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Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Group Members That Annoy You

Hey guys, just finished two group projects involving presentations and I tell you that they can be awesome. You get to know cool people, collaborate and make something and look back and celebrate together once it's done. We all, however, have worked at least once with someone who annoys everyone else to the point that we wouldn't mind holding meeting in suburban Kandahar if it meant they couldn't make it. I find that amongst my last foes in the world of group projecting have contained the 5 following qualities:

1. Gauge. May seem like a strange word to pick, but I feel that the first thing these forsaken individuals do is gather each member together so that they can scoop out all of our sanity and privacy away by asking an insane amount of questions about ourselves. I mean way beyond basic contact info of cell number or email, I'm talkin average sleep duration and favourite meal time. They suggest they need it so we can plan meetings, but you know they have a much more sinister plan.

2. Annoy. While you may not have realized off the bat with some of these people, you have now seen that something is clearly wrong, Perhaps its from the number of times their parents dropped them on the head when they were young, but it definitely means that they are up your lower colon with non-stop questions every minute, on the minute. You get sequences of texts, repeated facebook messages and my favourite the "What was the answer on lecture 3, slide 5, table 1, line 4? And to make sure I know you got this text me back :)))))))))". -_-

3. Instigate. You are now a week in to your two week project and tempers are beginning to show. Your other group members know you went to high school with this crazy b*^%# and ask you for proper coping mechanisms as the criminal at large has dropped 50 angry emails to those unfortunates that came 1 minute late to a meeting and forgot to print off the last page...even though they already finished their part and had 3 midterms, 2 labs and 4 quizzes.

4. Lie. Ahhhh. My favourite, and as we begin to see what Dr. Phil Collins, citing Mrs. Lauper, and calls true colours of the perpetrator. You know about that time you told them you were going to spend you're entire Friday organizing the 50 odd references? No you remember stating that the group could meet up on the Friday to review the paper and complete the menial task before the group decides to cancel the meeting because editing can be done individually. So you sleep in on a Friday, wake up to 12 different texts from the liar questioning you're allegiance to the group, sign onto skype before putting on pants and still half asleep and quickly message them with you're deepest apologies over missing the meeting that didn't happen and how you are ready to take on anything they give you in penance. Of course, they have taken it upon them self to do the noble work of renumbering the embedded references and reply with the classic "Its a one person job, but you can read through and edit the entire thing before submitting it". Why did I even wake up?

5. Escape. You are finally done submitting the answers and presenting to the prof. Your group goes out for a celebratory lunch, even with individual responsible for the drama inducing atrocities. Everyone is happy, till you get the mark back and get deflated as its at least 5% lower than you thought, so you go leader mode and request a meeting to the prof and make it happen. Everyone meets up before the meetings and grieves together over missed chances but conclude that those guilty of the mark losses were right in feeling bad, but ultimately the group loses. There is no I in team, and we are all responsible for that mark. Sadly, the hell-spawn demon has taken it upon themselves to spread word that it is your fault for losing "a lot of marks"through the gossip wire. They have gotten their way and have escaped with only minimal hard feelings as all other group members are focused on the mark. Yet they still have the guts to smile with you all, before besmirching your effort and character to anyone that will listen because neither you nor the TA understood something you've never seen specific to an article.  UHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Well, there you have it in plain sight. These people are in lincoln park out there and they will find you, so proceed to hide your loved ones.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Why University is Awesome

Today was not a good day. I had some problems with finishing projects, caused a slight bacterial outbreak in my lab that caused my TA to squawk (not scream, but like a bird call)loudly and found out the test i thought i killed...killed me. DOH!

Oh well, for some reason when I return to my room and prepare for bed I look back and think how great the day actually was. I may have screwed up a test, but thanks to profs that expect it to happen I can drop that test and write a 80% exam (Yay...I hope). I also did great in another subject that is taught by a German prof who could't explain 1+1=2 to a child without confusing himself. Victory is mine? Not quite but I'll take it because this is how University functions, they throw as many punches at you and see if you fall. If you do, well then you drop out and work as a manager at McDonald's, but if you can stand in there take the blows and come out with your head up you'll be rewarded with the ability to change the world by doing something you love. Ultimately, who cares if I nearly failed a mid-term I could still run for office and win, or find the cure to any disease out there.

I would be selling University short if I stopped there though, because its so much more and this is what makes any day great when I'm here. I had dinner with a friend and went over ridiculous stories from the weekend, bursting out in laughter and nearly sending a potato flying. Even in a lab in which I almost caused a centrifuge to explode by forgetting a lid, I got learn awesome things in my field of study with awesome lab mates who are as confused as I am. And when I got back to my dorm for the day, I was greeted by people who want to discuss the day. Again this is why University is life changing, a true nexus of social life and work life. The people you meet here are the close friends you have forever because you live, work, play, win, fail, laugh, run, drink, party and do stupid stuff with on a Saturday night. You come together to understand what's going on in this world and you discover that nothing is realer, more meaningful than the fun times you share learning about each other.

So that's life of a undergrad student, we're a mashed up network of people thrown together into a mess of school work and overlapping egos, but after 4 years we come out of that blender with a ticket to a job and a network of countless, life-long friends.

Life's Good...Cheers!!!

Saturday, October 23, 2010

An Introduction of Sorts: What This Blog Is About Part 1

Hi there and welcome to The Swag Juice Corporation, brewing the important things in life since 2010.

Let me say on behalf of my colleagues how excited we are to have you the reader visit our new blog. I would like to take this time to introduce you to the the goals of this blog and the types of posts that we will be writing. Firstly, our main goal is to write about things that impact our current times, that is the lifestyle of up and coming students who like to work hard and play hard, and are relevant to you the reader. We promise that each article will have a fully organic view of these issues and ideas because we are writing about our own personal experiences and thoughts. There will be times when we use or advertise third-party information, but this will only be used when trying to prove a point with logical statistics or offer a product that you may be interested in. Obviously, we will only use external items that relate to the content of this blog and fall into our value-system. Ultimately, we want you the reader to find a mixture of purpose and fun in this blog, so by all means comment and let us know what you do or do not enjoy so that we can optimize your experience.

Now to the fun stuff; What exactly are 3 university kids writing about:

1. School Life: Classes that interest us and their cool ideas, Classes that bore us to death and wreak havoc on our GPA so much so that we feel justified in a rant or two, and the issues that we as young adults face in getting through "The Institutions".

2. Extracurriculars: The stuff that goes on after class ends for the day, from awesome intramural sports and clubs to the local party scene and after-parties to the random stuff that only our age group seems to run into on a consistent basis.

3. Sports: All of us here at Swag Juice Corporation have a passion for sports, from basketball to hockey to football to soccer to anything really. Think of our editorials as an unbiased ESPN (AKA Less articles on why Brett Farve retiring/not retiring/semi-not-retiring is an important thing)

4. Global and National News and Interests Pieces: We all happen to come from the cool (literally and figuratively) country of Canada, home of the greatest comedians and hockey players around,  so we may be just the tiniest biased when we ponder who the greatest country in the world is. That being said we are global citizens that are always interested in why and how the world works like it does.

5. Ignorance: A relatively unique concept that has been brewing in our minds for the last couple of years. Let me just say this isn't you grandmother's classic ignorance. Our's is a wide-ranging and twisted look on the old term and how it relates to all the nonsensical, farcical and un-freaking-beliveable things that humans manage to accomplish when their brain turns off.

So that's what you can expect from us whether you read us on the blog or subscribe to our RSS feed. Hopefully it will be something that brightens your day with humour (note Canadian spelling and learn to love it our international friends) or makes you stop and wonder what the point of this all is.

Again thank you very much for reading and comeback whenever you can!
Cheers,
The Swag Juice Corporation Staff of Writers