And So The Journey Continues

When I last posted, it was during my second semester in my third year at UBC ....  technically my fifth year of uni, since I took a year off and transfered from Columbia College. Although my average from the last year was a B-,  I've decided to expand my education from UBC to VCC.

You're thinking: "VCC, but that's a much worse school to go to?!" 

If I were going to be taking history, yes --- but i'm not. I've switched into the hair program. Hair design is art, and I've always fancied myself as more of an artist than a scholar. The history of science and medicine is more fun as a hobby anyway and maybe later in life I can mix my passion for art and my knowledge of medical techniques from around the world to better myself spiritually, and perhaps economically.

I hope that you will be proud of me, and to those who I know are ashamed, I want you to look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if you're doing what you want to do with your life. 

I AM.

Broke Through the TA Problem!

So, I posted course inspired drawings for the course with the evil TA, and vuala, my marks became A's with little change in my effort. I'm sadly going to only get a 'B' in this course due to last semester though. =__="

Course inspired drawing for History 302:

On the other hand...history 455 still annoys the heck out of me. Perhaps I can't understand the gendering of history because I've been raised not to think of myself in terms of gender. Sure, I'll look at another side of history, but that side is not a side that I enjoy looking at. It's whiny, from every point of view one takes - a men's, women's, homosexual's, cross dresser's, youth's, and class's/race's. ANNOYING - That's what it is.

(Is has to do with understanding of the history of bodies - that's why I took it.)

THE TA FROM HELL!

Have you ever had a teacher's assistant in charge of your marks that seems to not like you and therefore gives you low marks. I have one of those. Seriously, in all of my other courses I'm either getting A's or B's except in this class (for which i'm working at twice as hard.) He belittles the comments I make in my discussion section and gives me the most pointless reasons for why my grades are low. He also usurped a presentation I was making yesterday and later blamed me for not getting through enough information. If he had let me go through my questions, a lot more would have gotten done. He lingered on the theory of looking at the history of Louis Riel with sovereignty and not criminality for MUCH too long when there was a lot more to the presentation, like the comic medium and the author's sources. He later said that he wished that I had touched more on the comic medium - what a jerk.

Example of belittling my comments: We were talking about how people read books for class. While most of my peers read books in two hour chunks over many days, I tend to cloister myself for about 30 hours, reading a book until I understand it (Otherwise, I wouldn't have the self-discipline to do so and would end up on Facebook.) The TA completely ignored my comment and just said that people should study in those fragments of time. If I did that I'd forget what I had read, even if I took notes along with it. Heck, my method has been used in China for a thousand years - that's how studying was done and tests were done up until just after the Qing dynasty.

Example of a pointless comment on my work: "You shouldn't write your reviews about paraphrased autobiographies the same way you would for historical novels and primary sources." --- this would be just fine, if there wasn't a very strict format for how we're supposed to write reviews for this class. It's supposed to go "Write a statement about the theme/argument of the text" then "write about the evidence that the author uses for this argument/lack of it/where from." How can I write about some thing differently with such strict guidelines?

So, there you have it - he's the least helpful, most stuck up TA that I've ever had. And I'm stuck with him for another semester. He's probably been in school for only a couple more years than I have. I can't wait to get into grad school and prove to him and a few others who underestimate me that I'm worth something. If I were a mean person, I wouldn't give him the time of day - but I'll make sure to be really nice to him when I'm getting my work published along with his own. Heck, at this rate I'll have my non-academic book published before I graduate my BA and hopefully soon after, I'll get my academic book published - I've been researching for it for a while now.

All of my other classes are good though. History 393 (History & philosophy of science) and 439 (History if Fin de Siecle Europe) are awesome, and my Coastal Salish class is generally really fun. History 455 (Gender and sexuality in Latin America) is weird though. I don't like mixing gender-studies and history - it's sort of unbalanced when we're using our own experiences as gendered bodies in Vancouver to talk about the murder case of an Indigenous female slave in the 18th century.

The Essays! THE HORROR!

So i'm 12 pages down, with 24 pages to go of essays due this week. It wouldn't be so bad if two of the essays weren't on the vaguest of topics... bet you can't guess which class is annoying me this time.

Yup, you guessed it - Quebec history! 12 pages of writing worth 50% of my final grad are based on the questions:

Quebec History was influenced by both liberal and conservative principals and values in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Explain. (worth 30% of my final mark in 7 pages)

How revolutionary was the Quiet Revolution (worth the other 20% in 5 pages)

The prof gave us the topics of multiple essays worth 50% of our final grade when every other term-paper for every other class was due in the same week. When I become a professor, I'm NEVER going to do that. Seriously, here's my vow to never assign 50% of a final mark in the last week of class. Quote me on this!

In further news, I put up my academic blog on November 26. At the moment it's a compilation of my old essays, study cards, and projects for the history of medicine, science, and technology. I plan to expand it as my academic career continues. Who knows, there might even be some posts from China eventually. Oogiantheorem

Okay back to the study cave...

A bit of fun in the middle of essays

So, it's my birthday in a couple of days, not that it really matters. 23 isn't really an important age. (Wow, I might be repeating myself from two post ago, lol). My older brother got me the box set of "Avatar The Last Air Bender". It's a kid's show - pretty deep storyline though. I'll probably watch it some time in the summer - winter break is reserved for study. Believe it or not, I plan to start some intense analysis of the medical use of tea is Sri Lanka and a few African countries, and dig a bit deeper into its use in India - also apparently cultivation there has evolved greatly since the 1860's (who'd have thought - there was only a cultural revolution!!!). Yay for lack of context when I first studied it...

Anyway, among all of my essays I drew a picture. No comic for this week yet. My ideas, max's ideas, and my dad's ideas are weak...really weak. And my dad wants me to have the last leaf of autumn say, "I ain't go'a fa'w on ma' knees no mo'." I get it. It's a blues joke and to the right audience it's adorable, but not to a bunch of 20-somethings who don't care what they're reading...And professors don't read the Ubyssey purposely. Max wants me to make a really bold statement of some kind - he just can't figure out what. And me - the best thing I can figure out is an octopus surrounded by shoes singing "poor unfortunate soles." Horrible.

Without further ado, a drawing for some teenage kid who I don't know:



He said it looked too cheerful. What an emo kid XD.

I don't think I'll sleep tonight. I feel like cleaning. I get that way sometimes when I feel anxious - that's probably why I drew the picture. There's only 5.5 hours until i'm supposed to be awake anyways. I heard that my dad wants to celebrate my birthday in the morning instead of on my actual birthday. Too bad I have an essay due the next day, a test the day after that, an argument do the day after that, and a presentation on thursday. I'll stick around long enough to be friendly - then I gotta sneak back into my lair.

I have good news and I have bad news...


1st the good news:

My comics are going to be published weekly in the Ubyssey, starting either tomorrow or Thursday.

What will be published this week:



The bad news:

While reading about the Quiet Revolution (Quebec history BOOO), I spilt tea all over my beautiful white sheets. The only sheets that I own... Sigh. I learned my lesson.... don't drink tea in bed. U__U"

Well so much for posting every day. I guess that school and work got in the way.

Speaking of which, school is causing me some grief these days. I'll be starting my fourth year next semester and I know that I'll be wanting to go to grad school for history the year after. Unfortunately, I might be stuck because generally people study the history of the language that they speak. Since I was too stupid to realize this and decided to learn hən'q'əmin'əm' (Coastal Salish), I might be suck going into Canadian history instead of Asian History or the Histroy of Science and Technology/Medicine.

To make my predicament worse, those who apply for a masters degree with a concentration of Canadian history are expected to know French. In short, I hate French Canadian History and the French Language. It is not that French Canadian History is more boring or whiny than any other history, it is that the current study of it is more biased than any other history that I've ever come into contact with except for Indigenous history. I can deal with Indigenous bias - because Canada's Indigenous peoples got the short end of the stick when it came to the loss of their cultures and their land. French Canadian History - the main bias is cruel and unnecessary in PanCanadian culture. It stands on the basis that English Canada should compensate French Canada for four hundred years of oppression and meanwhile states that French Canadian-ness should be common all over Canada even when many French Canadians refuse to move out of Quebec. Basically, French Canadian History is anti-English Canadian. UGH U____U"

To get out of this predicament what I was thinking of doing is teaching in China for a couple of years before applying to Grad school. That way, while I'm there I could learn mandarin to a good enough conversational degree to get tested, whilst doing a study of Ancient Chinese Medicine in any spare time that I might have. ---- The problem with this is that my family would probably flip its lid seeing its only female child dash out into the big ol' world with eyes full of wonder and naivety.

Alternatively, I could go into an MA with a concentration in the History of Science and Technology, or Medicine. To do this in British Columbia I would have to get amazing marks this and next year, otherwise I'd have to go to Ontario.

If worse comes to worse I'll end up doing my MA in a prairie province or even up north. But i'm gonna stick it out in History, fighting to make my mark, no matter what.

For now, here's a sketch of my worried dad. Sometimes he seems more worried about my future than I am.