Waiting for the bus.

Got my Ideology and Politics exam back today. 67 percent. Ouch.

That is well below my usual personal minimum of 75 percent, and WAY below my usual average of 83 percent. So I am not a happy camper.

I have a very strong feeling that we are being held to standards that were never made clear to us. A lot of what she said about the weaknesses in our exam answers are things she never taught us. She seems to expect us to be able to write like scholars without her teachung us how, and this is a first semester intro level course. We have to learn to crawl before we learn to walk.

But seeing as I am still smarting from a low grade, all such thoughts must be viewed as suspect. It could very well be that I am simply lashing out against something which upsets me and wrecks the warm glow of ego I have been enjoying lately.

And to be honest, I knew I had not done well. So this should not have come as a big shock.

Clearly, I have some work to do in order to get my grades back up to where I feel they belong in this course. That means I am going to have to become a better scholar, as well as pay very, very close attention to anything instruction-like the prof says, and really try to get into her head and figure out what it is she wants from us.

Luckily, I am pretty good at that kind of thing.

(—)

Fuck! My bus finally showed up… and it was full! Son of a bitch. Right now, I am back in Kwantlen, where it is warm. The next bus is not till 6:10, so I have fifteen minutes to warm up and wallow in seething resentment of full buses and low marks.

Oh well. At least I still have you nice people.

I have two of the three pictures I need for that stupid “overheard conversation” assignment for my Creative Writing class. The third I will do at home.

I got my snippets of overheard conversation from the BCSFA meeting last Sunday. I figured that this way, I would be overhearing quality stuff. But I am still not happy about the assignment. I hate having to do this kind of thing.

I just want to write. Ask me to write a play, a poem, an editorial, an obituary, a business letter, a memo, or a shopping list and I will do it, happily and well.But forcing me to eavesdrop and take pictures? So very not on.

Oh well, I suppose taking people outside of their comfort zones is part of the mandate of education. But I am still going to resent it. I am a writer, writing is what I do, and I can write anything.

I’m just not great with the photography.

(—)

Home now. The next bus was almost full but I got on anyhow. I was too impatient to get home to wait for yet another bus. So I ended up standing around three quarters of the way home. Fat guys hate standing.

But it’s not that long a trip, and I did get to sit down after the bus stopped at the Skytrain and that sucked out like three quarters of the people on the bus.

And only replaced like, half of them.

It’s definitely getting to be chilly. I was cold enough after waiting at the bus stop for the bus (the one that turned out to be full) that I was thinking about getting a pair of long johns.

Do people around here even know what long johns are? Long underwear, people. Kind of a necessity if you live somewhere that has real winter. When going outside means facing temperatures of -18 C, it’s all about the layers.

And these dress pants of mine don’t exactly provide much protection.

It’s going to be worse tomorrow night. IT’ll be 9 PM when I get out of Creative Writing class. My jacket protects me just fine from shoulders to mid-thigh, but the rest of me needs more.

Who knows, maybe I will find a nice little restaurant to eat at partway home. Like say, the White Spot on Ackroyd. That way, I have an incentive to walk home like I did last week.

Otherwise, things are funky winkerbean. My metafictional website is due tomorrow as well, plus some little “read theses things then write 150 words about which one you like and why” thing. Whatever. That’s barely an effort for someone like me.

Still working on developing a big ego. Nothing assholish, just a cocky attitude towards the world and a firm (ish) belief that I am an amazing human being with lots to offer the world if the world would only wise up and take it.

How’s that? Eh, it’s still a WIP.

Right now, the Melt is kicking in and I feel really sleepy. I wish I could just give in and go to sleep. But I haven’t eaten supper yet, and I got a bunch of work to do for that Creative Writing class tomorrow night. And while you would think not having to go to class till six PM would leave me plenty of time to do my work tomorrow, experience has taught me that those extra hours have a tendency to evaporate real fast once you factor in a trip to the therapist.

Oh, and I have to make another doctor’s appointment, because the medicine he prescribed me for a certain rather person problem last Friday night was apparently a) super expensive, like $360 for the full course of treatment b) super obscure, so obscure that the elderly pharmacist at Shopper’s had never heard of it, and c) super rare, seeing as the full pharmacy at the local Shopper’s did not carry it.

So I have to go back to the doc to get something less esoteric for my condition. I realize now that I could have let the pharmacist take care of that, but whatever.

Being a grownup is so much work!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.