I am absolutely done with all my work as an undergrad. And since I am done, I am about to vent on how fucking stressful that sustainability group project was.



So there were four of us: Tim, Chamomile, and Sycamore were my group members. From the get-go our professor had told us to look for people in the class that you felt you could function and work as a team with. The people that appealed to me were already in their own groups, and Tim first approached me to be in a group together. Then the other two did the same. I was a little wary but I was cool with them for several reasons I won't get into.

Sycamore did great in that she looked up research. Her problem was that she wasn't so good at writing, so we had agreed that I would do the original writing that was required in our report and she can input data. This worked fine when she remembered our agreement, not so fine when she tried writing paragraphs and made no sense whatsoever. I told her to give me the research so I can see what's relevant for our report, but she still input stuff randomly and I had to cut a lot of it out because it made no sense-- for example, we were comparing the pros and cons of paper towels and dryers, and out of nowhere she sticks in this giant block of quotes talking about ultraviolet light. Even when we met with the professor, she asked Sycamore what relevance that had and all she said was "I don't know". I appreciate that she was the only one that made any serious effort, but man it was maddening having to clean up after her.

Even for the PowerPoint presentation she added things that made no sense, like a Google Earth image of Northridge with the school circled on it. We were presenting to members of the Institute of Sustainability within our school. THEY KNOW WHERE THE SCHOOL IS, THEY WORK THERE, WHY WOULD THEY NEED A MAP. Our professor told us she was a visual learner, so I added graphs and charts, she thought we needed more to appeal to our professor's visual learning so she added cartoons and pictures of the school and Clip Art. It was honestly so awesome to hear our prof. go on and on about how great the presentation looked after I had edited the hell out of it (with Kevin's help because my rage was making me tear my hair out).

Chamomile did the first version of our PowerPoint, which was pretty much gone by the final version. Tim did nothing. Like really nothing. No, wait- I had him make up a map of the school so we could point out areas we think have high volumes of foot traffic. I think the first time he looked at the report was when I handed him a bound and printed copy. At my professor's suggestion, I made him just stand there and click for the next slide during the presentation. He really may as well not have been in the group.

The one good thing is that my professor was pretty up on the details of who was doing what without anyone really needing to tell her, so she knew the others were failing for the most part. She praised me a lot for the work I did and for taking the leadership role even though I didn't want to. I smiled and thanked her a lot even though the whole time I was like OH MY GOD NEVER AGAIN. NEVER EVER AGAIN. She wants me to consider an MBA because even though she knows I want to focus on sustainability, she thinks and MBA can teach me to market myself. She said I've got a great package, "but not in a creepy way".

The rest of my classes were nothing compared to the shenanigans I had to deal with in this class. But I'm done now. The presentation went fantastically and I was able to answer anything that came my way. Now I'm taking a year to decide what the hell I want to do for a master's.

But now now I'm going to sleep.

I'm going to go ahead and suggest that most people don't like group projects, right? Is there anyone that genuinely enjoys that, or anyone that genuinely learns something from working with others? I have done several group projects this semester but the worst one has been for my last sustainability class. It's been a semester-long project, and the only thing I've learned is how to say, "I don't trust y'all to do shit so I'm running this show now." My group has just been the worst to deal with, honestly.

To give you an idea of what I've had to deal with: We have a report due this week, it includes every bit of information we found on what our client wanted us to research. The report is currently 24 pages, but it'll easily be 30 when I'm done. Of the four people in our group, the one guy, Tim we'll call him, hasn't touched the report. I'm not exaggerating, I'd be surprised if he's ever opened the updated files the rest of us have sent through emails. One of the girls, let's call her uh.... Chamomile. Cham, for short. So Cham wrote four sentences. Then there's uh, Sycamore. She input information, but often it was irrelevant or confusing, like she would add up numbers on the page but I would have no idea if this was money, weight, years, or anything. And when I'd ask she often wouldn't answer me unless I badgered her. I told her she could let me handle the actual writing if she wanted to focus more on the math/fact bits. We agreed, and yet more than once she took one of my paragraphs and rewrote them in her own words (the Lord was testing me then). Writing is not her forte, by the way. She admitted this herself, which is why we had the agreement. Cham got called out by he professor the other day on the fact that she hasn't done anything, so she wants to be responsible for the powerpoint presentation now. Tim hasn't been showing up to meetings or class, once with a good reason, the other times I don't even know.

At the end of this class we're supposed to do a peer evaluation and my professor has a pretty good idea of who's done what already, but it got me thinking of an evaluation I already did for another class with a different group. After we had turned them in my professor asked us what we thought about having to evaluate each other and ourselves, and some people honestly told her that they would not give bad marks to any fellow class member because they wouldn't want to affect their grade. The girl that said this was actually in my group, and I noted in my evaluation that it was hard to keep her focused on what was relevant for the project. She kept suggesting decorative ideas and hardly talked about the content. I gave another girl the highest points for everything because she deserved them. I didn't say this in the discussion, but I answer honestly in those things. I try to highlight good bits but I don't keep from mentioning bad bits when they matter. Of course for this evaluation I'm going to have to do my best to keep from full on ranting about this current group.

I'm wondering though, if the reason someone might choose not to do the whole "I don't want to lower their grade" thing is that they might be hoping for some kind of good karma to come to them for being generous to everyone else? I mean, I would never have to worry over what someone says about me. I know I do my work, so if anything I'm often filled with indignation over having to be stuck with people who don't. Then I want to make sure everyone gets their deserved grade, good or bad. Maybe I'm filled with too much self-righteousness though.

I am so very physically and mentally exhausted that I'm not sure how to organize this post. I'm kind of just writing it up while I clean the apartment because I have to wait for some cleaners to sit for a bit.

I'm nearly done with school, and it looks like I'm doing well in all my classes. My body hurts like hell right now because I had my self-defense final on Monday and let me tell you that was so not easy. It's self-defense against sexual assault so you go up against three grown ass men (police officers that taught the course) through three different scenarios and by the end of it you're really, really tired. And the next day you're really, really sore. You get padding to make sure no one gets seriously hurt but I still managed a bruise or two (I can't imagine how hurt the police officers are though). The simulation gets split into two days, and since I volunteered on the first day I get to sit and watch on the second day (Monday). It was fun doing it, but I imagine it's so much more fun in the sidelines considering you don't have that deep anxiety of knowing you're about to be attacked.

I still haven't finished 50 Shades of Grey but I'm sure I'll have more time to do so when I finish my current school projects. I was never intending to do the entire trilogy, but some posts on ONTD have made me wonder if I should continue (for science!). I mean, look at these:



Is that not just the essence of quality literature? :D

- The Vampire Diaries need to stop with this love triangle thing already. I would love either Stelena or Elena by herself. Also if Elena doesn't get turned soon I don't see what else they can possibly pull to keep this show interesting.

- Legend of Korra is aaaaawesome. I almost wish I had gotten into the show late like I generally do with shows so I can just sit around watching episode after episode for hours on end. Refusing to do homework the entire time. I like Korra very much, in fact she regularly reminds me of Sokka, which reminds me that this show has so far managed to regularly make me feel sad that the first series is over and most of the characters are dead. :\

- Go here and type in any subject. Lawl.

- I finished The Fault In Our Stars. My tiny not-really-review is over hurr.

So the most interesting thing I've done in the past few days is going to the L.A. Times Festival of Books at USC. I love going to this event, I wish I had time to go on both days but I usually only do Saturday. Last year's YA stage was great, but this time around it was pretty damn boring. The usual questions were asked, "What inspires you as a writer?" and "How valuable is romance in a novel?" which annoys me particularly because the three authors present each had romances in their novels so what else are they going to say besides some variation of "very valuable"? Besides, the only author I was interested in was R.L. LaFevers, the author of Grave Mercy. It looks like we're going to be reading her book for YABC later in the year so I figured it'd be nice to know her opinions on writing/ya/books/whatever. But like I said, it wasn't that interesting.

What was fun to attend was the John Green stage, in which he mostly talked about the process of writing The Fault in Our Stars. There were so many nerdfighters present, it was adorable. I'm not a super huge fan of his novels (I think he repeats his characters too much) but I think he's very charming and funny, and generally likeable. As a person who tends to review books that are popular, and as a person who tends to review them somewhat harshly at times, I like to see the authors now and then so I don't become so far removed from the person that I get mean. I've seen that happen with other reviewers, and I don't like the idea of it ever happening to me. I mean I don't necessarily meet them, unless I'm getting something signed, but yeah, I like seeing authors at events and such for these kinds of reasons.

It also sometimes helps to only further see how full of themselves some authors are. I remember meeting Christopher Paolini, and boy was that guy in love with his own writing. He read excerpts so majestically, like he was discovering how awesome his books were for the first time. I mean really, he's just all right at best, dude needs to get a grip-- but still, that was pretty funny to see firsthand.

Oh, and regarding my normal life in which I have school and stuff: My group members for my sustainability project are this close to pushing me so far over the edge that I might end up in prison charged with a triple homicide. But that's for another post.

For your lol'ing pleasure:

"I want you to become well acquainted, on first name terms if you will, with my favorite and most cherished part of my body. I'm very attached to this."- Christian Grey. 50 Shades of Grey

I ask you, how am I not supposed to crack up at that? I was also really hoping he would actually tell her that his penis has a name, because that would have made my day. I'm about 30% into the book and so far she's said some variation of "Holy Crap!" at least 30 times, although I didn't count from the beginning. I'm also offended at the fact that this author thinks her token Hispanic character needs to inject phrases like "Dios mio!" into nearly everything he says. WE DON'T ACTUALLY TALK LIKE THAT.

Anyway, I added more bags to my mother's Etsy shop: Salvadora. Any feedback is always appreciated, since I have a biased eye and don't really know how to go about all this. Like if you think the pictures look bad, or there's a question you have that isn't addressed in the description, or anything like that. Basically, pretend to be my customer and judge away.

Oh, and since I forgot to post a picture last time, here's Katniss:

She has a deep obsession with yarn and fuzzy things. Also she can match a Nascar racer with the laps she takes around our tiny studio apartment. The Katniss 500 usually takes place at 1am and 6am respectively.

Oh- OH and I tried Pottermore again and got Hufflepuff.

Really, really have to re-read A Clash of Kings because I KNOW they're changing things and I can't remember the specifics. The last episode seemed to have more changes than any episode before it, I think. I'd also like to say that I don't like the portrayal of Samwell's character, or rather I think it's disappointing that the show seemingly couldn't handle all the nuances with the book version of him and went with this more goofy version of him instead. I keep hoping they'll angle his character to be more like the book version, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

In other news, I've started reading 50 Shades of Grey, for science of course. Actually, the ONTD book group on Goodreads picked it out, and I figured if I would ever bother reading this book, it would be only if I had a group of people to readily discuss it with. I'm honestly amazed with how well E.L. James gets Meyer's style down, but that isn't in any way a compliment. All the things I hated in Twilight are here in 50 Shades. She's even got all the things I hate about the characters down, except they're so much more awful, Edward Christian especially. He's so domineering and psychotic, and I am not talking about any of the BDSM scenes. I mean in general, the dude's a creep.

The one thing I find especially irritating with James' work that Meyer didn't have going is this habit of repeating the same phrases in the protagonist's head. She keeps saying "Oh my" and some variation of "Holy crap!" that I've started taking a count of the latter and have chosen to think of this whenever I see the former:

It just makes it so much more entertaining.

Aside from that, I've got about a month left of school and I still can't believe graduation is so close. Somehow, I still don't feel like I've accomplished anything, but I suppose it'll hit me when the actual day comes. By then I'll probably be so full of myself that I'll just walk up on stage and be like:

At least that's how I intend to be.

I said in the last post we weren't getting HBO, and we didn't, but then I remembered my brother once offered me access to his HBO GO account, so we've actually hooked that up to our tv through our laptop and have been catching up on last season's True Blood episodes. First, OMG TARA! Second, daaaaaaamn it they took away my Jesus. :( Why they gotta kill my brujo?

Of course we also saw the first episode of GoT. Why the heck is Ros still around and why is she getting so much screen time? Watching the first episode of this second season is making me feel like I have to re-read the books because there are things that I think are being changed but I can't absolutely be certain because my memory is fuzzy with A Clash of Kings.

Yesterday I dragged my brother along with us hiking, but the day was kind of full of unexpected problems and coincidences. I shall place them here in list format:
1.While driving up the forest road there were tons of small rocks and we got a flat tire.
2.While trying to change the tire we discovered the wrench our dealer gave us didn't fit our tires.
3.We forced the car a way's up to find help (walking was not an option, we'd have been hit by a car fore sure) and found one woman with her kids and dog. She had a wrench that fit our car even though it didn't fit hers.
4.We got lost. We somehow missed our specific destination. Ended up in another county entirely.
5.We found our way back and discovered we had missed it because the Angeles Forest doesn't believe in signs (although we kept finding signs that said "No Exceptions" "No exceptions to WHAT?").
6.We found that almost the entire trail was covered in snow. Climbed it anyway. It was fun.

Overall it was pretty fun, but my body's aching today. I'm sure my brother is doing worse because he hasn't been hiking in years and he is not in the best shape of his life. In fact, that's why I dragged him out there, because he needs to exercise and I don't want him to get diabetes.

Kevin left the decision of getting HBO up to me, and I decided against it because I don't feel right spending so much without a job. So we'll be watching it online or something, but I'll have to miss the initial squealing with everyone else.



Aside from that, here are some links for you:

Title of latest J.K. Rowling project revealed: 'Lairs of Lady Po'"

Introducing Gmail tap.

ONTD changed its background, added music.

Hiring at Goodreads: New Opening for Hyperintelligent Pandimensional Mice Note: We will also consider qualified dolphins for this position.

It occurs to me that I've never had a good prank played on me, I've only fallen for stuff online, and even then you can tell it's fake more often than not. I've never played a good one on anyone else either. I do not know if I've saved myself from horrors or if I'm missing out on life. D:

Some links for you:
'Hunger Games' gorges on $214 million global debut.
The "Hunger Games" blew past the domestic debuts for each of the first four "Twilight" films...

'The Hunger Games' to air on ABC Family. I hope they do HP and THG weekends. I shall never leave the sofa.

The Hunger Games' Katniss gets the Barbie doll treatment. It will be available from the barbiecollector.com site and other outlets as a custom-made doll "created specifically for the adult collector", Mattel said.-- I'd prefer they do a general one for children, but something is something I guess?