Study, study, study, study…

Right now is not a fun time for me. These past two weeks have been so hectic with so much to do. One more day, and I should be able to forget about school for 4 days. I can’t wait!

Today I spent almost 14 hours on campus studying and being in class. I have a German midterm tomorrow and I don’t feel prepared enough. We didn’t get enough time, or I was too busy with everything else going on right now. I can’t wait for school to be over in three weeks! There was a project due this morning in Land Use and Transportation Studies. We were pretty much done, just some formatting in Word. We did adjustments to the intersections but the teacher looked at us like we were stupid when we told him about them. He told us to be professional about it, and honestly; how the fuck can we be professional about something he never thought us?? I am so upset with this class and especially the teacher. If you ask him a question he always answers in a condescending tone, like we should already know that. It shouldn’t be like that. I am seriously afraid of asking him questions! Questioning him though works sometimes I’ve noticed. I saw some errors in the data we got for this assignment, and he accepted my changes gladly. But the other parts are not okay for a professor. We did our best with the resources we got, and we actually sat down for many hours yesterday and discussed mitigation options. We thought about lane changes all throughout the intersections compared to other groups. Ugh! I just hate this right now. I hope we sent it in anyway and hopefully will get at least 90% on the assignment. Because everything before the last mitigation part is a very well done job!

Then the scuba class took four hours of my evening, I didn’t get home until 10:30pm, and after the shower and the Digital Cities quiz that is due tomorrow, it is now midnight and I haven’t even started on German. I will go through the review sheet one time tonight and that’s it. I am too tired for this. Let’s pray to something and hope it works out for me tomorrow! Wish me luck, I will need it.

One fun thing happened today (except me passing the final exam in the scuba class). On Tuesday I talked to my Digital Cities professor and asked about the grading on one of the short answer questions. Today I got an updated grade on PolyLearn. 100%! Go me!

 

The video is done, and I have to say that I am surprised at hearing my voice and accent. Neither was as bad as I thought. And the video is really good! Here is a link to it (3min), if you feel like watching it. Now, time to get back to studying… fml

Midterm, flight ticket

I am not waiting too long between my posts now, but I still have a ton of stuff to write about.

First, I had my last midterm ever today (not that I have had many in my life). I didn’t study too much for it, but I would say that it went pretty well, maybe not A+ or 99% (which I got on my Digital Cities midterm), but hopefully at least A-.

No filming today for the video project, so I just played beach volleyball for almost two hours instead of having the lesson. I wasn’t very good, but I blame the wind, haha!

When I got home I repainted my nails, watched Grimm and Once Upon a Time and then did German homework and started reading the papers I got for the scuba class that starts tomorrow. They told me that I would get the course material at least 3 days before start so I had time to read it through. I got it today and have 170 pages to read before tomorrow evening’s class. I am taking this for fun, but I really can’t read that much in one night, I am too slow at reading.

Another big thing I did today was to book my flight back home to Sweden. I will fly from San Diego early morning on June 20th. And I will fly almost exactly the same route as I did when I flew from there last time. First to Chicago, then to Berlin instead of Frankfurt, and then to Gothenburg. I will land 9:45 am on the day after.

I am excited to go home!

A+

It is ”Friday”, 11pm, and I am ready to go to bed. I need to be better at using time during the week so I am not so tired all the time. Since I moved to SLO I haven’t been tired enough to fall asleep, but now I really have to try to stay awake by taking notes until my hand hurts from writing more than I need too.

Today we had a midterm review in Land Use and Transportation Studies (I can’t find a short for that course name) and it actually doesn’t feel like a completely lost cause. I just need to review it myself, write it down at least one time with my own words and then I should be good. I will do that tomorrow. We didn’t get our midterms back in Digital Cities like the professor said, but hopefully through PolyLearn tomorrow. In German we got the results on our midterm after class. We couldn’t get the actual tests back, so when class was done a bunch of us went up to the professor to give us our results. He saw me and just said that I got an A. I was surprised. I mean, it felt great writing the tests, but this week when we went over it, I got insecure in my answers, so I was actually a little bit surprised. When I was back at my seat to put my stuff in my backpack and the professor went through the pile of tests to find the other students’ results he looked at me and said: “Oh, add a plus to that letter!” What? I got an A+?! How does that even work? Shouldn’t A be the highest? I am super happy anyway, he must have seen that I tried a little bit extra on some problems, even if I probably missed a few minor adjective endings and stuff. I am curious to get that test back.

As soon as I got home I baked cookies, just normal cookies but with a click of Nutella in them. They flattened out so much in the oven so they are boring cookies with a little bit of Nutella. Still pretty good.

At 5pm I got picked up by Ralph and Cathy. Ralph is a 60+ guy in my German class, and him and his wife are going to Sweden for a week this summer and wanted some tips on what to do. I gave them a ton after eating a really good tacos dinner at Taco Temple in Morro Bay. It was a very nice dinner and they are really fun and interesting people. I wanna be like them when I grow up, adventurous, still traveling, finding new friends all over the world, just living to the fullest. If I am in Gothenburg when they are there we will probably meet up. I got really inspired by doing this research and I have already plans on being a tourist back home, I might as well do some stuff with them if they would be up to it. I got really excited about coming home and do all of these things. I also wanna go to Öland again. Maybe to camp this time? That will be a well-planned trip though and sometime in the future.

Old me am getting tired, so I think I will head to bed now, maybe watch another episode of iZombie and hopefully get a good night’s sleep so I have energy to deal with midterm studying and the awful homework we have in Land Use. I worked on it forever yesterday (we are analyzing 16 intersections downtown and are eventually gonna determine the future Level of Service for all of them). In the lab I discovered a lot of errors in the data material we got from the teacher so I had to go through it all and correct it and then send it to the teacher. In the afternoon I managed to get 14 out of the 16 correct for the current Level of Service. One of them, just doesn’t make any sense. I did everything correct, but I just don’t get the answer the teacher got. Probably because the data flows didn’t match the intersections directions… And the second intersection I don’t even know what is wrong with it… So annoying! My group is meeting up tomorrow afternoon again to hopefully fix that and work on the next step.

Back in San Diego

For the third time since New Year’s am I back down in San Diego, my second home. Once again I used Cal Poly’s Rideshare group on facebook and rode with new people again. This bunch was nice and the ride went so fast. Six hours and I was in Carlsbad. Even with some traffic.

First I hung out with my hostmom and the girl at a basketball game for like three minutes. We picked up the girl and her friend there and went for Starbucks after and then back home. I hung out for a bit more, and then spontaneously decided to go down to PB to hang out with German David (from Cal Poly). I wasn’t there too long since I have to get up early tomorrow morning, but it was still a nice evening.

Tomorrow I have three beaches to go to and I am so excited! Lots of beach volleyball and then surfing, yay!

Yesterday I had my second midterm for the quarter. It was Digital Cities and I have to say that it went really well and I am excited to see the results (I would be surprised if it is not an A). I also finished my book, Ghosts of Ascalon, yesterday. It took 13 days, longer than usual. It was a good one and now I am reading about the Guild Wars 2 lore on the Internet. It is a really good story!

My runny nose is also completely gone. It was like it never happened. Weird with only two days of a stuffy/runny nose. I’m glad it is gone!

Now it is definitely time to go to bed.

German midterm and hike

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

So yesterday I had my first midterm of this quarter, the German one, and I have to say that it felt really good. I answered everything and that’s all I can do.

In the evening I went to a presentation given by an immigration attorney from LA who talked about the H-1B visa and permanent residency. It was interesting, and now it feels pretty hopeless to ever be able to move here in the future. Even if I would find a job, there is not even sure that I would get the visa since only 65,000 get it every year and more than 200,000 apply for it. Maybe I should just try to see myself living in Sweden now. Why should it be so hard to move here?

After that meeting I went to Farmer’s Market with David, walked around for a bit and then went for dinner at wunderbar Firestone. The rest of the evening I was just at home, not doing anything special.

Today I was supposed to go surfing in Morro Bay at 8am, but my surf partner lost his car keys so that didn’t happen. Instead, I went back to bed and then skyped with mom. It was her birthday today! Happy birthday once again :).

Then I made an adventure of going grocery shopping. No one was home and I needed food pretty bad, so I picked up my new headphones at the post office (they are amazing! My old ones broke a couple of days ago, but at least 3 years for a pair of in-ear is not bad at all, go Sennheiser), picked up my bike on campus and rode to Haggen (former Albertson’s) on Foothill. As a second breakfast I got a donut from Slodoco and then a bunch of baking ingredients. Since I am all alone (Rachel’s at Stagecoach and Lauren was home in Solvang, but she came back tonight) I knew I would be bored so I decided to bake, or rather make, rocky road fudge.

Right after I came home from the bad bike ride home from the grocery store David texted me and asked if I wanted to hike Serenity Swing and Architecture Graveyard. I never say nay to a beautiful hike, so off we went. First to the swing. As beautiful as always up there. The hills are getting browner and browner. It is sad. Why can’t Sweden send some of its rain here to California? I wonder if I would win the Nobel Prize if I invented something that would transfer the rain from there to here. Maybe that’s what I am destined to do instead of something else that I don’t know yet?

We explored around the different constructions at Architecture Graveyard for a while, took some cool photos, didn’t see any horses (bummer), and then went back where we started making the rocky road fudge. He left at 8 to watch the end of the Cal Poly baseball game but was back at 9:30 and I cooked dinner for the three of us, because he brought Alex with him. Then we just hung out until after midnight. It was a nice and relaxed evening.

Now for some reason, the time is already past 2 in the morning. I am really tired, but still have to make my bed after doing laundry tonight. It will be so nice laying down in newly washed sheets!

PANO_20150424_165850 IMG_20150424_183942 IMG_20150424_180042 IMG_20150424_175229 IMG_20150424_175144 IMG_20150424_180739 IMG_20150424_181532 IMG_20150424_181619

December already!?

Yes, dead week is almost killing me. But the worst is definitely over (for this week). The midterm this morning went real bad. But I think everyone had trouble with it and since the teacher is using a curve when he is grading I might be fine. But you never know. I am just glad that it is over. There is still the presentation on Thursday, but that will be a piece of cake. What I have to focus on now is the final I have on Thursday in the lab class. I don’t understand why we have to have a final when we’ve worked our butts off for all the lab assignments. But I have an A in that class so far, and this test is only 20% of the grade, so I don’t think I have to study too hard. The last two nights I’ve stayed up really late and today I was planning on going to bed early, but I still haven’t done much because I enjoy talking to our neighbors too much. And I can sleep-in tomorrow. I will solve some engineering economics problems now and then to bed.

Oh, right, I got two packages today. One from mom, and one from Amazon. Mom’s package was missent to Canada, but it got here today and it made me so happy. It was a lot of Swedish Christmas candy to share with roommates and friends, and four chocolate calendars for me and my three roommates. She is the absolute sweetest. I also got two packages of Swedish lasagna, and a tiny Christmas cat. She knows I miss the cats, and now I have a little bit of Christmas in my room. I love her!

In the package from Amazon was most of the gifts I bought for people, but also my Bluetooth speaker that works gloriously. Those two packages made me forget about the awful midterm. The lab in the afternoon wasn’t too bad. It was our last assignment and we were supposed to walk downtown and learn about some things there. But since it’s been raining this whole day we did it virtually with google maps. Worked that too. And I actually got done with the writing before class was done so I don’t have to worry about it, yay!

Now I will focus on the lab final!

Midterm result

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

Let’s see, what happened today? First I got my Transportation Engineering midterm back and I did way way better than I thought. I got 71% (last time I got 66%) when mean was 78. With the curve it might be an okay grade. I am super happy about it!

Then there was architecture history class which went by really fast for once. Maybe because the professor went away from the subject and talked about blood sugar levels for 20 min?

During lunch I was at the UU Plaza with Kelsey. There was an event with the British boy’s frat, Pie Phi Psi. You pied guys in the frat and I think they raised money for something. Kelsey did both of the boys at the same time. It was funny. We had lunch together on campus and when I got home I was very very tired but started working on my Sustainable Environments paper which is due tomorrow.

Pie Phi Psi

Lab in the afternoon, Johanna and I got 25/30 points on our Civil3D road design. I am satisfied. My lowest grade in that class so far but it was a big assignment and it was hard. And grades doesn’t really matter for me anyway.

I was gonna go to Pint Night when I finished the paper after the lab, but I was too tired so I started watching Guardians of the Galaxy. I am one hour in, and I have to admit that it is not as bad as I thought it would be. The reason why I took a break was because I was about to fall asleep and wanted to update my blog. It will be so great getting many hours of sleep tonight!

Midterms, strep and line dancing

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

Finally this horrible day is over. I felt better this morning, and I was prepared and ready to do the two midterms. But no, the first one went to hell and it will turn out as a big fat F. I had solved so many problems before and I felt that I knew everything. But then I see the test. I couldn’t solve a single one of the problems. I tried and I did write on some of them, but I don’t think I even wrote enough to get 50%. Most of it was because I usually sit for a while (since all the tests in Sweden always are four or five hours long) and try to figure it out. And most of the times I do that, but after thinking about the problem for sometimes 40 minutes. There was one problem today I tried doing that with and I figured it out ten minutes before the test ended, and I did not have enough time to write it all down. I am gonna talk to the professor about it. I did study, a lot, for this exam. And I don’t wanna get an F because he formulated the questions weirdly and gave us too many big problems. It is not fair.

I went to the second midterm where I sat down next to George, he asked how it went and I just looked at him and he totally understood what my face meant. Fortunately the architecture history one went better. I think it even went better than the last one. But we will see.

My next stop for the day was the Health Center and I was in and out in 20 minutes. The doctor told me that all my symptoms and the fact that I’ve been sick on and off for five weeks points towards mono. So I took a strep test and a mono test and later in the afternoon the doctor called me and told me it wasn’t mono (apparently you can have that several times by the way), but I had very high levels of white blood cells which means a bacterial infection, most likely strep. So I got penicillin and in a couple of days I should be fine. If it’s not better by Monday I will have to go back and take more tests for other things I guess. I have been feeling great today, my throat still hurts a bit, but it’s not as much as yesterday when I almost skipped class because I was crying from the pain.

The last four hours of my long day of horror (I had the exact same day three weeks ago)  was writing on the lab report. We handed it in 6 minutes before deadline which is the closest I’ve ever handed something in before.

It felt so great after. I didn’t even mind riding my bike home in the rain after. Yes, it’s been raining the whole day, just a drizzle, but definitely enough to get me wet.

I went home, did laundry and then headed to The Grad where there was a line dancing lesson for a while. It was fun, but way to hard. I don’t know if it is because I am sick and my coordination is the worst or if I am just not meant for dancing. After that I was just sitting down and watched everyone. It looks fun, but to know all those different dances will take time and I don’t have the ambition to put that much time into something. Maybe when I am older.

It was loud there so every time I talked to someone it made my throat worse and at the end I didn’t talk to anyone because my throat was on fire. Eventually me and Kelsey went home and stopped at SloDoCo on the way home to get some donuts. It’s dangerous having a 24/7 donut shop so close. But it was good.

Now I am home, coughing more than I have in three weeks and it sucks. I should probably go to bed and read some. I so look forward to tomorrow when I can sleep for as long as I can! Can’t wait!!

Line Dancing

Midterms

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

That was definitely a new experience. I got three hours of sleep last night (5 the day before and 3 before that), so I was afraid of feeling like crap today. But I’ve been feeling ok. The only real problem is that I am coughing and the coughing is making my throat hurt. It’s getting better.

The first midterm, Fundamentals of Transportation Engineering 80 minutes long, like the class. But that was not enough time for 7 questions. I just barely could do all of them and the last three minutes I was writing like a maniac. I skipped one question which I didn’t know at all how to solve, and in general it felt okay. If it’s not a pass I would be surprised. After the test I found out that our group got 10/10 on the group proposal. I am surprised at how well it is going for me in all of my classes. This school system suits me better.

I had to rush to the second midterm which was a weird one. We were in the normal lecture hall, with a scantron, which is a sheet with multiple choice answer. The first 25 questions were displayed through the projector, each lasting for 30 seconds, and we had the questions on another piece of paper. Those questions rolled twice and then there were 25 more multiple choice questions on that second paper. And two short essay questions and I think I understand both of them and wrote something understandable. I was 99% sure of 30 out of the 50 questions and the rest I had a clue what it was about. That should also mean a pass.

It feels so great to have this done, I know what it is about and don’t have to worry next time.

The second test was only 1 hour long and I was done before 10am. So I went home and spent the next three hours in bed watching Arrow and The Flash (I love that TV show, and Grant Gustin is probably the most handsome guy in the world). I tried to relax for once, it’s been a hectic week. And I think my throat need to take it easy. This weekend will be so awesome. A spot opened up in the Yosemite Stand Up Paddling tour with Poly Escapes, but since I’m not completely free of my cold yet I probably shouldn’t go on an adventurous weekend trip. I will probably go there in the spring instead.

The lab in the afternoon was pretty chill. We were first on Tuesday, so today we were last. But we were still out of there at 4:30pm instead of 6. I went home and almost fell asleep on my keyboard. I guess the lack of sleep has finally reached me (even if I took that energy pill this morning). But I had to stay awake. I had dinner plans with Julianne and Alyssa. At 7pm we went to downtown to eat sushi at Yanagi. We ended our dinner with sake. My first time. I don’t know what I was expecting, but not that. It was like strong and hot wine. It went down, but I’m not sure I would pay for it again.

We spent too long in the restaurant so we missed farmers market. We went to a candy store instead, bought some candy and then watched a movie in Alyssa’s apartment. We watched Coraline. Well, they did. I fell asleep, haha. And that’s what I wanna do now too. I will go to sleep and wake up when I automatically wake up. This weekend is all about sleeping! And of course, the field trip at 7am on Saturday…

Julianne, me and Alyssa Frozen Jelly BellyFrozen is my favorite movie at the moment.