Dear Internet,
Well, the summer term is in full-swing, and damn is it busy. Several assignments per week, plus English readings, plus two marking jobs, plus the occasional essay and midterm have made this term fast-paced and stressful thus far. This month, in particular, is ridiculous. Not only do I have something due nearly every single day, but my weekends are booked as well. Last weekend: first aid training. Weekend before that: Hitchens debate. This weekend: traveling to Boston for the weekend. Weekend after: orientation stuff.
Not only is it busy, but it's also HOT. This is the first summer in my life that has been/will be spent nearly entirely living in an apartment without air conditioning. We've had a few ridiculous heat days so far, and let me just say that I really hope that they continue to be sporadic and don't last the entire months of July and August (although I'll be home for most of August anyways). At least it's not Toronto - that was utter hell, in case you missed those entries from last summer.
I don't really have very much clever to say because all the work has robbed me of the ability to think properly. This is the busiest summer I've ever had. I would just take it day-by-day, but there's so much to do that I have to always be thinking like 2 days in advance. Luckily for me right now, that means that my mind is in a place where my work for the week is done. Now I just have to wait for time to catch up...
Sincerely,
Caro
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
A Long Overdue Post
*Note: this was originally written back at the beginning of March when this was going on. I decided not to post it in the hopes it would blow over. But that didn't happen. And now I've moved out*
Dear Internet,
I am in the worst situation right now. Honestly, I should have seen it coming. Let's go back to where it all started.
I have been living at my current place for about 6 months now. There are two problems that I have consistently: our internet sucks (cap at 60GB that we always go over that my roommate in control of the internet never "has time" to get changed), and apparently I'm the only university student in existence who likes to keep a clean apartment. These aren't typically huge problems. It's frustrating when I have to pay between $30 and $40 every month for internet when I know that there are better options out there, but come May/June our soul contract with our ISP ends and I can finally choose a better option. Had I been living here and not in stupid Toronto last summer, I would have been able to prevent this problem. Oh well. As for the cleanliness problem, every few weeks I find the time to clean, and in between I often leave notes for my roommates asking them to take care of a chore (our schedules are very different and I barely ever see them, or I would ask them in person), and this has seemed to suffice pretty well until now.
Now, to the current problem. Our lease ends at the end of April, so our landlord asked us last month if we were planning on staying on for another year. If we weren't, he wanted to start advertising the place ASAP. We decided to stay on for another year. We have not yet, however, signed another lease. Just yesterday, chatting with one of my roommates online, she lets it slip that she doesn't think that she's going to be able to stay another year. This is extremely inconvenient to everybody else in this situation. At this point in the term, it would difficult to find somebody to take her place for the summer; difficult for me and our other roommate to find somewhere good to live starting in the summer; and difficult for our landlord to find tenants starting in the summer. I tell her this. She flips out, claiming that I don't care about any of these family problems that she is having (problems, I might add, that she did not tell me about before). I tell her (admittedly rather rudely) that she should calm down and that I didn't know about these problems that she had.
Then, she decides that now is the time to tell me that basically she's been angry at me for over a month. I quote: "Seriously Carolyn I have been biting my Tongue since early Jan ..... Instead of actually talking to [us] you have decided that leaving passive aggressive notes was the best way to deal with things people respond better to kind words and conversations." Because obviously, she is such an expert with "kind words and conversations," as she is exemplifying by vilifying me over Facebook. I'd like to mention, again, that we all have very different schedules and I had decided that leaving notes for them to read and deal with when they had time would be the best alternative to struggling to talk in person. Do you have any idea how angry I am that she decided not to communicate her unhappiness with me at all (not even through passive-aggressive sticky notes!) and let it arbitrarily explode?
It is so hypocritical of her to decide that my leaving sticky notes for communication is not okay, but bottling up her anger with me and allowing it to come out on Facebook is perfectly acceptable (even though, as she says, "people respond better to kind words and conversation"). Her response when I called her out on it? "I bite my tongue because I hate confrontation and you know that, but I am done being bullied." So bullying = leaving notes for roommates and expecting them to do a fair share of the chores, but attacking somebody on Facebook is perfectly legitimate.
Before this happened, I was already planning on asking them to get together with me for a meeting, as I had drawn up a potential roommate agreement and was hoping we could take care of some of these problems. At the time, the only problems I was aware of were that the place is never clean and it stresses me out, and they picked a crappy internet service provider in my absence.
Now, I didn't think that our other roommate, J, was having the same problems with me as she was. The reason I thought this: I see J more often than her, and he's never said anything to me about being unhappy with my methods of communication. However, after the argument with D (the first roommate), I wrote an email to them proposing a meeting and attaching the roommate agreement I had written so that they could look it over and decide what they liked and didn't like about it before the meeting, with the intention that at the meeting we could draft up a final version together that would help to take care of some of our problems. Finally, I asked them when they wanted to have a meeting.
So far, I've passed a few emails back and forth with them about it. The gist is that they have both now decided that they're going to be jerks to me because of problems that they never tried resolving with me in the past; they're mad that I've gone ahead and done a draft because apparently that means to them that I am trying to control everything; and they won't tell me when they want to meet. I attribute that to the following reason: they are children who are incapable of making adult decisions for themselves and who will avoid conflict wherever possible, even when it results in an utterly horrible and undesirable conflict situation such as the one in which we currently find ourselves.
What makes me angry is that they're mad about me being controlling, when I wouldn't have to be controlling if they would get off their lazy butts and do anything. For instance: dishes barely ever get cleaned unless I request that it is done or I do it myself; trash barely gets taken out unless I request that it is done or I do it myself; we would never get together to discuss things that are going on unless I organize the entire thing (i.e. come up with a date/time, propose the date/time, and work things out with people's schedules from there). They need to understand the difference between controlling and initiating. If they would step up and take responsibility for themselves as adults, they would understand this.
I would love to tell them all this. In fact, I would love to look them in the eyes then punch them in the face. I would love to call them out for being all the horrible things that they are. Sadly, however, I have to live with them for at least 2 more months. I don't think that there is anything salvageable left of our friendship, which I would be disappointed about if I didn't hate them so much right now. In fact, part of the reason I am writing this is that I hope they will see this and know exactly what I think of them, which is extremely passive-aggressive and possibly hypocritical of me but I'm too angry right now to care. Instead of saying this to their faces, however, I have to grovel to them via email so that living together will be even slightly bearable.
The problem now, however, is that I need somewhere to live this summer and I don't want to move...but I don't want to live with them either. I've been checking out various apartments online, and while I would love to live in a single bedroom place where I can keep things as clean as I want as consistently as I want without idiotic, childish roommates, the rent for one bedroom places is much too high for me to afford (nearly twice what I am paying now).
Is a clean apartment really so much to ask for?
Sincerely,
Caro
Dear Internet,
I am in the worst situation right now. Honestly, I should have seen it coming. Let's go back to where it all started.
I have been living at my current place for about 6 months now. There are two problems that I have consistently: our internet sucks (cap at 60GB that we always go over that my roommate in control of the internet never "has time" to get changed), and apparently I'm the only university student in existence who likes to keep a clean apartment. These aren't typically huge problems. It's frustrating when I have to pay between $30 and $40 every month for internet when I know that there are better options out there, but come May/June our soul contract with our ISP ends and I can finally choose a better option. Had I been living here and not in stupid Toronto last summer, I would have been able to prevent this problem. Oh well. As for the cleanliness problem, every few weeks I find the time to clean, and in between I often leave notes for my roommates asking them to take care of a chore (our schedules are very different and I barely ever see them, or I would ask them in person), and this has seemed to suffice pretty well until now.
Now, to the current problem. Our lease ends at the end of April, so our landlord asked us last month if we were planning on staying on for another year. If we weren't, he wanted to start advertising the place ASAP. We decided to stay on for another year. We have not yet, however, signed another lease. Just yesterday, chatting with one of my roommates online, she lets it slip that she doesn't think that she's going to be able to stay another year. This is extremely inconvenient to everybody else in this situation. At this point in the term, it would difficult to find somebody to take her place for the summer; difficult for me and our other roommate to find somewhere good to live starting in the summer; and difficult for our landlord to find tenants starting in the summer. I tell her this. She flips out, claiming that I don't care about any of these family problems that she is having (problems, I might add, that she did not tell me about before). I tell her (admittedly rather rudely) that she should calm down and that I didn't know about these problems that she had.
Then, she decides that now is the time to tell me that basically she's been angry at me for over a month. I quote: "Seriously Carolyn I have been biting my Tongue since early Jan ..... Instead of actually talking to [us] you have decided that leaving passive aggressive notes was the best way to deal with things people respond better to kind words and conversations." Because obviously, she is such an expert with "kind words and conversations," as she is exemplifying by vilifying me over Facebook. I'd like to mention, again, that we all have very different schedules and I had decided that leaving notes for them to read and deal with when they had time would be the best alternative to struggling to talk in person. Do you have any idea how angry I am that she decided not to communicate her unhappiness with me at all (not even through passive-aggressive sticky notes!) and let it arbitrarily explode?
It is so hypocritical of her to decide that my leaving sticky notes for communication is not okay, but bottling up her anger with me and allowing it to come out on Facebook is perfectly acceptable (even though, as she says, "people respond better to kind words and conversation"). Her response when I called her out on it? "I bite my tongue because I hate confrontation and you know that, but I am done being bullied." So bullying = leaving notes for roommates and expecting them to do a fair share of the chores, but attacking somebody on Facebook is perfectly legitimate.
Before this happened, I was already planning on asking them to get together with me for a meeting, as I had drawn up a potential roommate agreement and was hoping we could take care of some of these problems. At the time, the only problems I was aware of were that the place is never clean and it stresses me out, and they picked a crappy internet service provider in my absence.
Now, I didn't think that our other roommate, J, was having the same problems with me as she was. The reason I thought this: I see J more often than her, and he's never said anything to me about being unhappy with my methods of communication. However, after the argument with D (the first roommate), I wrote an email to them proposing a meeting and attaching the roommate agreement I had written so that they could look it over and decide what they liked and didn't like about it before the meeting, with the intention that at the meeting we could draft up a final version together that would help to take care of some of our problems. Finally, I asked them when they wanted to have a meeting.
So far, I've passed a few emails back and forth with them about it. The gist is that they have both now decided that they're going to be jerks to me because of problems that they never tried resolving with me in the past; they're mad that I've gone ahead and done a draft because apparently that means to them that I am trying to control everything; and they won't tell me when they want to meet. I attribute that to the following reason: they are children who are incapable of making adult decisions for themselves and who will avoid conflict wherever possible, even when it results in an utterly horrible and undesirable conflict situation such as the one in which we currently find ourselves.
What makes me angry is that they're mad about me being controlling, when I wouldn't have to be controlling if they would get off their lazy butts and do anything. For instance: dishes barely ever get cleaned unless I request that it is done or I do it myself; trash barely gets taken out unless I request that it is done or I do it myself; we would never get together to discuss things that are going on unless I organize the entire thing (i.e. come up with a date/time, propose the date/time, and work things out with people's schedules from there). They need to understand the difference between controlling and initiating. If they would step up and take responsibility for themselves as adults, they would understand this.
I would love to tell them all this. In fact, I would love to look them in the eyes then punch them in the face. I would love to call them out for being all the horrible things that they are. Sadly, however, I have to live with them for at least 2 more months. I don't think that there is anything salvageable left of our friendship, which I would be disappointed about if I didn't hate them so much right now. In fact, part of the reason I am writing this is that I hope they will see this and know exactly what I think of them, which is extremely passive-aggressive and possibly hypocritical of me but I'm too angry right now to care. Instead of saying this to their faces, however, I have to grovel to them via email so that living together will be even slightly bearable.
The problem now, however, is that I need somewhere to live this summer and I don't want to move...but I don't want to live with them either. I've been checking out various apartments online, and while I would love to live in a single bedroom place where I can keep things as clean as I want as consistently as I want without idiotic, childish roommates, the rent for one bedroom places is much too high for me to afford (nearly twice what I am paying now).
Is a clean apartment really so much to ask for?
Sincerely,
Caro
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Lesson and Fun Fact of the Day #2
Dear Internet,
Lesson of the day: When you enjoy what you do, it's never really work.
Fun fact of the day: My boss had to tell me to stop working and go home yesterday.
Sincerely,
Caro
Lesson of the day: When you enjoy what you do, it's never really work.
Fun fact of the day: My boss had to tell me to stop working and go home yesterday.
Sincerely,
Caro
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Lesson and Fun Fact of the Day #1
Dear Internet,
Lesson of the day: A lot of students think they can get away with not reading directions to assignments and just do them however they want.
Fun fact of the day: I failed a lot of students in the assignment I was marking today.
Sincerely,
Caro
P.S. I want to try to see how many of these I can come up with on consecutive days. Because I've just told you this, I will fail at it.
Lesson of the day: A lot of students think they can get away with not reading directions to assignments and just do them however they want.
Fun fact of the day: I failed a lot of students in the assignment I was marking today.
Sincerely,
Caro
P.S. I want to try to see how many of these I can come up with on consecutive days. Because I've just told you this, I will fail at it.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Vacation Wisdom
Dear Internet,
I just completed one of my assignments for my professional development course (I am required to take a certain number during my work terms). Do you think it's redundant that one of my goals is to make better goals? We'll see what they think of that.
Anyways, in other news, just recently I got back from an amazing break. I went home, and had a great time (what a shocker). Showed my old friends how awesome I am (at least, that was goal), partied with my siblings, hung out with my family, celebrated Christmas the awesome way, then eventually came back here to Canada. When I came back, I hung out with STEVEN and we celebrated New Year's by killing zombies.
Although I did have a good time over my break, I must say that it was an educational experience. At least, there was one thing that I learned that I feel I will share with you.
Never be the last person in a house of 14 people to shower.
I just completed one of my assignments for my professional development course (I am required to take a certain number during my work terms). Do you think it's redundant that one of my goals is to make better goals? We'll see what they think of that.
Anyways, in other news, just recently I got back from an amazing break. I went home, and had a great time (what a shocker). Showed my old friends how awesome I am (at least, that was goal), partied with my siblings, hung out with my family, celebrated Christmas the awesome way, then eventually came back here to Canada. When I came back, I hung out with STEVEN and we celebrated New Year's by killing zombies.
Although I did have a good time over my break, I must say that it was an educational experience. At least, there was one thing that I learned that I feel I will share with you.
Never be the last person in a house of 14 people to shower.
Sincerely,
Caro
Caro
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Vandalism == Marketing?
Dear Internet,
Over the past few weeks/months (time really all blurs together when you're a university student), there have been little symbols spray painted all around my university campus. This symbol has been painted onto benches, walls, even the ground, and you can't escape it. Understandably, the entire student community has been pretty angry. Someone has been going around and vandalizing our school that we pay a lot of money to attend. This isn't like high school where everyone who thinks he's cool hates school/community/government/society ("Yeah dude! Stick it to the man! Graffiti is art, yo!"). Most students at this school are here because we like the school (or are strangely masochistic and enjoy paying money to an organization to make us feel stupid). The worst part was we had no way of knowing what this was, what it stood for, who put it there, etc.
Then, just the other day, it comes out: the symbol is a logo for a clothing company called "Incognito." A website is released, as well as a Facebook page, and everyone goes "oooo mysterious, I'm interested by your lack of information, not to mention your sexy anti-establishment actions." Except not. A website is released, and because most of the students at this school are far from technologically challenged, the name of the person who has been doing this is found quickly. Turns out that he is a student here. I imagine that he has, at this point, been turned into police services on campus for being a stupid vandal.
What's funny is that I found all this stuff yesterday...and I go to look at it again today, and the Facebook page as well as the guy's old blog has been taken down, but it was still available in Google's cache at the time of writing this.
If you scroll down somewhat, there is a post that contains a picture of the guy holding examples of the spray painted symbols. He might as well have been trying to get himself in trouble.
I think about it and I just think it's absolutely ridiculous. I mean, say someone creates a new clothing company. If he had the following marketing choices:
a) Legitimate means, such as actual advertisements
b) Incomprehensible vandalism
who would actually decide that b) was the best answer? If this guy had gone with a), at worst his marketing attempts would have been unsuccessful and he'd be a failure. Instead, he now has the potential of getting into legal trouble, not to mention an entire campus of 31,000 -ish students hating his guts.
Although I would never do this myself, I'm really hoping that people (using our school's directory) have called him out for being an idiot.
Lesson to be learned that should have been obvious from the start: vandalism != marketing.
Sincerely,
Caro
Over the past few weeks/months (time really all blurs together when you're a university student), there have been little symbols spray painted all around my university campus. This symbol has been painted onto benches, walls, even the ground, and you can't escape it. Understandably, the entire student community has been pretty angry. Someone has been going around and vandalizing our school that we pay a lot of money to attend. This isn't like high school where everyone who thinks he's cool hates school/community/government/society ("Yeah dude! Stick it to the man! Graffiti is art, yo!"). Most students at this school are here because we like the school (or are strangely masochistic and enjoy paying money to an organization to make us feel stupid). The worst part was we had no way of knowing what this was, what it stood for, who put it there, etc.
Then, just the other day, it comes out: the symbol is a logo for a clothing company called "Incognito." A website is released, as well as a Facebook page, and everyone goes "oooo mysterious, I'm interested by your lack of information, not to mention your sexy anti-establishment actions." Except not. A website is released, and because most of the students at this school are far from technologically challenged, the name of the person who has been doing this is found quickly. Turns out that he is a student here. I imagine that he has, at this point, been turned into police services on campus for being a stupid vandal.
What's funny is that I found all this stuff yesterday...and I go to look at it again today, and the Facebook page as well as the guy's old blog has been taken down, but it was still available in Google's cache at the time of writing this.
If you scroll down somewhat, there is a post that contains a picture of the guy holding examples of the spray painted symbols. He might as well have been trying to get himself in trouble.
I think about it and I just think it's absolutely ridiculous. I mean, say someone creates a new clothing company. If he had the following marketing choices:
a) Legitimate means, such as actual advertisements
b) Incomprehensible vandalism
who would actually decide that b) was the best answer? If this guy had gone with a), at worst his marketing attempts would have been unsuccessful and he'd be a failure. Instead, he now has the potential of getting into legal trouble, not to mention an entire campus of 31,000 -ish students hating his guts.
Although I would never do this myself, I'm really hoping that people (using our school's directory) have called him out for being an idiot.
Lesson to be learned that should have been obvious from the start: vandalism != marketing.
Sincerely,
Caro
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Happy!
Dear Internet,
You know how I've been bitching and complaining about not getting my owed bonus from the summer?
I FINALLY RECEIVED IT LAST WEEK! I was so pumped I went shopping. Now I have a cute dress for a semi-formal dance Steven and I are attending on Saturday! I'm excited.
The past two-ish weeks have been really awesome for me. Even though I've spent a LOT of money (the most wonderful time of the year?) I don't feel horribly guilty and poor like I usually do after large expenses. In fact, I might actually go out and purchase those running shoes I've been meaning to purchase since June so that I can actually get going on a healthier lifestyle for myself. Lazy me, though, keeps thinking, "You know what that would be good for? A New Year's resolution. We should put it off 'til them. Plus, you know, exams are coming up and it's a busy time..." etc. So we'll see what comes of that.
So last week, two of my siblings and my mother were visiting for a few days. They claim their main purpose in the area was visiting universities: a clever sham so they didn't have to admit they missed me so horribly they just had to make the 10-hour drive. My mother (the best one in the world, don't you know) took Steven and I out to dinner (with my siblings, of course) to a nice restaurant in the area to celebrate Steven's birthday. It was a wonderfully good time, and now I am looking forward even more to going home for Christmas! I'm looking forward to it so much that I conveniently forget about those exam things I have between now and then.
At the moment, I am honestly not worried about my exams at all. I'm sure that this will come back to bite me in the ass, but it just doesn't feel like it's exam time. Last day of classes on Monday? Pffft no way, the term just started! It's gone by so quickly it's ridiculous. It feels like just yesterday I was naively stepping into my classes, thinking "I am going to dominate this term." That mindset, however naive it may be, probably caused my domination by this term to be minimized somewhat. It's weird to think that so much knowledge has been stuffed into my brain over such a short period of time. Sitting in front of the exams will probably make me feel that not quite enough knowledge was stuffed into my brain, however...
Overall: I am happy!
Sincerely,
Caro
You know how I've been bitching and complaining about not getting my owed bonus from the summer?
I FINALLY RECEIVED IT LAST WEEK! I was so pumped I went shopping. Now I have a cute dress for a semi-formal dance Steven and I are attending on Saturday! I'm excited.
The past two-ish weeks have been really awesome for me. Even though I've spent a LOT of money (the most wonderful time of the year?) I don't feel horribly guilty and poor like I usually do after large expenses. In fact, I might actually go out and purchase those running shoes I've been meaning to purchase since June so that I can actually get going on a healthier lifestyle for myself. Lazy me, though, keeps thinking, "You know what that would be good for? A New Year's resolution. We should put it off 'til them. Plus, you know, exams are coming up and it's a busy time..." etc. So we'll see what comes of that.
So last week, two of my siblings and my mother were visiting for a few days. They claim their main purpose in the area was visiting universities: a clever sham so they didn't have to admit they missed me so horribly they just had to make the 10-hour drive. My mother (the best one in the world, don't you know) took Steven and I out to dinner (with my siblings, of course) to a nice restaurant in the area to celebrate Steven's birthday. It was a wonderfully good time, and now I am looking forward even more to going home for Christmas! I'm looking forward to it so much that I conveniently forget about those exam things I have between now and then.
At the moment, I am honestly not worried about my exams at all. I'm sure that this will come back to bite me in the ass, but it just doesn't feel like it's exam time. Last day of classes on Monday? Pffft no way, the term just started! It's gone by so quickly it's ridiculous. It feels like just yesterday I was naively stepping into my classes, thinking "I am going to dominate this term." That mindset, however naive it may be, probably caused my domination by this term to be minimized somewhat. It's weird to think that so much knowledge has been stuffed into my brain over such a short period of time. Sitting in front of the exams will probably make me feel that not quite enough knowledge was stuffed into my brain, however...
Overall: I am happy!
Sincerely,
Caro
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