Finally got Indy up on the couch today.

In other news I’ve been dying all week with what was probably Swine Flu and has now turned into a full on cold with all the extra features… Woo hoo…

I definitely need mittens, if for no other reason but to carry my cold Starbucks beverages across campus every morning…

I want these ones…

I can’t believe we’re over halfway through October already! That is nuts, where is my semester going! Registration for winter semester is already open, which means before I know it I’ll be starting new classes with new professors again! Its already Mid-terms week!

I had one and a half last week, one and a half today, and two more this week. This morning I had my Communities & Societies midterm. This is my glorified social studies class. The midterm was intense! 53 short answer and T/F questions, 3 short answer questions, and a 3-4 page essay, all in 50 minutes!

I’ve somehow developed this skill of reading and writing super fast under pressure. So I managed to finish all of it. However, if I had been given ten more minutes my essay would have been exponentially better. I know there was quite a few people who didn’t finish their essays, and some who barely got started at all. The guy next to me only got one paragraph done! I think 50 minutes is a little bit short for that much to do! The worst thing is that people who didn’t get much of an essay done will get marked lower, and its not because they may not have the knowledge, but because they didn’t have enough time to get it down on paper!

My second midterm, or half a midterm, in Intro to Cultural Anthropology went much better. However in the hour before I had a minor panic attack when I realized there was an “essay question” posted on blackboard about a topic I was pretty sure we hadn’t covered in class. So I sat there stressing and cramming about this topic I’d never heard of for half an hour before I realized that the website said “FINAL exam essay question”… Briana clearly has a problem with reading entire sentences and paying attention. So I wasted half an hour studying for something I don’t need to know about for two more months. LAME! Anyway, I did study the stuff I needed to know for the rest of the time, and I did okay on midterm I think. She split the test up over two days for us, one day last week for multiple choice questions, and today for short answer. It is way less stressful and easier to study that way. And she gave us 3 different topics we had to write about for short answer questions, and then there was three questions in each of those topics, and we had to pick and answer two of them for each topic. She is an awesome professor!

I have my Intro to Linguistic Anthropology midterm on Wednesday, and I think my Critical Reading and Writing [AKA English] midterm is on Thursday. I have a paper due in that class on Tuesday. I’m having trouble with this because I picked a difficult topic. The point of the whole thing is to pick a purchase of some sort that you feel is wrong ethically or morally. I couldn’t think of anything, and I ended up choosing magazines, then switching to natural gas, and now I can’t find anything about how natural gas use is bad for the environment. So I’m hoping she will be okay with me switching again, this time to water. I think it will be easier to find information about how bad it is to waste water, and what you can do to minimize water consumption. On Tuesday I have to hand in a 2-3 page paper, with two sources, of how I feel this topic compromises my morals and ethics. I think it should be easier to write about water usage than natural gas. We are using up the fresh water on our little planet at an unprecedented rate, and what are we going to do when we run out?

To top off the procrastination and time management topics… I am really bad at time management, therefore I procrastinate a lot. These are things I need to improve on so that my college career, and life in general, is not so stressful! I’m sort of working on it… Sort of. Like I’ve given myself a time-limit to produce this blog entry, and after that I have to do some more research for my paper. Go me, I’m finishing this up early, and I will have a couple minutes to eat and relax before I have to start studying!

Maybe I should make the main topic of my blog time management and try to write about my efforts on that every day/week?

Just a thought since I’m trying to create some goals for my blogging career. Anyway, here’s a pic over my shoulder as I’m writing this… No more snow! Yay!

I know I should be studying…
but i just had to note this…

It is snowing… Its been snowing for like a week. They keep saying its going to be like plus 18 again in a few days, but I’m starting to think they’re just trying to be optimistic because they keep changing the forecast and dropping the temps…

Anyway… I was late getting going this morning cuz I forgot that I needed to shovel the sidewalk, so I drove to school, and paid $10 for parking for the day… and now it begins…

My first Prof was half an hour late for class…

My second prof emailed early this morning to say she was cancelling class…

Then I got an email that says my 3rd prof is also cancelling class…

SO I paid for parking all day to attend class for 20 minutes…

I’m kind of annoyed, but I guess at the same time now that I’m here I might as well suck it up and do some research for my term papers or something…

Also I’m pretty sure this is the beginning of winter and this snow is not going to be going anywhere… Which is lame cuz I was hoping to have one more decent day to finish cleaning out my flower beds…. STUPID winter!

This is the view over my shoulder from where I’m sitting.

This is how Indy ate breakfast today… She is not a morning dog…

So last week in my Intro.  to Cultural Anthropology class we watched some videos about some anthropological field work with some Amazonian tribes.

Today our instructor showed us some of the comments she has received from students in the past about these videos.

There was an extreme underlying theme of surprise, intolerance, and “ethnocentrism.” [Sorry I just had to use the new word lol. It means believing that your culture is best and everyone else's culture is wrong]

It was shocking to me just narrow of a world view there is. I didn’t think it was that extreme, but apparently it is. Some of the things previous students said about the videos blows my mind, makes you realize that this person probably has never even considered the fact that there are other cultures and that maybe they do things differently.

This is a generalization, but I’ve always kind of had the idea that a lot of people who are so intolerant are staunchly religious. But this is obviously not true.

It seems crazy to me that people can still be like this when there is such an overload of information out there to be had. There’s so many shows on television about travel and culture; Word Travels, Departures, Long Way Round, etc. Even sitcoms and cooking shows deal with different cultures on a regular basis!

Sometimes its just plain naivety about the world, and people just have never been exposed to anything like this. However when you’ve been exposed to it, and you’ve had access to the information, why would you still choose to be ethnocentric and ignorant about the rest of the world?

Canada is supposedly a “melting pot” of culture, and there is still people like this. It makes me wonder about other countries (*coughUScough*) that are not so tolerant of other cultures, and how much more common these views might be.

There were lots of comments about people just being surprised by all the nudity, or the drugs, or the emphasis on warfare. But there were also so many people outright saying it many of these things are “wrong” and that the people are “primitive” and “savage.” It’s crazy to me that people are so set in their way that they can not even accept another culture for how they live.
It makes me wonder if the same people aren’t accepting of the people they know? I know I personally have trouble accepting people just for who they are, but I try. It makes me wonder if people with these opinions don’t even try to be accepting of any others? Do they even give people a chance? How can you possibly make friends if you aren’t willing to accept someone who does something slightly different from you? Is there really enough people around that do everything the same way you do that you never have to branch out and learn about new ideas? Isn’t acceptance a huge part of learning? How can you learn without accepting and trying to understand differences regardless of your preferences?

What are your experiences with acceptance issues?

edit: heres another question, why do some people want to raise their children to be have such a narrow view of the world, wouldn’t you want your child to learn and gain knowledge? Why would you voluntarily limit their access to information which could help them be a better global citizen?

I’ll blog just for the sake of blogging today. Since I haven’t done anyting all week…

But since I don’t have much to say I’ll mostly make this a 3bt entry.

1. Starting the new job at Booster Juice this week, its good to be back, its easy, its slow, its so much less stress than Home Depot was.

2. Speaking of Home Depot, I had my last shift on wednesday night. I’m so glad I’m done. Sure I miss some of the people, but theres like this huge weight lifted off my shoulders.

3. Its friday, I’m going to my last class in an hour, and then I have 2 whole days off!

4. I got my house totally cleaned the other day! Top to bottom! It feels much butter!

5. I made a friend in my english class who just so happens to live just up the street from me! Cool!

6. Its sunny today! Yay.

7. I’m getting a dog this afternoon! One of the ladies from Chinook Winds is bringing me a little black 5 year greyhound named [for now] Mindy. So I’m pretty excited about that. I’ve been looking at pictures and reading all the threads I can over at Greytalk for the past couple days!

8. Probably going to go up to Lacombe and see my family this weekend, so thats pretty cool.

9. I managed to fit myself into my skinny jeans the other day, which is a pretty huge accomplishment in itself!

10. Actually being able to figure out spots in my house for all my plants that need to come inside for the winter! Woohoo!

[on a side note, I hate people that smoke in non-designated smoking areas... AKA the old lady sitting at the table across from me on the quad smoking and the wind is blowing it all in my face... Lovely.]

anyway, heres a picture, thats the main school building behind me.

and heres another one for good measure

11. Joel should be coming home in a couple days! I can’t wait to see him

1. so many pretty yellow leaves everywhere on the ground on the streets.

2. movies in both classes, no homework last night, no assignments today (yet.)

3. lots of parking spots when I had to drive to school ’cause I was late.

4. meeting a new dog on friday

not today… but whatever… aren’t you glad theres something to look at atleast?

I’m super early for school today. Its funny how quickly I can get ready and out of the house when Joel isn’t home. However I’d still rather have him home and be rushing around than have him gone. I thought the buses would be crowded today because its national car pool day or something… Anyway, your supposed to do something other than drive to work today. Car pool, take the bus, walk, ride your bike.

Anyway, the bus actually wasn’t full. But thats probably because I got on the 8 am one instead of the usual 8:30.

I’m super tired. I don’t think I slept well last night. I’m so tired today, and my back hurts.
Joel should be home tonight so thats something to look forward to, even though I work til 1030. I can sleep in as long as I want tomorrow, instead of getting up at 7 like yesterday. I suppose I should post some pictures of our trip to Banff on the weekend…

Hayley and the view of Banff from Mt. Norquay

The amazing windows and king bed in our amazing hotel room

The ravens that were eyeing up Tom and Hayley’s hotel room

Tom and Hayley on the bike

Me and Joel on the bike

I’m making this a regular occurrence now! Who would have thought that Briana would actually start blogging regularly! Well guess what, having a normal routine does that for a person! It gives me a slot of time 3 days a week where I can make it a habit to update my blog!

Anyway… I just ran into Tanya, a friend from Starbucks, at school. We chatted a bunch about school. Yay for knowing people! lol

I have decided that M-W-F classes are the best ones I have, and probably the best class I have is Intro to Cultural Anthropology, the teacher is so awesome and accommodating! Even though I won’t be in class on friday, I will still get credit for it, because the “assignment” is a scavenger hunt around campus, and I can do it any day next week!

Cultural Anth and Linguistic Anth are definitely my top two classes. Profs are awesome, and the topics are super exciting too!

Anyway, my Linguistic Anth class is about to start in like 10 minutes so I’m going to end it here with a pic… This is me sitting in my Linguistic Anth class with my Starbucks London Fog because I am having trouble staying awake! [on a side note: So far I have not fallen asleep in any of my classes! Thats gotta be a record! Go Me!]