on why i hate the college of saint rose

basically, it's because they steal your money.
they suck so much. they charge like a billion dollars tuition a semester and they give you a crapass education. and they're supposedly the best school in the area for teaching. three out of four of my teachers "teach" straight from the book.
my wednesday night teacher is the worst. you can bring your book to class and highlight the exact passages from the book that she's speaking. word for word. and she had the nerve last week to say that she doesn't subscribe to the theory of direct teaching. um. yeah, right. all she ever does is stand up there and speak her outlines which she takes right from the book. oh, and sometimes she divulges unnecessary personal information. like the one time she said that she wasn't feeling too well because she ate some food that didn't agree with her or something like that. and then suddenly during class she says something like "here comes the food" and ran out of the room. eww. like we all needed to know that's why she was leaving. she could have just said, let's take a 10 minute break or something. whatever.
my monday night teacher also sucks. he's a full-time clinical psychologist with a private practice and he's got a bunch of other shit that he does, so i don't know why he teaches also. probably for the health insurance so that he doesn't have pay for it on his own. anyway. he also teaches directly from the book. he even uses the provided powerpoint slides that are basically the textbook only on a screen. and his tests are right from the teacher edition of the book, so sometimes they're the exact same questions that are on the practice tests on the website. every time i take a test in that class i'm finished first and since we have to grade our tests right away and everyone goes outside and compares their scores i know that i generally get the best grade in the class. and it's not like i study. in fact, i put the least amount of effort in possible. we just got papers back in that class last night. he was saying that you should have at least six sources blah blah blah and that it should be all scholarly blahblah. and i'm sitting there thinking, "great. failed this because i had three sources and two were textbooks and i did the whole paper in 3 hours." we got them back and i had a 91 on it. a 91. and other people got grades in like the 80s. and seriously, i never go to this class and i generally leave early when i do go and when i leave early i just walk right out in front of the teacher. we'll be on a break and i'll go back into class and collect all of my things and he'll watch me leave. why do i get these grades? i certainly don't deserve them. and that's not the only class it happens in. actually, it's been happening in all of my classes. but perhaps the worst example is the paper i got back today in my philosophy class.
all of my papers that i've handed in for my philosophy class have been shitty, half-assed jobs done an hour before class. but the one i handed in last week was really the shittiest ever. i didn't even read the book. i kind of skimmed through the introduction and wrote the paper. i got it back today and i got an A on it. rediculous. i mean, it's my highest grade so far in that class (i'd gotten Bs and B+s before). and he wrote on the top: "Very good analysis of Newman and good comparisons." and he wrote comments throughout the paper, so he did read it. i must have some grade angel that redoes all of my work for me, because there's just no way that the work that i've been doing is deserving of the grades that i've been getting. no way.
and this is why i hate saint rose. because they're ripping students off. they take their money and then let them get away with doing shitty work and rewarding them for it. i feel all dirty now.

Sunday Beck and I went for a walk. It was so warm out, it would have been a crime to not go for a walk. We walked down Riverview Road for a while when a small beagle crossed the road in front of us. We half-tried to stop it as it escaped from its yard, but we weren't sure whose dog it was, and we weren't sure that we cared. Then some girl holding a toddler came from the yard where the dog was fleeing calling after it. It was clear that the girl was not going to get this dog holding the small child, so I offered to go after Daisy who was at that moment running free through the yard of a house under construction in a gated community across the street. It was such a nice day, and I was in a good mood, so running across this yard in pursuit of a puppy was fun. I felt like I was six years old... carefree, running and laughing... Then the damn dog went towards a mud patch. I recognized this too late... I ran into the mud and when my sneakers (of course i was wearing my "good" sneakers) started to sink i tried to turn around... and i slipped and flipped down into the mud. The whole back of my sweatshirt was covered in mud, and so were the bottoms of my jeans. My hat even got dirty. I had to laugh though. I wish somebody had taped me falling, it must've been hilarious. I got back up and crossed a ditch on a plank of wood left there and went after the dog another way... eventually, I got bored and ceased to care about whether or not this snotty looking teenager and her little sister got their dog back, so beck and i just left as the girl wondered around the yard trying to get the dog and keep a hold of her sister at the same time.

being covered in mud is very freeing. i felt like i could do just about anything then, because i was already dirty, so what did it matter? I guess that's what it's like for a lot of things. like: i've already spent this much, what does it matter if i spend more? or: I've already gone this far, I might as well go further. in fact, that's how i came up with my concept of owning something. you've already done something that you didn't think you'd do or aren't very proud of, but instead of whining about it, you've got to own it. and once you own something, it's easier to own other things. soyeah. i owned that mud.

soyeah. last thursday i baked a cake. see, one day last week i was trying to look up the nutritional information for guinness, because i'd been drinking a bunch lately and i was thinking that it was counterproductive to my efforts to not gain weight and so i thought i'd try and figure out the 'points' value (weight watchers) of a pint o'guinness. but when i typed in "guinness nutritional information" in google all i got were a bunch of recipes for things with guinness in them. and one of them was a recipe for guinness chocolate cake and i figured that since i hadn't baked in a while and since it was cold out i'd try and make it. soyeah. thursday i gathered my materials: i had to purchase a hand mixer (got the el cheapo version at target), mixing bowls (got a cute but cheap cobalt blue set at target), cake pans (got the hella-el-cheapo version at the christmas tree shop: $1 each), and a cake holder (also cheap at the christmas tree shop... $2 and it's cute). I also went to the grocery store and picked up the necessary food supplies for baking (flour, vanilla extract, sugar, etc). unfortunately, i forgot to get eggs, so i ended up having to walk to the stewart's down the street after dark to get them. it wasn't late yet, still in the 6 o'clock hour, but i don't think i'll do that again... it was a little nerve wracking anytime anyone walked by me, and i was the only female out walking alone. soyeah, after i risked life and limb for eggs i got home and started to bake. well, first i had to do dishes... i had a ton of dirty ones in the sink, and i had to clean all of the crap i had just bought. in the meantime, i put two sticks of butter (one for the cake, one for the icing) on top of my computer to soften (hey, it's warm there...). i made the cake batter, and it seemed a little thick, but i figured, hey, maybe that's how it's supposed to be, and i stuck the layers in the oven. then i started on the icing. i went to grab the stick of butter off of the computer and i realized that there were still two sticks there. i had freaking made the cake without putting the butter in it. i was so pissed. i was really curious how this cake was going to taste, and i'd fucked up the recipe. so i just made another batch of batter. when the layers were finished in the oven, i popped them out of the pans, cleaned the pans and threw the better batter in and stuck 'em right back in the oven. the layers that i'd screwed up don't taste bad, they're just darker and denser (i call them my guinness stout cakes). i didn't have enough icing to cover two cakes, so the stout cakes are sitting on top of my microwave covered in foil. i don't know why i kept them, i should just pitch them. yeahso, when the layers were cool (enough) i stacked 'em with icing in between and covered the cake. i wasn't too careful so there were crumbs all mixed in with the icing. also, i didn't bother leveling off the layers when i stacked them, so the cake was all lopsided. whatever. here's a picture of it:

I didn't sample it until the next day because by the time i was done i was a little drunk (i had to finish off the cans of guinness that i'd opened to make the layers/icing... and i'd also had some more...) and a lot tired. it was really rich, and i liked it (except next time i won't dust the pans with cocoa powder like it said to, because the straight cocoa that you taste between the layers is bitter). I took it to my parents house on friday, but i don't think they liked it very much because it was still there today (but dad said that he just forgot it was there). i brought a piece for beck to try tonight when we met for coffee, and she said it tasted "yeasty" and "like bread," which i don't think are good reviews. beh. ah well, i liked it... and baking is fun :)

speaking of going to get coffee, beck, her brother, and i tried to go to Starbucks because that's what we do every Sunday night, but it was closed. how freaking annoying is that? it was only 7:30 when we got there... they had a sign on the door that said that they had some sort of district meeting or something like that, and that every starbucks in the area was closing at 5. that's so annoying. i mean, does everybody have to go to this meeting? they need all of the peons there? we had to go to dunkin' donuts instead. i got what i always get when i go there: a large iced coffee light and sweet, and the woman really went to town. i mean, there was a good 1/4 inch of sugar at the bottom of the cup. but hey, i like it when i drink my coffee through a straw and i get to chew on the sugar granuales (sp? ah well).