Cinco (or how to distract oneself from grad student-itis)

Ohhhhhhh.....
I've got the grad-student-at-the-end-of-the-semester-with-too-damned-much-to-do blues.

The things that are particularly grinding my gears at the moment?

-Group projects. My prof thinks its a good idea for us to focus on these at this stage in our education, as collaboration is a reality of the academic life. I want him to try to find a few matching hours to spare in the life of two massively busy people. As well as a way to not waste countless hours trying to make two completely different writing styles flow at all.

-A supervisor who has taken over 4 months to edit a manuscript I wrote, yet wants me to write an entire chapter in! the! next! month! or! so!

-Bosses who say one thing to reassure you, when the very opposite is true. Like we won't make you commute hours and hours a day when there is another person working the day before and the day after you with a car.
By the way... new boss, it isn't cool to ask me why I don't have a car. I've been a student for eight years now. I pay full-time tuition even when I'm working full-time at an unpaid practicum. Why do you think I don't have a car?

Anyways, for this, and multiple other reasons, I am going to have to put aside my few topical and thoughtful posts for the time being. As such, it looked to be the perfect time to pull out the meme that my fellow royalty, The Frog Princess tagged me to do.

In actuality, it is just the classic five weird facts about me meme. Since I am already plugging away at 100 facts about me, I figured I would do the whole two birds, one stone thing.

#41- This will probably exhibit my total Canadian-ness, but I was a huge fan of Mr. Dressup as a child. As such, my friend and I were thrilled when he was doing a live show in our city. My friend even made Casey, the fellow on the right, a doll (she was adamant that Casey was a girl, as she couldn't figure out how a boy would have such bright cheeks without the help of makeup).

So, went went to the show, and had a fabulous time. Once it had finished, my friend's father somehow managed to get in contact with one of Mr. Dressup's "people". This person apparently had the connections to get my friend backstage so she could give Casey the doll she made. However, apparently I, by virtue of my doll-less-ness, was not allowed to accompany her-- no matter how much I cried, pleaded, and begged.

I think the person who made that decision must have been jaded and hateful of children. Who else would let only one of a pair of seven year old girls backstage to meet a childhood idol?

#42- I had to wait a few years until around the age of 13 for my celebrity moment-- being an extra in a film.

An especially bad film, called "Gold Diggers: The Legend of Bear Mountain".
Don't you be misinterpreting that title- it's about treasure hunting!
It starred Christina Ricci pre-Indie films (and post "Adams Family") and the chick from "My Girl".

If you look very closely, you can see me walking up the street as Christina Ricci rides past me.

Altogether, it was a pretty un-glamourous job that mostly consisted of waiting in a large room for my supposed four scenes (of which I only actually got to be in one, due to time constraints). I totally got free catered lunch in the same room as Christina Ricci, though! *insert star-struck teenage squeal here*

#43- My parents never allowed us to have a video game system growing up, insisting that our time was better spent gallivanting outdoors. Outside of some initial glee at playing Duck Hunter at a friend's place, playing video games was never something I felt I had missed out of in childhood-- after all, a treehouse is way cooler, wouldn't you agree?

However, apparently a bit of my unconsciousness disagrees. As you may remember, I purchased a Wii for a certain fellow to celebrate his tolerating me for a whole year (I swear it wasn't a bribe!). As he basically lives at my house without technically having moved in, and he didn't feel like sharing with his roomies, he decided to set it up at my apartment. At first, I enjoyed dabbling around with the sports games, but was generally fairly indifferent.

Until Super Paper Mario came around.


And now I've turned into that 12 year old I never was. I used to roll my eyes at video game previews... but now I am seriously into this game. And not at a logical level- like an overstimulated adolescent. I gasp, swear, and make all sorts of random sound effects. You should have seen me freak out last night when a giant green spider came after me. Put a controller is my hand, and the adult apparently disappears.

#44- I am apparently an exceedingly fast speaker. It is something I'm not generally aware of- it's just my natural rate of speech, particularly when I am excited about something, and thus takes some extraordinary effort to deliberately slow down (and makes me feel like I am speaking in the most patronizing slowed tone ever).

The funny thing is that I don't recognize it in others. My brain follows along remarkably well, while everyone around me is struggling to keep up. I have a few friends with whom others cannot follow our conversations... it's like we play off each other and quickly cycle into hyperspeed.

Even more intriguing is people's interpretation of my reasons for speaking so quickly. My mother used to tell me it was because I thought so quickly, my mouth tried to keep up. Of course, I am fond of this interpretation, and others have at times attributed it to confidence. Others, however, instead place it within a more anxiety based framework, thinking that I am generally nervous, particularly when giving presentations. It is funny receiving course evaluations when I have TA'd saying the opposite things, which I attribute partially to them using whatever story about my fast paced speech that works within their view of me.

#45- My first full time job was a cashier at KFC... aka. the worst job ever. My friend was kind enough to refer to me as the Colonel's concubine as a result.

I could write an entire post about the sheer awfulness of this job. Be it the fact that I was vegetarian working in a greasy meat pit, the time I spilled insanely hot gravy on my hand and had to keep on working (with one hand!), the number just being in such a greasy location did to my otherwise clear skin, the minimum wage, the 16 days without a break, the split shifts, the incredibly passive aggressive manager, the fact that we were short-staffed by almost half the number of employees we were supposed to have because everyone kept on quitting, the neon green coleslaw we squeezed out of the end of a massive bag.... ugh.

The worst, however, was the customers. It is an odd thing how it has somehow become socially appropriate to take out your frustrations on me people who make less than what your meal cost an hour. I was yelled at for anything and everything, including prices, food we didn't serve, food the cook had made, restaurant policy, closing time, the fact that we had no fresh coffee on at 4pm (seriously, guy, no one drinks KFC coffee except the five elderly regulars who arrive at 9am- who, BTW, were totally my favourite), or the fact that I had to ring in an item rather than just take the cost of it out of her change.

I do get a little of a smug sense of satisfaction, though, knowing that most of the people who treated me so poorly were total elitists who had never worked a service job... and now, with me so close to my PhD, if I was to play their classist game, I would be far above them on the hierarchy.

I actually have this little fantasy whereby, once I am Dr. Pointful, I go back to KFC and work until the first asshat decides to yell at me for some reason... and which point I show him (it's usually a business man middle manager type in this fantasy) my ID, introduce myself as Dr. Pointful, Psychologist, and tell him that I would like to ask him a few questions, as I am writing a report on the association between abuse of service industry workers and overcompensation for small penis size. Ha!!!

***

So, there you go, five more royal factoids that ended up taking up just as much time to write as a "thinking" post. Oops.

I was going to tag, but I realized that most everyone I know has done this one at least once. I will put in my plug for it being a good filler post, though!