"On Monday, instead of asking your friends 'Hey, what's your story?', ask them 'Hey, what's your mythos?' - My Mythology Prof

"What are you doing?!" (Shakespeare prof to a very late student) "I'm looking for a seat." "You're not looking for a seat, you're looking for a social life. Sit down."


I've neglected my blog since school started. There isn't much to report, really. The reading is increasing steadily, but I'm still a week ahead, which I'm going to try really hard to keep throughout the year.

I'm actually finding the workload not too bad - I think this has a lot to do with my 2 or 3 short shifts per week at work. Speaking of work, they're hiring 20 or so new employees for the Christmas season. This seems like a lot to me. I mean, it'll be great to have tons of help, because even now it's starting to get really busy at night. But, with 20 new employees, it'll be very difficult for those experienced employees to get all of the shifts they want/need to pay for their education.

Oh well... back to reading I go!

"Like, oh my god, look at all of those puppies!"
"I know! There is so much! Like, at LEAST six." - two teen girls on the subway discussing a couple who had many small dogs

"I love reading the dictionary, it's like... my favourite pet peeve. It's a new hobby of mine. And I love conversating with people. That rocks." - some dumbass on tv

So, my first "week" of school has ended. Here are some overall impressions of my classes and of people in general.

My Canadian Literature prof is cool, but he's very much like Mr. Dick, in that, given the chance, he will talk for hours on nothing whatsoever. He started the lecture by asking the class what we think a "Canadian author" is, and then proceeded to go into an elaborate story about how he was a hippy and how much fun he had when he was in university.

The mythology course that I'm taking is in the worst room in the entire school. There's one main entrance, so (naturally) everyone crowds around that one door. By doing this, however, they are not only blocking the way for one to go to the other door (which, admittedly, is somewhat hidden from the frosh's view), but also blocking the entire hallway so that other students cannot pass to go to their own classes. It doesn't take a brilliant person to see that if you just make a small gap between you and the person in front of you, other students (aka me) would not push you out of the way rudely with their shoulders or backpacks. Anyway, so we finally get into the class (after waiting for the class prior to ours to make their way single file out of the one door). Before the lecture began, this guy went up to the prof and asked her if he could have three copies of the syllabus to give to some friends because they couldn't make it and he had to leave right away. She gave him one copy of the first page, and said he could have the rest when he came to the next lecture. I thought that was cool. I mean, yes, first class of the year can be really boring, because most profs go through every word that's written on the syllabus, as if we can't read. Yes, I know we're at UTSC, but give us SOME credit (haha). My first impression of her was a good one. However, she is an oddball. For example, in her introduction of the course, she paused and look around the room. "How many of you here like to draw or like to look at paintings?" A few people hesitantly put up their hands. "You're in the right place!" she said, a little too enthusiastically. "How many of you here like to listen to music?" A few more people put their hands in the air. "You're in the right place!" Another pause. "How many of you like... stories?!" Snickers, but tons of hands. "And YOU are in the right place!" Sigh. There goes the first impression. For some reason, the professor didn't bother to staple the three pages of the syllabus together, so we had to pass the three stacks of paper around the room. This should never be done in any classroom. There was always the one person in the back of the room who was skipped, so the lecture had to stop so that the prof could send the stack up his/her way. While this was going on, a few more students came into the class and scrambled for seats. The professor asked if everyone had a copy, and this one girl (who had JUST stepped into the classroom and was still standing close to the doorway) waved to her and said, "I don't have any of them", to which the professor shook her head and replied, "You can get yours after class."

They've removed a lot of the study space at school, so I have no idea where I'm going to study during my break on Tuesday and Thursdays... Then again, who needs to study, right?

I'm dying of excitement...

Apparently, Hawksley Workman is coming out with a live DVD in November. I will, literally, be first in line. Unfortunately, who will carry such a DVD?! Sigh.

I'm happy.

Under a week to go...

I'm both looking forward to school and dreading going back. The reading and learning aspect will be fun and I'm very excited about most of my courses this year. On the other hand, I'll have less time to do what I want, namely seeing Chris and relaxing with a good (and not a course required!) book. Oh well. I guess I can wait until December's holidays to read some more...

I saw my (well, I guess Melissa's) A-Team the other night. It was nice to see them after so long. Funny story. Ashley and Melissa came to visit me at work, so I took a minute to say hi and give them a hug. Well, we didn't notice that there was a police officer standing right beside us when we were hugging each other, and he said, "Well, I've never received that kind of service here!" or something like that. He retold this story when he went to cash, as well, I found out later.

I can't believe that there isn't anything else that's new...