classes are Math (3rd level freshmen class), History, Honors English (3rd level freshmen class), a Sociology class, Communication Disorders, and a seminar class. A total of eighteen credit hours.

If you didn’t know already, my goal is to double-major in Psychology and Elementary Education. This, I believe, is do-able, but will require some serious effort. I’m going for the Bachelor of General Studies degree in Psychology and the Bachelor of Science in Education for Elementary Education. The BGS allows room for a minor or a second major, but the BSE is tougher and has a LOT more major-only courses. The general education courses basically all transfer, which is super nice, so the Math, English, and History I’m taking this semester count towards both degrees. Next semester and the summer of ’09 I can quite easily get all my requirements for admission into the school of Education done (which usually you do by the end of sophomore year) so then sophomore year I can work on the rest of the requirements for the admission to the Psych program.

At least, that’s my plan. I don’t really have a main adviser yet, so once I’m actually in school I’ll have to go to the advising center and get one to make sure this would work.

Dorm Room

Yes, I got one! I’m actually kinda excited about it now, instead of all ugggghhhh they’re smallllll like I was earlier. The dorm I’m in is, admittedly, the worst one for girls, and it’s all girls, which sucks balls (hahaha,) but it’s not that big and a lot of the girls got stuck there too.. so there will be many of us that hate the residence but have a good time! There is a Facebook group for it as well, and it sounds like some cool people will be there.