Back to School Vibe

I LOVE back to school. I love that feeling of new supplies just waiting to be used, the anticipation, the promise of a whole new chance to finally realize your potential. I love the smell of new books =/. That crisp paper smell. Yumm.

I bought my textbooks and they look amaazzzing! I’m taking four courses this semester. After two years of nonstop psychology courses I’ve decided to broaden my horizons, take a look at what else is out there. So I registered in Anthropology 203 – Introduction or Social Anthropology, Philosophy 279 – Logic I, History 307 – The Contemporary World, and of course Psychology 383 – Personality. I really, really wanted an English Lit course, but those were booked full so quick, by the time I realized what I wanted and how to go about getting it, it was way too late. It’s all good though! I still have two more years – three if I can get that combined degree! – to take all the courses my geeky heart desires. I  can’t wait to get started. Only three more days =D

Giving back

Now that I’ve finished bragging then, about the lesson. =P

Before we moved to Syria, my mum was the resident Muslimah Youth Group leader (was it YMC? Young Muslimahs of Calgary?). Anyway, I’m not just saying this because she’s my mom, but she was, hands down, one of the kindest, most compassionate, and articulate teachers I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. She changed my life. Actually, she’s pretty much an amazing woman period. Allah yerziha kel khair, inshAllah. 

Anyway, fast-forward about six years (I’m now in Syria) and I meet this other amazing lady. And I’m thinking to myself: for all you had it pretty shitty in CIS, things are going good these days! The topics are gripping, my faith is rising, and my life is now full of strong Muslim women I can learn from and hopefully emulate. And I realize that after, alhamdulillah, being the recipient of so many great lessons and advice, maybe it’s time a give back a bit.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

I want to see unity, pride, understanding, cooperation, strength. So why not be the first step then, inshAllah?

So there was a sister giving Friday lessons in Calgary at the SW mosque, but she had to leave… right when I came. I already had a vague idea of starting a support group for young Muslim women. A sort of safety net, I guess. Or even a discussion group. A place where we were accepted, no questions asked, where we could grow and learn and cry and laugh and be ourselves. 

So this sister leaves and I suggest to a good friend of mine, Maria, that we do it. Each week we prepare something – doesn’t have to be perfect or long – and talk and discuss. So she said I should do it, and one thing led to another and I did! 

And it wasn’t, by any means, perfect. My tongue was tied, I made mistakes and umm made an extensive appearance that night, but I was so happy! I am so happy! If we can stick together, if we can unite, can you imagine how much stronger we would be? In our faith? In our lives???

Anyway, the reviews came back pretty positive, so I’ll be doing next week! Don’t tell them, but I’ve already prepared half of it, lol. Yes, I have that much to say. And now that I’ve managed to find people willing to listen, I’m not going to be shutting up anytime soon!

Ignorance is bliss. Or is it?

So I figured the best way to tackle a problem is head-on, you know? Just take the first step, and you’ll gain enough momentum to make the whole nine yards. So that’s studying, which has not been going well. Other than my exam marks: 91 on that Research subject and 99 on Statistics. Am I on fire or what? 

Anyway, in my social psych textbook there was this:

And it reminded me of when I used to work at Mac’s convenience store, and I’d be passing a pack with this warning to some guy. It always made me laugh when they’d shudder and be “Dude, not that pack!!” like I’d screwed up. Like just because it was out of sight out of mind and they could avoid the ugly truth.

Makes me wonder why we insist on lying to ourselves about the obvious. How much of our selves is the honest to God truth and how much is the smoke screens we throw up so we won’t have to confront that truth? 

I know a lot of people who believe ignorance is bliss. Why know about all the gruesome stuff out there if you can’t change it? Like the monster in the closet. So long as you don’t open it, you can’t deny it. But you can’t confirm it either. Ignorance is bliss. Or is it?

I believe I’d rather know. Just because I can turn a blind and go back to my ordinary and blessed life, doesn’t mean life doesn’t go on for countless people out there. And it ain’t pretty.

DHL op. – Destruction or Detainment of Hoped for Letters [and other packages]

I, for those who are unaware, am enrolled in a distance university. I’ve recently completed two courses, so naturally said distance university mailed the final exams, via DHL, to Damascus Syria. Not to be confused with Damascus, VA. Five weeks, three emails and two voice messages – and a partridge in a pear tree – later, I find out that they’ve been here. The entire time. For over 5 weeks. Held because of a ‘bad address.’ 

To add insult to injury – that or just for the hell of it – they destroy one package and hold the other. That’s right. Destroy. Who on earth does that to a package?! And with no lurking bomb suspicion as incentive. Only a measly bad address. My mind’s picturing white suits and protective goggles, complete with air-tight containers,  spontaneous combustions, and ominous puffs of smoke. That or the paper shredder.  

I am raging. I want to rip someonething apart. I had a one, one month break before my next courses, which are piled up in one corner of my room, a seemingly innocent pile of processed tree for God’s sake, began. A threatening reminder of Hell to Come (i.e. more studying). And now it’s gone. And not because they (the exams) failed to make it over. Were they an ocean away I’d give in to the fact that I had no access to them. But no. All this time they’ve been here, less than a 15 minute drive away. And I’ve been going mad, not 10 minutes away. Err… 15. 

I want to kill. Preferably the DHL employee responsible for the destruction and detainment of my exams.

Exaggeration? Consider this the straw that broke this camel’s back.

Off note, but speaking of camels, I ran into one the other day. A Syrian exclusive, because honestly, “I ran into a camel” is something people just can’t say in all honesty. Honestly. 

Back to the point. My exam is this Saturday. The one that survived. The other is to be mailed. My university has kindly waivered the fee. Which is all around beneficial to all. I wouldn’t want to commit couriericide, after all. 

Tomorrow’s rant: “Self-righteous preaching of the sort only a Syrian male can pull off.” I’d heard of these people but up until a few days ago I hadn’t had the misfortune of actually meeting one. Revolting experience. Brace yourselves.

When life gives you no means of entertainment….

When life gives you no means of entertainment….
                                                               …. entertain yourself 

Horesman needed help with his essay. As luck would have it, it’s a persuasive essay, with a list of topics ranging from terrorism to school uniforms. Wide spectrum, eh?

We settled on racism. First step is to begin your persuading with an anecdote. Apparently, Horseman has no recollections of racist acts perpetrated against his self and wants to make one up. I stare at him and inform him that no, he’s not. We’re going to be using Mine Own Experiences as inspiration. I’m in the mood for some laughter, so I grab the keyboard and begin:

Like the rest of the world, I remember September 11th, 2001 vividly. I was

S&S: “How old were you? You weren’t eight were you??”
Horseman: “I was nine. How the hell can I be ‘vividly remembering’ anything?”
S&S: “In my anecdote, the impossible becomes *pause* possible…”

ten at the time, and didn’t feel the effects as directly as others. But the aftershocks of fear and hate ran clearly through our Muslim community. I clearly remember

Horseman: “Correction… I was nine and I don’t clearly remember anything”
S&S: “Shut up, will you? I’m having a moment” 

the tears in my sisters eyes

Horseman: “What tears? Tears of laughter?” 
S&S: “Hey! *pointing to face* This is to mask the pain revived by these words….”

as she walked home from the library

Horseman: “Actually You’re right, wallah. There probably were tears. Tears because you couldn’t find the book you wanted!” *laughs at his own ‘wit’*
S&S: “No respect for the pained, I swear. I’m in the middle of a catharsis. The laughter you see is a defense mechanism against the pain! Reaction formation, as Freud would say.”

hopelessly dejected, head hung

Horseman: “You’re a fag” (my brother’s favorite insult) 
S&S: “Your face” (my customary reply) 

because people had yelled at her to take off her doorag and or tablecloth, and ‘go back home.’

Horseman: “That so did not happen”
S&S: “Did too! It was a horrible. Still brings tears to my eyes” (by now I am crying – tears of laughter)

A few days later, children threw rocks at her, and harassed her and her Hijabi (that’s a headscarf wearing female) friends mercilessly.

Horseman: “That was because you hit him. And then got Will to beat him up.” 
S&S: “Oh yeah… but that’s besides the point. Shut up. And let me continue! Repressed feelings and all, remember?!”

Furthermore, to the dismay of the community, the field and parking lot beside a Mosque, a Muslim prayer hall,

Horseman: “EVERYONE knows what a Mosque is, fag.”
S&S: “Your face…” (automatic, knee-jerk reply) 

was burnt in a hate crime.

Horseman: “HATE CRIME? It was a bunch of drunk idiots!! You’ve got to be kidding me…” (he’s peeing his pants from laughing, the hypocrite)

A few days afterwards, the local Islamic school was vandalized and the children harassed by passerbies/passerby’s(?). One drunkard remained on the premises and threatened to ‘unveil’ the young girls. The local authorities sent two cops to remain on school grounds and patrol the entries to the school.  

Horseman: “Owwww my cheeks!!” (that’s how hard he’s laughing) “You fag!!”
S&S: “Your face… Fine then! Have it your way! I’ll delete the damn thing! Make your own damn anecdote!! See if I care!” 

By the end we’re crying from laughing so hard, and no closer to finishing his assignment that when we’d started. It’s all good, though. I believe that laughter is cheap medicine (thank you, Lord Byron) and, as you probably guessed, laughter comes really, really cheap and easy to me. I can pretty much singlehandedly set myself off into a hysterical fit…

Btw, I didn’t hit him. Well, I did, but he threw rocks and insulted my hijab first and then I hit him and got Will to teach him a lesson.

I have so much more to say. My drafts are in the double digits, but I should really sleep. I have two more exams in two weeks and I don’t want a reoccurrence of Mine Emo Breakdown, now do I?

‘Night!! 

The little things that add up and blow, blow, blow…

This is a long, ranty, somewhat scary post, that, if you do take the time to read, you may want to split up into manageable sections. I would, but it’s all the same day the same situation. I don’t think I can.

For today’s exam, MATH215, I was allowed to bring in a cheat sheet. An 8 x 11½ inch, double sided, cramped to the point of near illegibility, wonderful savior in my opinion. The *hopeful* success of my midterm is solely based on it.

Getting said cheat sheet was a whole other story. It took over seven painstaking hours to compile because I used formulas, diagrams, and examples – I went the whole nine yards. Then first, I find out that a month, a month ago the bloody thing was open book. Ugh.

Then, I go to print it off. Wait the printers off. Turn it on and it won’t respond. Check the plug and its out. Look for the power converter (the printer’s from Canada) and it’s not there. Spend over an hour looking for it, find it, plug it in, and turn it on. Nothing. No beep, no bleep, no humming. Silence. MiniMe’d fried it when he’d stuck it straight into the electricity. That’s number one.

Then, I call the guys at the net café closest to our house and ask them if they have Microsoft 2007. Yeah! Of course we do! Well, no actually, you don’t. But that’s number five. So meanwhile….

Will’s leaving. He wants to see me before he leaves, because our lives being what they are, it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll see each other again. Besides, I know I’m going to miss him. He leaves the house at 1am. I have reviewing like crazy; I haven’t slept in over 30 hours, and am running on coffee and sheer pig-headedness. That’s number two. I fall asleep at 1:30ish from cramps.

I wake up the next morning (morning? I slept for two hours) with a migraine, backache, nauseated, and with symptoms of that time. Two mugs of coffee later, my brains working again, albeit slower and more painfully than usual, but my mood’s deteriorating. I’m in a rush, nothing is going right, and I can’t seem to understand that standard deviation crap so I call my invigilator to see if I could write the exam at night rather than afternoon as planned. Get some shut eye. Not happening – he bumps it up till 1:00pm. 3 hours away. There’re number three and four. I leave the house at 12:40 sorta crying.

Back to number five. Never fear, Syrian-ized S&S has learnt this lesson before – never take a Syrians word for it. So, I’d saved two versions on my flash memory stick: Word07 and Word97-03 compatible. “The following features of this document (namely my equations) are not supported by earlier versions of word.” Blah, blah, blah. Point is, they’re going to become images. No biggie, right? Wrong. Entrée number six.

Everything prints expect the ‘images’ which are, in reality, my formulas. The essence, no the core, of my cheat sheet. Then something happened that I knew was going to because I didn’t give my crying fit its due up there. With me, once they start there ain’t no stopping ‘em. Tears start streaming down my face while I look at the unprinted formulas. They guys all just stare while I silently fall to pieces, and calmly discuss what we can do to fix. Mr. B!#$%yNetGuy doesn’t want to help. The guy that I sit beside while I try to enlarge the ‘images’ decides now is the time to ask me if I go to AEU. I just stare blankly, not on purpose I just couldn’t make sense out of his words, till he turns red and mutters that he guesses not. I call my mom, trying to sound like I haven’t been crying, and ask to talk to Horseman. She picks up on it, asks me what’s wrong and up starts a full blown, not-so-silent crying fit. I make it to the entrance silently and then blow. I’m at the entrance to a net café, full of guys, in a strip mall that consists of barbers. For men. That would probably be seven and eight.

My mom sends my brother, Horseman, down, and my dad follows on his heels. We can’t have our womenfolk going to pieces in public places, now can we? We go to four stores, cafés, stationary stores, printing stores, all in our area. No one has Word2007. The tears, to all the guys around me’s relief, have stopped. I’m getting pissed and I have a dirty, sarcastic mouth. That would be number nine. It’s 1:20. I call my invigilator, who doesn’t sound too happy with me. I feel like a hypocrite for advocating punctuality and being late. Increases anger. Number ten.

My dad’s convincing me to go to my brother, Smeez, who works at a printing press. He’s in a part of Damascus that’s the exact opposite of where I need to go (my exam location). He talks me into it, saying it’ll only be a 15 min drive max. And he’d be right, were it not yom al wa2feh. Back in the car, the guilt settles in and I call my mom to apologize for giving her a heart attack. The sympathy in her voice starts me up again, and I’m crying while my brother and dad console me. Number eleven? Twelve?

My brother, Smeez, is my savior. His friend has Word 2007 (FINALLY) pulls it up, adjusts my margins, pdf’s it, double sides it and prints it. All in the time it took me to type that line. He’s joking and laughing while he does it, which eases me up a little.

I get to my exam. 2:00pm. The elevator ride up is with this guy who has light fixtures with him and the voice in my head’s going: what did someone say about lights today? That’s right; my invigilator’s getting his chandeliers in. And drapes. And I feel so ugh. Out of place? I want to go to home. To Canada.

I forgot my coffee in the car. Half way through and my head’s throbbing away to my heart beat, and I fall asleep twice, sitting there at the desk with head propped on my hand. I cry twice. I make mistakes you wouldn’t believe. 

Half way through I pull my shit together and get cracking. Review it and fix mistakes no sane person would make. My feet are freezing, I’m peeing like crazy from the stress, and I am in desperate need drugs/coffee/sleep. The words in my head are making it all jumbled onto the paper.

I finish, 3 hours later. Eat good food. Go home. Drug myself, drink coffee, and eat comfort food while everyone compliments my genius-ness (I’m guessing they heard about my emo break-down. Hell, I’d be surprised if all of Dummar hasn’t heard about the girl that fell apart. It was not a pretty sight.)

So I’m done.

Finally.

And that, kids, is why mental health is important. I probably shouldn’t abuse myself so much. Sleep is good. And because my brian is screaming in agony, I’m going to sleep now, to dream of oblivion, to wake tomorrow to the bliss of not having to study. And *hopefully* some Eid money.

Good night.

I didn’t review this. In fact I’m surprised I was able to type it out. My fingers are numb. Should make for an interesting read tomorrow.

‘Night.

ps. Now that I’m done exams (for a week) I have a million and one posts I want to write. I’ve been writing drafts with their titles and main ideas, so I don’t forget. There’s been some crazy stuff going on. So expect many randomly crazy posts coming up! =)

RAT Answers and Exams

A while ago I posted the RAT test, and here are the answers.

1. prince 
2. dog
3. cold
4. glasses
5. club
6. boat
7. defense
8. black
9. pit
10. writer

I got 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, and 9. So what now? I’m 60% creative? Or creative 60% of the time? Hmm…

The four I had wrong were 4. Spot, 5. Maple, 7. Power, 10. Short. LOL. I know they don’t make sense, but I got them stuck in my head, and couldn’t work around them..

Anyways, I just got home from my PSYC290 exam. Less tiring than the PSYC323 exam. That one had 7 essays and by the end I felt like my fingers were going to be permanently cramped in the ‘holding a pencil’ position. I’d have much rather typed it out. Owie. One more left… MATH215 midterm tomorrow. And then I’m going to sleep through Eid. And wake up to two more exams at the end of December. *sniffle* 

Ps. Will’s leaving, again =( Tonight. Don’t tell him I said so, but I’m going to miss him. He makes me laugh… when he’s not being an annoying older brother. 

Ugh. This post is so dead. I’m about to fall flat on my face. I need sleep, coffee, and mathematical enlightenment, and in that order please…

Creativity II – The RAT

Going with the last post on creativity…
I came across this while I was reviewing today. I had a great time doing it, so I decided to spread the joy =).
Yeah, I’m a geek like that. 

This is the Remote Associates Test (RAT) used to measure creativity. You’re given sets of three words and you’re required to make associations between each set of three words to come up with a fourth word that is related to all three words.
For example, one set is ‘rough, resistance, beer.’ They have the word ‘draft’ in common. So that would be rough draft, draft resistance, and draft beer. Cool, eh?
The sets are:

1. charming, student, valiant
2. food, catcher, hot
3. hearted, feet, bitter
4. dark, shot, sun
5. canadian, golf, sandwich
6. tug, gravy, show
7. attorney, self, spending
8. magic, pitch, power
9. arm, coal, peach
10. type, ghost, story

So, following the example, you’re supposed to find a fourth word that is associated with the three in each set.
I’ll post the answers in a few days. Enjoy!! And let me know what you come up with. I’d love to see =)