sometimes life lessons come in the form of obnoxious sirens sounding late at night in the middle of jauary....

Sorry readers for the delay. Sometimes it takes a fire alarm to get your ass in gear... so two weeks back in and so far i've seen some pretty ugly sides to both my education and more recently,god-damn-drunken-womb-clingy-dregs-of-the-gene-pool, erm... my living arrangements.

So far my time back has taught me how much i hate schism...or more lightly gossip. It hit me yesterday how much that's been eating at me and how inescapable it's going to be in this career. It seems that every theatre techician is going to know every other theatre technician's relationship status, who hates who, every quip and quarrell anyone has on any crew, or whatever else made high school complicated. Being the backwards individual i am i almost completely avoided that drama in high school so i'm not equipped to handle it just yet i guess. I suppose it's something i'm going to have to grow into and then out of. hopefully not. I enjoyed dodging that bullet. Maybe i just have my back up because i feel hard done by for being stuck into two soft crews in a row. Guess being short and weak and dare i say dainty doesn't a carpenter make. Could just be the fact that i'm on the other side of a few opinions among the general populace. Still just a rough spot though, theatre is where i belong and no one for the good nor the bad is really going to do a hell of a lot about it. Looking back on it maybe is just people in general I don't like. hmm...

Anyway I've decided that a list of do's and do not's for living in a building with a thousand other people might help others avoid living in college residences.

1. Do become aware of the fact that in high concentrations people of any age tend to become stupid. Stupidty leads to lots of messes that will have their own categories.

2. Don't assume that because you would like the place you live to be pleasent that others will agree. In large concentrations people tend to prefer the opposite. Gotta love that bystander effect!

3. Do pest proof your living arragements. People are gross. they bring their bugs with them. Pest proofing should also include sound proofing and a shut the fuck up stick that you can use to hit the walls, ceiling, floor, window, to make noisy neighbours do just that...shut the fuck up. You should also conceal any indication to pests...i mean... outsiders that you live where you live, they will come to your door when you are hung over among other things. Normally at times when you don't want them there basically.

4.Do Fire proof your living arrangements. Yes. People in high concentrations are stupid. Stupid people can't be trusted with any sort of combustables. your fire proofing should also include sprinkler proofing. Tonight I have learned from other's misfortune to keep EVERYTHING off the floor.

5. Just don't live in a building that houses more than say... five people...

Day one

So to start off I'm going to state something that Griff pointed out so wisely. The first class of the semester was Comm 300. Business writing. That would have been a very bad start indeed if, say, Stella was teaching it but it was someone more hyper so it was amusing. Stella seems nice enough but she lacks the insanity needed for a monday morning...

This guy trumps all of the tech teachers in his ability to get lost in rants so he's pretty awesome in my books. However. Communication classes are not. Nor are the dim witted registrar gophers that stuck your sad responsible ass in that damn class to begin with. Ooo look at that snappy change of mood! I wouldn't be so ticked if you know... they looked into their computing fuck up. That would have been pretty swell. According to some higher schooling power I'm exempt. I tell them I think there has been a mistake because well... i have little to no experience writing formal business pieces and I haven't done anything to prove I have. So what do they do about this? Without even looking into how i got that exemption status the toss my ass into class without a second glance back. Makes me nervous that these are the people also handle my finances within the school. I've slapped down 11k already with these guys. You do 11k of work wrong on a car and you're losing fingers.... makes me think that they're either assuming mommy and daddy pay for everyone's schooling so we don't care or that we're just in school because we have to be so we don't care. Either way I'm getting the feeling that they think we don't care which seems kind of ludicrous because even the richest people would probably feel a little twingey about flushing 11k...

oh and there is more to come with the lack of communication thing kiddies! because that's the main issue here. I'm thinking they don't think we care as long as our ass in a chair preferrably in a class room and with an instructor. This other tidbit comes from rez. So my roommate moved out just before break (thank effin god). So that's cool, I had the entire dorm to myself for a couple of weeks. Then i come back three weeks later and the place is still empty and I clear some space for the new chick. fine by me. then the electricians come in and open the room up to get at the fire alarm and i notice it's set up like a display room. I wasn't notified that the place is a display so i'm left here thinking do i get a roommate? is it safe to continue running around in my skivvies? are random tour groups chock full of high school kids going to be stampeding through my room only to run into a very cranky me after a wild night? I really hate kids. That would be messy indeed...

Hopefully this is just beginning of the semester bullshit. Other than that it was great to be back in class. It was amazing how quickly we all picked up where we left off. feels like we've been away for a weekend, which is still a retardedly long time to be appart in this industry. I'm really looking forward to where this shit storm is going to take me. Ha ha. bring on the three weeks to opening!