Giving Credit Where Credit is Doodoo

It occurred to me last night that I will be turning 20 on a Friday in 2011.

Which means that I'll turn 21 in 2012.

2012 is a leap year.

April 15th will be a Sunday.

Ergo, I cannot buy alcohol on my 21st birthday.

So I've been cursed since birth. I have always hated leap year for how it rudely shows up every four years and tacks on another day to the worst month of the year. But this? This is simply unforgivable.

I just thought I should share my frustration.

Which will be the theme of this post. Let's begin.

1. I am a frustrated student.

Nothing is hard yet, and not that I'm doing terrible. Why- just the other day I pwned managerial accounting into oblivion, punched a marketing quiz in the face, tea-bagged an IDS test, and drop-kicked both CISM AND Management in the same day.

So I'm doing quite well academically.

But there is always that one class, that one stupid class, with that one stupid group project that lasts all freaking semester long. I don't even know how to get started. The directions don't even make sense. Partly because the professor is Chinese and sometimes leaves out important articles like a, an or the, and partly because the project itself just doesn't make sense.

And you know how sometimes you can like pretend to know what's going on, do stuff according to what you think you're supposed to be doing, and it kind of comes out okay? Yeah- not this time.

Look at this sentence: "What structural elements are required for each module, the attributes necessary to create each of those structural elements, and the nature and type of data necessary to populate each of those attributes can be identified by referencing the lab 2 and 6 tutorials."

QUE? EN ANGLAIS SIL-VOUS-PLAIT!!!!!

And here's the thing about this class. It meets one day a week. And if you already finish the lab tutorial before you go to class, then there's nothing to do that one day in class, so you can go home. So I don't know what we're supposed to be learning, or how to apply what we're learning to this "project". And I feel like if I ask, I'll get directed to a tutorial.

2. I am a frustrated worker.

You know how I said last semester that my job was boring? Well, if it's not boring, it's annoying. It's around the time for refund checks to be sent out, so we get calls all the time asking the same freaking questions (when will they be sent out? what if I have direct deposit?) OMG SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!

I feel with all honesty like a machine recording could do my job. Therefore, I am a waste of human capital. I was reworking my resume this morning and I realized that I have skills! I know things! I know how to do things! And yet I get paid minimum wage to sit in a chair and talk to morons.

It was both an uplifting and a depressing realization.

And so I'm going to try my hardest to get a graduate assistantship next spring where I will be paid way more for doing something meaningful.

3. I am a frustrated inhabitant.

My roommate from Burkina Faso came back from grocery shopping at midnight last night. And, you know, it's Friday night, so I'm up a little later than normal. But then she starts cooking (which for some reason involves the pounding of a jack hammer to break up frozen goat meat) at 12:15 and leaves the stove on all night. But it's not like I can talk to her about it because of the language barrier.

True story.

But I found a good way of coping with all the frustration. There is an emanating mantra that brings hope and peace:

THIS IS TEMPORARY.

• I will not forever be in school. I will graduate at some point, and there will no longer be projects and homework. There is indeed an end to this. I like to think of completing my degree as buying my "ticket home", and every single assignment I do gets me that much closer.
• I will not forever be at this job. I'm going to get my degree and earn money by doing stuff I LIKE.
• I will not forever live with these people. I will move HOME where only the crickets keep me up at night.

23 months. Can I make a paper chain yet?

And you should know this: I started playing Halo.

I've realized that I don't have many friends here, and there are only a select few who don't annoy the poo out of me. And so in order to spend time with them, I have to have something in common with them.

Enter Halo.

I'd like to get a little better at video games in general so that Peter will no longer get to make snide comments at my expense. But I draw the line at that. I will not invest money into this and I will not call it a hobby. I would just like to not be so socially inept ("WHERE'S B!??!!?").

And I've gotten better. Actually got 2 headshots in SWAT last night.

Also, I kind of like to think of myself as the "Penny" of the group (as if this were really The Big Bang Theory). So I stopped trying to pretend the nerds aren't my friends.

Because they are.

First train home, I've got to get on it,

T.T.