The Journal of CSI_Sanders1129

So, I graduated on Saturday. It was fun, if not really, really hot. Sad, too, moving out and leaving. So much cleaning happened, too, the day before. We cleaned from like 11am to midnight, practically - there was some drunk cleaning and we had movies playing in the background (Anastasia, Lord of the Rings, Aladin) and Chinese was had, too.

Graduation itself was exhausting. The last of the cleaning, a quick lunch before we got ready. Had to be down at the gym by 1, and from 1 to like 2:10 they had us standing in a giant not air conditioned room. It was awful. Finally got into the gym where the ceremony was being held and felt sick to my stomach (probably from the heat). Speeches, speeches, pres of the University gave his speech endorsing Hunger Games (which he compared the job market to (only one in 24 of us will survive, thanks, dude!), more speeches, jokes about more speeches. Then began the long presentation of degrees, and by degrees I mean posters of the school because we get our degrees mailed to us. They pronounced my name wrong (really, it's live letters, it's very simple, jeez). Did the tassel thing once everyone was done and got to leave. Still felt like hell. Felt better once in air conditioned car. Went to take pictures with friends in front of history building and say goodbye. Returned to house to deal with crazy landlady who expects a house built in like 1916 to look pristine when hoardes of college students have been occupying it, said goodbye tot he roommates and that was that. Went out to dinner with parents and aunt/uncle who came out to Frostburg partially for the graduation but mostly just to wander around Western MD. Left early the next morning and spent so much time unpacking/reorganizing my room.

Anyway.

Grades:

Research Methods: A
Test 1: 97.5
Test 2: 97
Test 3: 100
Final: 94
Library Assignment:10/10
APA Quiz: 18/20
APA Paper: 88/90
Participation:20/20

Adolescent Lit: A
Test 1: 96
Test 2: 91
Test 3: 93
Project: 50/50
Final

Child Development: A
Pre-Test: 5/5
Test 1: 92
Test 2: 86
Test 3: 90
Test 4: 92
Final: N/A
Hot Topic 1: 19.5/20
Hot Topic 2: 20/20
Hot Topic 3: 19/20
Hot Topic 4: 20/20
Post-Test: 71/75

Drugs & Human Behavior: A
Test 1: 100
Test 2: 90
Final: 95
Application Paper: 100
Reaction Report: 200
+40 points Extra Credit

Music, Lyrics & Life: A
Start Here Quiz: 9/10
Introductions:20/20
Q1: 20
Q2: 20
Q3: 20
Q4: 16
Q5: 19
Q6: 20
Q7: 20
Q8: 20
Q9: 20
Q10: 20
Q11: 20
Q12: 20
Song Presentation 1: 80
Song Presentation 2: 80
Song Presentation 3: 100
Midterm: 96
Final: 100

I finished the semester with another 4.0 but my overall GPA was 3.941 (only one god damn B in there!) and anything above 3.9 is Summa Cum Laude, which yay!

Board game is coming along.

I bought a 5$ Chutes&Ladders game so I could use the board and the piece-bases.
I've organizes the 200 questions into 5 groups (Greek Mythology, Locations, Characters, Subtleties, and CHALLENGE!) I'm presently in the process of figuring out what on earth I'm going to print them on. Computer paper works pretty well, but requires a shit ton of cutting. I even founda Percy Jackson font to use. I have some ideas for the board. I'm hanging out with an artistically inclined friend on Sunday or Monday to help work on it. I figure it can kind of lay out like the progression of the book.
[New York (Museum or Montauk maybe?) -> Camp Half Blood -> Auntie Em's Garden Gnome Emporium (something about freezing players maybe?) -> Gateway Arch (falling players? Idk) -> Waterland -> Lotus Hotel & Casino (loop, have to roll x number to get out? or answer a question, idk?) -> Los Angeles -> Underworld (Maybe have either a path option or a fly by plane option wherein you have to answer a challenge question to safely cross the skies?)-> Empire State Building/Olympus.] I'm thinking my CHALLENGE! questions can be used at certain points on the board?

Ideas are welcome!

So, went out with friend tonight. They showed up here around 5:30 and we had to chill until like 7:30 when Ian, our ride, got off of work. Spent that time getting all dressed up (most Jenny, Dana, and Kayla, not so much much me.

Got on the road to Morgantown at like 8, got there a little after 9 and located the club - Vice Versa, which is a surprisingly awesome gay club next to an unsurprisingly awful regular club that was completely packed and neon and blacklighty and loud and required security checks. Vice doesn't even have a bouncer. Once we knew where we were going, we doubled back to grab some food from some place on the street and then at like 10:30 we went in. $5 Cover charge wasn't bad and I got a White Russian that tasted deceptively like a milkshake but had way more vodka in in than I realized at the time. Danced a bit, got a second drink, started feeling wonky for a while. Chilled at our table and played on my phone for a bit. Around midnight, they had a drag show. Reba McIntire impersonator was up first, covered a few songs and was awesome. Then some dude came out dressed like Justin Bieber with JB music playing and started stripping, which none of us were actually expecting. Might be the only time in my life that I enjoy JB songs. Reba came back out, did 'Fancy,' and then someone else came out to do a Nikki Minaj song. Then Reba came out dressed as Beyonce and then it was over. By then I was feeling awesome and so we danced until like 1:30 and then decided to get back home. Just got backa few minutes ago, almost 3.

Some of the people who went (Jenny and Kayla) are going to be miserable, because they are leaving for the Histry Club DC Trip in approximately 3 hours. I baile don that trip once this plan was established.

It was fun, though. QAF defintely skewed my expectations of all clubs. I kind of expected like wall to wall people and Babylon music and yeah, no. The last song they played was 'What Makes You Beautiful,' by One Direction, which is awesome, but not Babylon.

Hopefully we'll get to go back before the end of the semester.

So, today was eventful. Today was the Phi Alpha Theta (History Honor Society) Conference at Towson University. Which, while being blissfully close to where I live, did not allow me to go home for a bit - but, whatever, I'm going home on Tuesday for Spring Break.

Got up at 5, left the house at like 5:40 - I never want to be walking across campus under the eerie light of an early morning full moon ever again unless I haven't been to bed yet (not that the 2 hours of sleep I managed should count as such) - and we planned to leave at 6. There was a minor set back in that we were given the crappiest van the school had available - it was short a row of seats, so the 8 of us all had to squash in, the radio was wonky, heat control was limited, there was no gas in it (it's supposed to be filled up before it's returned to the van lot) and the oil change light was on. Took ten minutes to try to argue for a van switch, to no avail, and then to resign ourselves to being cramped. Had to stop for gas, so got on the road about 6:20. I have no idea how he managed it, because I was convinced we were going to be late, but we got there by like 8:40 and got checked in easily.

The first panels were at 9. I was in one and Kyle, our PAT President was in another. His family showed up, so the gaggle of Frostburg-ians came to mine. First up was some dude talking about Pirate stuff. He actually used the phrase 'So why is the rum gone?' and his display pic was the POtC logo. I was next, and I was misinformed about the technology available and therefore didn't have fancy powerpoints like the others in mine. My paper was 'Anti-British Propaganda in the Era of Revolution' and it was basically just an off-shoot paper of my Capstone that was designed as a Primary Source Analysis for my stupid Revolution class last semester. I was pretty freaked out about presenting - I hate it, I would typically be more apt to claw out my own eyes than to willingly present - but it wasn't that bad. I had some of my long!quotes memorized so I could look up more often than I thought I would. The third paper in my section (which was entitled TOO MANY REVOLUTIONS! (which sounds kind of bitchy)) was something about Union sympathizers in the South during the Civil War? I don't know. I'm really tired. Anyway. There was supposed to be a fourth person, but she never showed. So then we had a Respondent, who'd read all of our papers (and considering Kyle sent out a rough version of mine because he's an idiot it went well). Pirate dude got criticized for using a lot of secondary sources and virtually know Primary Sources. This flowed nicely into mine, given that it was the complete opposite, though not as critique-able given that it was a Primary Source Analysis. Civil War dude's paper did well, too. Then audience questions. Pirate dude got one: "Is that what Blackbeard really looked like?" Civil War dude got a bunch, but it was all "Why didn't you focus on this area in the South? There were Union sympathizers there!" that were really just all over annoying. I got two questions: One was "Which of the forms of propaganda mentioned in your paper would you consider most effective?" and "Did you run across a lot of Pro-British propaganda?" I don't feel like answering them and I'd have to explain way too much of my paper for the first one, so I'm not going to. And then it was done.

I was the only one of the Frostburg gang to go to one of the Second Panel presentations. Everyone else went to explore the campus a bit, which was totally cool. Most of them have been to conferences before, but I haven't. I sat in on one I thought would be interesting but was really just woefully boring. First was something about Ireland, which interested me and prompted me to see it - turns out it was some boring thing about Home Rule and land stuff and all based on a bunch of bland periodicals. Second, which also sounded interesting, was something about World War II and the British Home Front, but it ended up being about art depictions of WWII Britain. Third was some dude talking about how Operation: Eagle Claw resulted in a specialized air force (I'm a little hazy on this, as I said, I'm tired, but it was the most interesting of the three).

Then was lunch which was unimpressive. Then the keynote address, which was pretty interesting. It was about the Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals. Sadly, it wasn't terribly informative if you'd ever seen the play/movie 'Bent'. Which I have. Still, it was interesting.

Third panel was up last - my roommate, Jenny was in this one. The first girl in her panel was awful - she took goddamn forever to read her paper and she was damn quiet and boring and monotone and her paper was about Russian something or the others not really existing and I could not have cared less about the content of her paper. She also went over the time limit by like 10 minutes and clearly our moderator sucked (dude who keeps us on track). Jenny was up next. Her paper was on the Muslim Brotherhood and while I know nothing about that either, she made it entertaining and interesting. Last up was some dude with a paper equally as long as the first girls, but slightly more interesting. His was about gender roles in the Quaker population during the American Revolution. Their respondent sucked. His specialty is Russian stuff so he was fawning all over the Russian girl and asking these really in-depth questions. Moderator did he back on track for a bit and he offered quick stuff for Jenny and the Quaker dude. His comment to Jenny was pretty much 'So, can you please define the Muslim Brotherhood?' Apparently there were some awkward audience questions - some woman rephrased a bunch of stuff that Jenny said in her presentation bracketed by the word 'actually' to make it sound as if Jenny were wrong, even though she was saying the exact same thing.

Quick awards ceremony after that - the girl with the annoyingly long and boring paper was apparently a grad student and won first place. Ugh. Another grad student, who'd been in with Kyle's group, won second. 3 Undergrads won, too, but we didn't know any of them from the panels.

Got out of there just after 4, piled back into the van and stopped in Hagerstown for food (not as awesome as usual (typically we stop at a restaurant) as some people we were with didn't wanna wait around were like 'let's just get fastfood from the mall food court' so yeah). Got back to Frostburg just after 8 and fucking fuck I am so tired.

Gilded Age:
Participation Journal 1: 50/50
Participation Journal 2: 50/50
Principles of Scientific Management Paper: 150/150
Manliness Paper: 180/200
Up From Slavery Paper: 200/200
Imperialism Paper: 114/125 + 3
The Jungle Paper: ???/225

Animal Psych:
Exam 1: 93/100
Exam 2: 96/100
Exam 3: 101.6/100
Final Exam: 100/100
Ethogram: 18.5/20
Journal Analysis: 98/100
Participation: 20/20

Revloution:
Quiz: 82/100
Midterm Exam: 170/200*
Primary Source Analysis: 95/100
Final Exam: 91/100
Attendance: 100/100
Participation: 80/100

*This is the class that gave me a panic attack the other night. That 170/200 grade? Yeah, when the professor first posted the grade, she graded out of 100 but didn't change the 200, so I kind of freaked out, thinking that I somehow ended up with less than 50% on a paper worth 25% of my grade for the class. I ended up crying at my roommate when I told her about it, and then sending a rather distraught email to the professor that went something like 'CAN WE TALK? HOW... I HAVEN'T FAILED ANYTHING IN YEARS AND 85/200 AND AND AND...' But, yeah. Took her 12 hours to answer that email and I was fairly certain I hadn't actually failed, but it was still not a fun night. Also, I have no idea how she intends to grade our 8-10 page PSA and our 6-8 page Final Exam between now and Monday, since it took her from Oct 28 to Sec 8 to grade the 6-8 page midterm.

Capstone:
Houses of History Theory Paper: 82/100
Thesis/Outline/Annotated Bibliography: 92/100
Critiques: 86/100**
First Draft: 94/100
Final Paper: 91/100
Presentation: 84/100
Attendance: 100/100

**I'm actually arguing this, as I lost points for not delving terribly deeply into corrections for a paper I was not actually required to read and the professor didn't catch two of my reviews. Also, this amounts of 89.95% and I want to be sure he's rounding. ETA: NEVERMIND, GOT AN A.

I finished the last Gilded Age Paper a little while ago and would prefer to get the Revolution Final done tonight, as well. Everything else is just waiting on grades. Going to Hagerstown as a last hurrah with friends on Friday, roommate's boyfriend's birthday is Monday, so both of those things should be fun. Then going home on the 20th.

Guess what, guys?

I FINISHED MY CAPSTONE! IT. IS. FINISHED!!!

It's 10,515 words, 38 pages (with title page, visuals, and bibliography). AND IT IS FINISHED!

...sadly I still have another paper (only 4 pages) to write before Thursday so I can go home.

So, classes...

Psych is still cool. I got a 93 on our first test, next one is next Thursday. It's pretty straightforward. Listening to my classmates bitch about writing essays was entertaining at least - history students loooove essay questions - you can make things up on essay questions, whereas if you're wrong on a multiple choice question, you're kinda SOL. We have a paper due soon, too. It requires stalking squirrels.

Gilded Age is still awesome. The prof really likes my papers for a reason I cannot fathom because I think they've been terrible, but okay. Ugh, he's entertaining and the subject matter is interesting.

Revolution still sucks. We took a quiz 3 weeks ago and we still haven't gotten our grades back. We have a midterm due on Friday (which I need to, like, start). She actually used a powerpoit in class on Monday! This should have been an improvement, but it was basically just 12 slides of maps with dialogue like 'This is a map of ____ in ____ year.' Then she started talking about teh War of 1812 (which is way after the course cut-off date) but with ideas like 'When the British tried to take America back again...' (Hint: Not what they were doing!) and ughhhh I hate that class. Wish I could drop it, but can't.

Capstone. Ah, Capstone. Our first draft is due by midnight with an annotated bibliography. I FINISHED IT ON TUESDAY (after staying up all night so I could buy and watch Captain America guilt free). God, that paper was killed. Presently, it's 36 pages - with pictures, title page, and a non-annotated Bibliography. I'm doing edits now and then the Bibliography then knocking out the midterm. We do peer reviews/prof reviews/edits from now til Nov 17, when the final version is due. The prof emailed out thesis to people he considers experts in our fields to read our papers - mine is going to Noam Chomsky. And a couple of random propaganda professors. And it's going to Awesome!Prof because it can. Ohgod.

Yesterday marked yet another three hour car ride. Left around 8 with most of Capstone class. A couple people bailed on us. I think we had like 10 of the 13, plus the professor. Our van was the cool van - five of us. We dubbed the van the Mystery (and /or History) Machine and dubbed ourselves as Mystery Inc people. I ended up as Scooby, Had fun and ridiculous sing-a-longs to classic rock songs. Got to the metro around 9 something, into DC just before 11. Got through the whole Registration process at Library of Congress, got our Reader ID's and headed into the main room. We stupidly had not requested our materials ahead of time, so we all went through and found a handful of potential sources and requested them. Said it would take like an hour, and it was close to 1 by then. We ended up walking like 2 miles to get food. Ended up at the same sandwich shop we went to when we were in DC during Spring semester. Decided to be blissfully lazy and take the Metro back to the LoC. By then, our stuff was ready (damn well better have been since we got back at like 3. I'd requested 6 books, only 1 showed up. The others all came back with Not On Shelf notifications, which sucked. Got some decent info from the book I did find and skimmed over that pretty well. Packed up just shy of 5 and headed out. Our van decreased to 4 people, the 5th opted to ride in the not as cool van once we got off the Metro. Stopped in Hagerstown for Panera Bread and Starbucks (YUM) and then headed back here. Ended up chilling at friends house and being slightly intoxicated and didn't come home until like 4AM. Fun, though. Might go back on Friday for more research.

So, Renaissance Fair was yesterday, It was fun, but in the end the weather kicked our asses. Woke up around 6:45, left the house at 7:30 with two friends who'd opted for parking there, and the four of us headed down to the police station to pick up the van we reserved for the trip. There were seven of us in total. We stopped for breakfast at Sheetz and got on the road about 8 or so. Stupidly, we forgot to like, print directions, so we relied heavily on the GPS built into my phone which completely kills my battery. It was roughly a 3 hour drive. We entertained ourselves with random conversations and silly sing a longs. We lacked the iPod hook up we'd used for the trip to DC, so we picked songs we could remember the words to. It entailed a lot of Disney music. Especially Mulan. I've had 'I'll Make A Man Out Of You' stuck in my head for upwards of 24 hours at this point. Stopped once on the way there for a break from the van and made it into the RenFair parking lot with a minimum of issues around 11.

We spent a while wandering around because half of us had never been there before. The awesome roommate's Dad and Sister were there, so we met up with them for a little while, along with the fellow-history club member who works there. We checked out the Unnatural History Museum which was silly and ridiculous, but worth the dollar it cost to get in. Realized soon after that everything for sale there is stupidly expensive and therefore I spent a whopping $6.50 there. $5.50 of which was on food sometime later. Wandered around pretty much everywhere, managed to lose one of the members of our group (she found other friends from Frostburg and chilled with them for a bit) while grabbing food. From there, we went to see the Joust. That was crowded. Yay, Maryland's State Sport (Lacrosse is the state team sport, but as far as I know, Jousting is still the state sport). The people behind us were absolutely baffled by the 'Huzzah' cheers that are used at RenFair. They were also confused by the fact that they did things other than fight each other, They had four tests prior to that, one with the little bronze rings, two with knocking a block of wood off a post - one fronthand, one backhand, with their swords - and then a combination of all three of those things. From there they did the jousting against each other. It was cool. And made me want to watch Merlin.

From there, we were trying to kill time until 4 when a show we wanted to see was set to state. We wandered around some more, with a rough goal of trying to find the lost friend. The roommate left us at some point to go hang out with her family before they left, and the 5 of us still in the group circled around a couple more times. By then it was like 40 degrees and quite chilly. It was like the Frostburg weather followed us across the state to fuck with us. Eventually, we got word that the roommate had found the lost friend and that she was smashingly drunk. We headed back to the stage where the show was going to be and indeed she was smashingly drunk. Macbeth was ending when we got there, we were there to see Shakespeare's Skum, which was a parody of Richard III. Twas quite amusing, but it started raining just after we got there and that just sucked. It was that icy cold rain and it was getting colder out and ughhhh. Sat through the show, and then sat through The Royal Chess Game. Wizard Chess would've been cooler, but then again, I spent most of the show staring at my shoes so my hood would stay up as we all slowly froze to death.By general consensus, we left after that. By the time we got out to the van in the far ends of teh parking lot, it was close to 5:15 or so. We didn't get off the lot and back onto the highway until like 6:15. By then we were mostly nice and warma nd dry again.

We intended to stop in Hagerstown (about an hour away from Frostburg) for dinner. After naps and some more singing and chatting, we got to the exit around 7:30. However, there was an accident that entirely fucked everything up. We sat there for an hour. The restaurant was literally 5 minutes away and it took us an hour. Finally got in and seated at Garfield's in the mall in Hagerstown around 9 or so. It was fun and tasty and delicious. You can draw on the tables and our waiter was like a ninja. Had steak and shrimp with a baked potato and a salad. The three of us at our table shared an apple crisp which was amazingly delicious and then headed out around 10:15 or so. More sleeping/chatting on the rest of the way back. Hit Frostburg around 11:30, was relieved not to see snow on the ground (there was a possibility!), gassed up the van and got dropped off at home.

Fun day, but fuck it was cold.

So. That was (and still is) exhausting. I came home on Tuesday after I got out of class at 3:15 (also, yay for a perfect score on my Gilded Age paper!) and we got home around 6:30. Zach helped me get out of a level I'd been stuck on in Dragon Age II for forever and I managed to beat the game (Yay for a RUNAWAYWITHANDERS OPTION!) before kismekilmeluvme picked me up around 8 so we could go hang out. We had a tasty dinner and an amazing dessert and caught up and it was fun. Came back to my house and chilled for a while.

Woke up early yesterday so I could be productive for a little while, ended up running out for groceries and some books. Was hoping to find a Kent State thing I'd been looking for, but didn't. Chilled for a while at home, left around 4 and headed for DC for the concert. Got there maybe 5:30ish. Chilled til just after 6 when they let some of us in early. It was at the 9:30 Club, which is a weird and not terribly awesome venue. I miss Recher. So much. They let about 30-40 people in early and by let us in, I mean shuffled us into a dark, warm basement for 45 minutes. until 7 o'clock hit. We did get to go in before the people waiting outside and unlike Rams Head, they don't charge for that privilege, so that was admittedly nice. Got spots on the rain, but they were in teh center so that was less awesome because microphone stands are annoying, and then we had to wait until 8:30. It was a loooong wait. On the plus side, I beat the level of BubbleBuster I'd been stuck on on my phone for forever.

Vanessa Carlton was the opening act and I cared so little that I have no idea what she played, My camera was camera was being wonky as fuck so i didn't even have the distraction of playing with settings to keep me entertained. She played 8 songs, and was off by like 9:10.

Matt Nathanson started at 9:30, as the name of the venue helpfully suggested. This was his second night in a row playing there. He played: Mercy, Falling Apart, Modern Love, Still, Queen Of (K)nots/Tainted Love (Soft Cell Cover), Princess/Jesse’s Girl (Rick Springfield Cover), Laid, Bottom Of The Sea, Room @ The End Of The World, The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel Cover), Sad Songs, All We Are, Drop To Hold You, Car Crash, and Detroit Waves/Acrobat (U2 Cover). Encored with Faster, Blister In The Sun (Violent Femmes Cover), and Come On Get Higher. Played til just after 11. It was a pretty fun concert, even if he wasn't quite as funny as he was at the other small venue shows I've seen him at (Recher, Towson). He made jokes and there was plenty of laughing, though. There was terrible, terrible lighting though. It was either too dark to take decent pictures (which has never ever ever been a problem for me from the front row) or I had a spotlight shinign straight into my eyes. So, didn't get any pictures, really. Afterward, there was a meet&greet if you'd bought any of his Merch and I'd gotten a shirt and a free poster, so I went to do that. Dad scored the set-list, too. Got to meet Matt again and got the poster signed and a picture with him. At first I thought he remembered me from one of the other shows, cause he was like "Hey, it's you!" but that was followed by "Front row, huh? Nice!" Anyway.

Got out before midnight and ended up home around 1:15 or so. Ended up crashing at like 2:30 after packing and showering and then got up at 5. I planned to sleep on the car ride back out to Frostburg, but I couldn't fall back asleep. Got back here around 8:30, got mostly unpacked and organized and took a nap from 9 to 10 but I have been so so so ridiculously tired all day long. My Psych class is always dark and room and it took considerable effort for me to a) get out of bed and go to class b) stay awake once I was there. Lunch helped, so I was awake for Gilded Age. Have to go back down for Capstone later. Joy. And then maybe possibly chilling with friends if I manage to remain conscious.

Z____Z