A Good Beginning

Getting through the first week of a new semester always feels like such an accomplishment to me. I have slain my giants, and I’m ready for week two.

My first class of the week, meeting three times a week, is Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. Definitely trying to fill a Gen Ed requirement there. My impression of the class is that it will be interesting in content, but it has a lot of abstracts involved and I don’t much care for abstracts. If all I had to do were sit and listen, it would be a very interesting class, but I find it hard to take notes on the lectures. There are only about ten gradable aspects of this class. It puts a lot of pressure on doing well on everything because you only have to blow one thing and you’re sunk in the good-grade department.

The class has around 45 people in it—a little big for my taste. The reading assignments have potential of being overwhelming, especially the second half of the semester. I’m not too pleased with the second book that we have to read. It’s a 400-page book about a voodoo priestess. Ugh!

I think this is only the second teaching semester for the prof so I hope his ideals aren’t too high. I was amused when, on the second day of class, he informed us that even though he has his doctorate, it gives him the willies to be called Dr. M. We are to call him by his first name.

Right after Anthropology, I have German II. It will fulfill my one-year of a foreign language requirement. For the first time since we started college, Kris and I have a class together. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not. It’s nice in the sense that we can do the homework together, but I can feel the pressure of the competition already. Whoever does better than the other on something will have to deal with the bitterness of the other. Sometimes competition can be a good thing; sometimes it’s a bad thing. I haven’t decided which one it is yet.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have my first accounting class. I’ve only been to it twice but I think it’ll be a good class. I always like to establish my place in a classroom before the majority of the students arrive so they have to choose to sit next to me, not vice versa.

I arrived on the first morning and sat at the end of one of the tables. I’m always amused to watch people fill in the ends of tables before filling in the middle. The room began to fill up, when in walked Brandon. I first encountered Brandon in my Speech class and drew his name for introductions that night. Much to my mortification, I managed to butcher his last name that night. He didn’t seem to hold it against me.

Brandon showed up next in my Computer class last semester and sat next to me in that class. Now, he showed up in my Accounting class. He smiled and asked me if I’m trying to show up in all of his classes. “I seem to do well when I sit next to you, so I think I’ll sit here,” he said and sat down next to me. I was glad to have at least one familiar face in class.

There is actually a guy from my German class last semester in my Accounting class, but for some reason he has never given me the time of day. I could meet him on the sidewalk anywhere, anytime and he would always look straight past me or through me as if I was as transparent as a sheet of glass. I guess it’s just a difference in people. Maybe he’s embarrassed to be associated with me?

After Accounting, I’m taking the first of three required Economics classes—Microeconomics. I’m taking the same professor that Kris had for that class. I’ve got a friendly face in that class as well—Monique from Algebra. She is quite gleeful that we are in the same class. I’m afraid she’s going to be disappointed.

The prof for Economics is quite unique. For instance, he will talk about a concept, give an example, and then pick someone out of the class and ask them if they got it. If they say yes, then he has them explain it back to him. If they say no, he’ll ask someone next to them and if they say yes then he tells them to explain it to their classmate that doesn’t get it.

While people are explaining stuff to each other, he’ll have these little undertone conversation with students. He’ll catch someone’s eye and start talking to them in a low tone. This, of course, distracts me because he’s talking just quiet enough that I have to look up in order to combine hearing and lip-reading to catch the conversation.

On the second day of class, he had one such conversation with me. He looked at me and said, “I’d have known your name even if you hadn’t told me.” “You would?” I said. “Yes, how much of an age difference is between you two?” he asked. I told him there is a difference of two and a half years. “You really could pass for twins,” he said, just standing there gazing at me. “So I hear,” I said.

Kris found him highly amusing, so I expecting great things from him. I fully expect to struggle with the concepts, but at least I’ll be amused while I struggle.

My original plan for the semester was to have all of my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I could work full days Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That plan was shot all to bits when I discovered that my German class was only held on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I rearranged my classes.

Once I was done with my schedule, I discovered that my MWF classes are both in the same building and my TR classes are held in the same building. Even though it was unintentional, I felt pretty clever. No rushing through the teeming masses trying to get to class before it starts. It’s just a walk down the hall in one building and down one flight of stairs in the other building.
From this end of things, it looks like it’ll be a good semester.

Heading for the Hills

On August 17, 2004 I wrote “sometimes it would be so handy to see a glimpse of the future…” and I still think that it would be handy know how things will be in the future. Back in November when I was selecting classes for this semester I got a glimpse of some of what my future will hold if I remain on my current path, and it was enough to make me want to run for the hills.

After this semester I will only have two more general education classes left to complete my general education. I will probably leave those to fill in slots of extra time that come up in future semesters. Well, I was trying to figure out what classes I should take in which semester so I made a comprehensive list of the classes required for my major. Classes like “Business Law for the Accounting Professional”, “Advanced Tax Accounting”, “Auditing and Assurance Services”, “Quantitative Methods”, and “Strategy and Policy” sound so…so out of my league!

I hear the Smoky Mountains are nice this time of year…

More Than Anxiety

The house has been cleaned. Carpets have been shampooed. Fan blades have been dusted (we got serious, people). Furniture has been rearranged. There are still projects that we didn’t get to but I’m pleased with what we did accomplish.

I can see the top of my desk for the first time since I purchased it just before last semester. I can see it now, just in time to cover it back up for the upcoming semester.

Finances have been updated (a sad situation, to be sure). All accounts have been reconciled. All statements have been filed. Well, except for the one that I couldn’t find. The fact that they are all reconciled and up to date at the same time is huge!

My backpack has been packed. All textbooks have been purchased. I haven’t figured out my method for notes for the different classes i.e. notebook or binder, but I’ve got the supplies for either way.

My car still has the ability to have “wash me” written on any surface, inside or out, but I’m hoping to take care of that tomorrow night. I had told myself that I couldn’t go to bed on Saturday night until it was clean but circumstances kept me from it.

So I should be ready, right? Except I’m not.

Over the past week or so, I’ve felt the pre-semester anxieties setting in—a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach; a band slowly tightening around my heart. By Saturday night, I realized that it had gone a bit further than just anxiety.

Kris and I had gone to BG to do some last minute shopping. I told Kris that my lower extremities seemed to have a weird numb sensation. By the time we got home I was feeling somewhat sick to my stomach but not totally. The weird numb sensation spread to my entire body. My eyes were burning and itchy.

My face felt like it was burning up, but I was cold. I longed to do as I did when I was a child—take a blanket, find a register expelling warm air, lie down next to it, use the blanket to seal myself and the register in, and get toasty warm. Alas, the air in my house comes from the ceiling, making it impossible to accomplish such a feat.

I took a hot shower. It felt weird because my skin had become ultra-sensitive to all sensations. I turned up my electric blanket and went to bed. My fever must have broken around 4 in the morning because I woke up hot as a biscuit and sweating like it was summertime.

Fortunately, it was my turn to stay home with Mom’s patient so I didn’t have the dilemma of deciding if I was well enough to go to church or not, especially because I wasn’t. Another fortunate thing for me was that Mom & Dad were going away for lunch so I didn’t have to fix a huge lunch.

So here I am, a mere nine and a half hours from class-time, wondering if puking would make me feel better, and running to the bathroom as if it’s the newest fad. Aaargh!!

Seeing Double

In December I was honored at an awards ceremony for my performance in German. At reception afterwards, Kris & I were speaking with Kris’s former German prof and my current German prof. In the course of conversation, my prof admitted that, after having me in his class for a week, he went to the master roster to see just how many people with my last name were enrolled at the school. He had subbed one day for Kris’s prof during the previous semester, and when I showed up in his class he was pretty sure that I was Kris and in the wrong class. After seeing that there were two of us, he realized that I was in the right class after all. He never said a word about it to me until that night. Kris & I were amused.

*** *** *** *** *** ***

Several days a week, Kris & I would walk to our first class at the same time. Kris would often cut through my building and continue on to hers and in the process meet people coming to class from the dorms. One day a girl came into the room and inquired if I happened to have a sister on campus. I confirmed that I did. She had met Kris on her way into the building. At first she couldn’t understand why I would be going away from the math building when I obviously had class in it. When she arrived in the classroom, I was sitting there so she came to the conclusion that it couldn’t have been me that she just met.

During the course of the semester, several more people asked me similar questions and still others became reporters of “I saw your sister.” One morning, Elizabeth proceeded to tell me that the previous day she and Brittany, another girl in our class, were sitting at the library looking out over the plaza in front of the library. “Look,” Brittany said, “There goes Sharon.” Elizabeth looked and told her that it was not me. “Yes, it IS Sharon,” she insisted. “No, it’s NOT her,” Elizabeth said. “Sharon was wearing tan socks with maroon flowers this morning. That girl is wearing white socks, so it can’t be her.”

I laughed. “Elizabeth,” I said, “My socks? You remember my SOCKS??”

“Well, I thought your socks were cute and that I need to start wearing cute socks,” she said.

The things that people notice…

Memories From Algebra

I want to record a few memories of my previous semester before the new semester takes over and I forget them all.

Over the last semester, Algebra was my favorite class. I saw my classmates in that class nearly every weekday for sixteen weeks, and I became rather fond of them—some more than others.

On the first day of class, as people trickled in one by one, most of the girls sat on the left side of the room and most of the guys sat on the right side of the room; therefore, girls surrounded me except for the TA that sat to my immediate left. It didn’t take long for some of the girls to catch on that I was capable of comprehending the concepts that Mrs. P put forth. One girl in particular was Elizabeth.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth sat in the row to my right and one seat up. By several weeks into the semester, I often would arrive in class to find Elizabeth there to greet me with a “Good Morning, Sharon!” “Good Morning, Elizabeth,” I’d say. “Sharon, I need some help!” she’d say and pull her notebook out. I would settle into my seat and she would begin to ask questions. Much to my amusement, small “ask Sharon”s would be scrawled throughout the previous night’s homework. I would explain stuff to her, and she would see the error of her ways and correct them. “Sharon,” she’d say, “You are a genius!” “Well, thanks,” I’d say. How can you not like someone that thinks you’re a genius?

Some mornings, Elizabeth would greet me with a “Sharon—I don’t have any questions this morning because I am a genius.” “Well good for you!” I’d say. Other mornings when Elizabeth would greet me with a question, I’d have to say something like, “I really wish I could help you but that one flew straight over my head, too.” So then we would write our questions up on the board for Mrs. P to deal with when she got to class.

When it came time to get test scores back, I was intending to keep my score to myself but not with these girls! Scores in this class were not a private matter. Shortly after the first test, the girls began talking about having a study session before the final and, according to them, I was going to be the leader—no ifs, ands, or buts about it. After each test, they would again reiterate what my role would be before the final. I had my doubts that such a session would take place, so I just played along with them.

Yes, I Can Read

Mrs. P had to go to the state capital one day to deal with high school related testing. She told us that the TA would be in charge that morning and we should, as usual, put our questions on the board so he could answer them before we took a quiz.

We were dealing with solving systems of equations that day and several questions were put on the board for the TA to demonstrate. He dealt with the first few questions okay, but came to one that left him with an answer of 0 = 0. Now this answer was a completely unacceptable solution for this particular problem, so he tried to solve it another way.

I was feeling sorry for him by then. I had faltered on this particular problem myself the previous evening and had to find an example in the book that explained how to come up with the correct solution. After his second attempt came up with 0 = 0 again, I helpfully told him that on page 343 was an explanation on how to solve it.

A black girl that sat at the front of the room in the row to the left of mine twisted around in her seat and just looked at me wryly for a second or two. “Man! She know how to read the book too,” she said, in a delightfully black southern accent. I couldn’t help but laugh. I guess if some people haven’t been told in class how to exactly perform a certain problem, it never occurs to them to look for something similar in the book. It was definitely a ticklish moment for me.

Studying for the Final

On our last day of regular class before the final, I was packing up my books to head to my computer class to take the final in that class when Elizabeth came rushing up to me. “Sharon, will you come study with us for the final?” she asked. After inquiring about the time and location, I told her that as long as I didn’t have anything else come up for that evening, I would try to be there.

The study day arrived and I drove the 30-minute trek to campus, hoping that I could find Elizabeth’s dorm. I’m not familiar with the dorms since I’ve never had an occasion to visit the dorms. Elizabeth told me that the girls would be meeting in the lobby to study in the “Bubble”, and she would arrive 30 minutes early so she would be sure to be there when I arrived.

I arrived to find that indeed we were meeting in a “Bubble.” We were next to the lobby in an entirely glass room with the main door on the other side of the glass from me. I’ll just say that I got my share of looks that night.

I studied with Elizabeth and Monique for nearly five and a half hours that night. Somehow, none of the other girls made it. But studying wasn’t all we did. In the midst of it, someone that Elizabeth was doing a project for called her to give her a hard time about it. She disappeared for a bit and when she came back, we talked about it for a while. As we hit the books again, she thanked me for listening to her problems. I really enjoyed my interaction with Elizabeth.

I think I’ll miss that class at least a teeny little bit.

Over-Exhumed

A customer called me today to explain why he was late making his payment this month.

"We over-exhumed ourselves during Christmas," he said.

I'm still trying to figure out how you do that.

More Better

I had a Hallelujah!! moment today just before I left work.

I always kinda dread January paperwork-wise. There is a seeming mountain of year-end forms to file; W-2s are due; 1099s are due; inventory must be counted and organized into process-able formats. Once-a-year stuff is always harder to deal with because of just that—you only do it once a year and don’t always remember how you did it last year.

This year I have received information about electronic filing of the W-2 forms via the Internet, not just once but several times. I have perceived that they really would like for me to use that medium to file W-2s. Since I don’t have a good Internet connection at work, I thought I’d take the information home with me and attempt to do it from there.

So this afternoon I was going over the information and correcting some of the city tax amounts since the accounting software was compiling the base wage information incorrectly. I finally had all the information corrected and decided to print a copy of the information for each W-2 to take home with me.

I selected the Print function and it gave me an option to print it on a form or on blank paper. On autopilot, I selected the blank paper option because I haven’t received the actual forms yet. After the information printed, I pulled the papers off the printer and glanced at them to make sure they had printed correctly. I was expecting to see only the information that would go in the boxes once I receive the W-2 forms. I was not prepared for what I saw—a fully printed W-2, complete with all boxes and fine print.

Hallelujah!! No more trying to get the information to line up with the form only to have the top form line up perfectly and the bottom form out of line. No more possibly running out of forms because of all the ruined forms. No more dealing with thin crinkly paper. No more, no more, no more!!!

I’m always a bit disgruntled when the software company pulls their stunt of “you must upgrade by [whatever date] because Version [3 years old] will no longer supported nor will payroll updates be available.” But I guess that ultimately I’m glad ‘cause if they hadn’t forced me to upgrade I’d still be using Version 1999 that didn’t print W-2s (not to mention all of the other improvements that I use much more frequently than once a year), and I’d be as grumpy as an old bear.

I love it when things get ‘more better!’

Burnt Popcorn

Twenty seconds too long in the microwave will burn popcorn.

Burnt popcorn stinks.