Gloryfades.org

As the semester is winding down I’m thinking a lot about the last three months and things that I’ve accomplished in that time. In the past my semesters have been rocky but this past one has been really good. I’ve learned to focus on my work and for that I’m happy. I thought I would list the few things that I’m proud of about this semester because I think it’s worth noting.

1. I’m proud of handing in my essays on time. While “on time” is a relative term in the world of academia I’m happy to say that I have not gone over extensions and I have not been penalized for handing anything in late.

2. I’m proud of going to class. I’ve had issues with this in the past, not going to class. I’d get over skipping classes and end up missing more because I was ashamed for having already missed one. This sort of thing often would snowball and I’d really miss out. While my attendance record this semester hasn’t been perfect I have not let it depress me (which is the problem because once I’m upset, I don’t want to do anything) and I have pushed myself to go to class even when I know I’ll be late. That was often a problem too - I’d miss classes because I knew I’d be fifteen, thirty minutes late for the beginning and I would be embarassed even just thinking about showing up late.

3. I’m proud that I haven’t missed any history seminars. All Ryerson history classes have four seminars which are worth 20% of your grade. Missing one is the equivalent of removing 5% of your grade. In the past I allowed myself the opporunity to miss one seminar because I didn’t feel it was important enough. This severely impacted my grades and I’m really proud of myself for not allowing myself to do that again.

4. I’m proud of myself for not freaking out entirely over my OSAP fiasco. While I may not have a loan anymore I have family who will step in and help if I need it and I am eternally grateful for their support. This is by no means a gift, though. I intend on repaying every dime they give me. On the plus side, though, that’s $2,000 I won’t have to give back to the government (plus interest!).

That’s pretty much it. It’s not a huge list but they’re important to me. I’m really happy that my final year is going so well, even with an extra course added. I was worried that all of this work would really bog me down and make my last year really awful but (for now) I’m doing alright. I just need to get through my exams and I’ll be alright.

Weekend is here and I’m pooped to the max. Today I handed in a crappy English essay and watched Once Were Warriors in said English class. If I had known it would be a movie day I may have stayed home and downloaded it. I decided to stick around, though, and watch it with everyone else. I had already paid for parking, after all. :/ Anyway, the movie was good. I haven’t finished the book (shhhhhh) but the movie was really raw and frightening.

For those who don’t know, Once Were Warriors is about the Heke’s, a Maori family living in the Auckland projects in New Zealand. My knowledge of Maori culture and life until this semester was minimal, at best. While I’m sure this movie and book are definitely the grimmer side of being a Maori it does present a really interesting comparison to the native population of Canada. I can see that it isn’t just our aboriginal population that was marginalized by the colonialists, a fact that really shouldn’t surprise me but still does. The movie was incredibly sad and pretty much ruined the book for me. It’s probably going to be hard getting through the rest of it cause it deals with a lot more violence before the end.

I don’t really know what I’m trying to say, really.

I wanted to try and make a new layout for gloryfades.org today but I couldn’t come up with anything decent. I’m gonna try again before the end of the night and hopefully think of something. I’m still hanging onto the blog on that domain with my dear life. No one really reads it and I don’t really update it as much as I used to (not that I updated it much to begin with :X). I hate having to choose between LJ and gloryfades.org because I want to put my thoughts onto both of them but sometimes I just can’t.

Well, reading back that last sentence made little sense to me. Once before I couldn’t write about certain things because I didn’t want a certain person to read it. Since then she has departed from my life and (hopefully) does not visit my website anymore. I could simply cross-post my entries into both accounts … Seems logical. I have no idea why I didn’t think of that earlier!

I’m not really sure what I set out to write tonight. It’s been a long week and I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. I’m distracted by several things - my exams are coming up and I’m starting to get nervous, I have a lot of bills to pay and not much money to pay them with, and Christmas is coming and I do not have that much money (again).