I wrote this entry weeks ago but things have been crazy busy lately and I haven't had time to update. Anyhow, here's a long overdue update.... I wish Daylight time savings were every week...
It's been such a long and dreary past couple of weeks. Midterms have been flying left and right. Let's begin from the last week of October. The first midterm that week was Math. It was difficult for me and I didn't do very well, but fortunately, since we're in graduate school, everything get scaled upwards hugely. The second midterm that week was "Econometrics" which was really a Statistics midterm because we haven't actually started Econometrics material yet. Everything we've done in the course so far, I've studied during my undergraduate degree. Needless to say, I did pretty alright on the midterm. I was kind of frustrated, though, because there was one integration question that I couldn't quite get. I couldn't figure out to complete a difficult square with about 6 different terms in it -- something I haven't really done since highschool. Anyway, it fortunately didn't affect my mark too badly.
That weekend was Halloween weekend. I had decided to have some people over at my place, but on Friday after I'd finished teaching my tutorials, I still didn't have a costume, so Zina, Peter, and I headed all the way to East London by bus and went to a Value Village, which - of course, had been and was being continuously raided
by a pack of hungry unprepared, costumeless wolves looking for a desperate disguise the weekend before Halloween. Of course I was among this pack when I arrived. Almost nothing worthy was available! I finally found this red velvet, long, not-all-too-flattering dress and decided I could pull off a Lady Macbeth from it. $10 later we were out of the store. Peter also bought a couple of items to dress as the March Hare from Alice in Wonderland. Zina was all set - her aunt made her a fancy Queen of Hearts dress (also from Alice in Wonderland - I guess I was third wheel...)
After that, we walked in the cold to a Dollar Giant and bought some Halloween décor for my place. Then we had dinner at a franchise restaurant whose name I can't remember but it was okay and then we finally got back when it was dark and cold. The next day was my party. I was pretty stressed, though, partially because I had to hostess a party and partially because I felt like there wasn't enough time to tend to Halloween as well as get through all my homework on time. Needless to say, I didn't get much homework done that day. I decorated with fake cobwebs and spiders and this banner of blood that made it look like the apartment upstairs (if there were an apartment upstairs) had gone on a murderous rampage and the blood was seeping through the ceiling and down my walls.
Hiro, who dressed as an eggplant, came over and we walked to the University because there was a Halloween "Dinner and Pre-drinking" party at the Grad club. Hiro got beeped at by cars all the way to the University because everyone loved his costume. I didn't even dress up to go to the Grad club because I wasn't in the mood - because I was stressed. We met Peter and Zina at the Grad Club, but the party was not very good. Hardly anyone was there and it wasn't very well prepared or organized or decorated or anything.
Then we walked back home to my place and it got better. More and more people kept showing up (I had invited everyone in my program as well as all our TA's (four of them) in second year PhD). I think the maximum we had in my place at the same time was ten people. Everyone liked the apartment, so I was more comfortable once the party got going. We watched The Hangover, which was stupid and funny, and everyone was drinking except me, who had just a glass of wine at the beginning of the party. The only problem was that the buzzer wasn't working so I kept having to go downstairs to let people in, and sometimes they didn't have a cell phone so they'd give me an approximate time of arrival before they left home. It all added to the fun, though. And the party was pretty good until it started getting late. One person started feeling sick so he was getting ready to go home, but just before he left there was a projectile vomiting incident. It wasn't horrible, but it started all of a sudden and a few drops of red wine throw-up got on my carpet. Fortunately a bunch of the guests helped me clean it all up. Slowly and one by one the guests started leaving except for Zina and our TA's (two of them showed up). They didn't leave until 4:30am! OMIGOSH! And it was only because I was falling asleep on the couch and eventually someone said, "I think Selina wants us to go now." And I answered with something along the lines of, "Yes, please leave."
I finally got to bed at around 5am and then woke up at around 8:30am or so the next morning to clean up my place and erase all evidence of last night's horrors (the "blood" on the walls, the stain and dirt on the carpet, the "cobwebs" and plastic spiders, etc. I was thoroughly exhausted and had to spend the rest of the day at school doing homework -- fortunately, so did everyone else. Worse, though, I got pretty sick that day. The next day - Monday - I had a headache and a head cold. It felt like there was so much pressure in my head, and that made it very difficult to study for the midterm that was coming up on Thursday (Microeconomics -- the teacher has a reputation of making tricky midterms for that course). On Tuesday, Daddy drove all the way from Toronto to London just to see me for the couple of hours I had off that day. We had an early dinner together and he brought me firewood for my fireplace. I'm so grateful for that firewood and for getting to see Daddy because now I can sit in front of the fireplace in the evenings with roaring fire - so romantic and beauteous! - and I needed a touch of home in my life that day. Unfortunately, though, it did make me miss home and my family a lot, and I did feel slightly upset and lonely. The remainder of Tuesday and Wednesday were spent semi-studying, semi-panicking about the midterm, but we had last year's midterm to study from, and it seemed pretty reasonable, so that helped me feel slightly less insecure about the midterm. Thursday came and went. The midterm was the worst exam I've ever written in my life.
