This Reminds Me Of An Old Pink Panther Joke*

School is going well - it's a pretty typical weekend here. Of course it looks like it might rain and I have no umbrella, but I've never been accused of being so sweet as to melt with a little rain, so I'll probably be alright.

My classes look like they're going to be pretty interesting. I'm taking Learning Theory, which, if I had to make a judgement right now, I'd say is generally bunk (though I'll concede a little bit of usefulness) - regardless, we're taking all manner of IQ and personality tests, and those are always fun. (To quash any curiosity, I consider this generally bunk because I see it as an excuse. "Oh, well I can't do X because my learning style is Y." "I'm right brained so therefore I can't do math." "I'm left brained so therefore I can't draw." To all of this, generally, I want to say that unless you're putting forth every last ounce of effort you have to go ahead and accomplish X or Y, then you need to just hush up and work. If, however, you can demonstrate effort and are maybe not achieving to level that you'd like to be achieving, then ok, you can blame the rest on your copout learning style if you want. In my experience, however, the people who are actually trying are not the ones whining about their learning styles.)

The other class is something to do with databases. In all honesty, the title of the course is so long and convoluted, I'd be hard pressed to understand that it's really about databases, but thankfully they include the word database in parentheses at the end of the course title to help us out. It should be fine, though I feel bad for a lot of the other folks in the class who don't really have a strong technical background (I'm in a program that's blended - so we get a lot of straight education people and a lot of tech people and then a small number of ed tech people.) One of our assignments is to create a relational model for a database and I'm guessing that the ed people would just as soon be asked to translate the Illiad from Latin straight into Chinese without knowledge of either language.

The only major bummer is that the one lady who I usually hang out with is in different classes than me. So I have noone really to chat with. Or, I would have no one to chat with had not the most annoying person in the universe glommed herself on to me. Suddenly it seems she thinks we're best friends. I'm trying to be nice, I really am. But I spend most of class wanting to look over at her and tell her to shush. She interrupts the professors with idiotic (and unrelated) stories and just seems to have something to say about everything and seems to think that we all really want to hear it. I'm guessing that none of us actually do. However, like I said, I'm trying to be nice. I keep reminding myself that she's probably pretty lonely as I can't imagine that many people flock to be around her. Hopefully I'll manage to have patience.

So at the end of 8 hours of class (with the babbler) I trucked back to my hotel room, only to find my desk awash with little ants. No problem, I thought, and began to try and smoosh them. And then one bit me. And that was it. So I gathered up my stuff, called the front desk to see if I could get a different room (thankfully I could), and moved. I spent the rest of the night with phantom ants crawling all over my skin.

*The joke, if you don't remember it, is "What did the Pink Panther say when he stepped on an ant?" "Deadant, deadant, deadant deadant deadant...." -- the last bit to the Pink Panther themesong.