This is the next entry in the series of posts regarding my undergrad experience. I originally didn’t really consider going term by term, but instead to go year by year. Although, when I saw the lengths of the previous two posts, well, I thought that there was no way I’d encapsulate four months in a relatively sane amount of space. Even now, these long posts aren’t covering all of what I was thinking and feeling. All in all though, it really doens’t matter. At least the main points are out.

Spring 2001
Besides the stress of the horrid job from the previous term, there was also much worrying about what to do about C. In the end, after some phone calls, he decided that he couldn’t live with us anymore. I do remember telling him over the phone flat out that if he continued to live there, there would be continued problems in the apartment. In retrospect, it was blunt, and perhaps sudden. I kind of feel bad thinking about it, because it’s like you’re basically telling someone that they’re not wanted. At the time though, it just seemed right.

Funny, the idea of “it just seemed right” seems to be popping up a lot as I type these. I guess it’s an indicator that I’m more ruled by my emotions than anything. Good thing? Bad thing? Well, regardless, it’s who I am.

Anyway, back to the story. In order for him to move out, C had to break the contract he signed with the landlord. To do so, he had to pay a penalty. I know. He paid to not live with us. Wow. When put that way, it’s a bit surprising to think that we were really that bad. I dunno. Every side has a different story, and if you were to ask him about what happened we’d probably end up on the bad end of things. But I digress (yet again). I guess S and I had a conscience problem, so we paid up some money to him to help him with that penalty. I suppose paying him off just seems wrong, doesn’t it? However, I think that we had to since he was making that kind of sacrifice, yeah? His room was vacant for the longest time. We ended up using it as our recycling pile. Things piled up pretty quickly. With him gone, it meant that I had the bathroom all to myself. R was kind of a no show that term. He technically still had his room rented out. It’s just that he barely spent any time there. Truth is, I think he failed the previous term really really badly. All S and I knew was that he wasn’t attending class like he normally would be expected to. Of course, with him barely there, S kind of had a bathroom all to himself as well.

Hmm. So, with the apartment to ourselves, I think we started bonding pretty quickly. We became close friends, I guess. We got along really well. We ventured over to the girls’ townhouse often since he had often had projects with them. He was in a similar program and shared a lot of classes with them; I didn’t: I just tagged along because I needed to socialize. It was at the townhouse that I met some future friends like K. In my mind, he almost seemed like a brother to me, although probably not. I guess I’d never lived with someone like that for so long other than my parents.

Soon, we were joined by a third party in the apartment. In the third month, the landlord rented out our recycling room. When someone came by to announce it, S was out of the apartment. Unfortuntely, that meant I was the only one there to haul things out. That was tough. The guy, Kevin, was an exchange student from Beijing. He seemed nice enough, but it seemed odd to have him come in so late in the game. On thing I remember about the guy htough is that he didn’t pay S for the last share of the utilities. Heheh.

School was a bitch. The summer sun was beating down on the town really hard that year. Walking to class was a daily ordeal. Every day as I passed by, I watched the grass slowly go from verdant beauty, to dry hay, to bare dirt. By the time I got to school, I was drenched in sweat. Of course, I ended up napping. Obviously not a good thing since I missed a lot of important lessons. This was the term in the program that we had an equivalent of six courses. So, the workload was higher than usual.

During marked computer tutorials, I was paired up with someone who was higher up in the class marks-wise (not through my choice). He went through questions with ease, while I just stared blankly at the screens wondering what the hell was going on. I just nodded and went along with things. I’m sure he thought of me as pretty useless, and you know what? He was probably right. I tried doing some questions on my own, but without any knowledge on how to do it, I just failed miserably.

During another class, I was paired up with a girl named Yesha. We worked on the labs together in class, but when it came to writing the reports, I don’t think I do a single thing. Poor her. I was an absolutely useless partner. She always said that she had old reports to work off of, so she was OK. However, I’m sure that she just wanted me to take care of some parts of it. I just didn’t. Laziness? I can’t think of any other reason, so yeah, that’s likely it. Oh, I’m sure I got a bad reputation among her friends about it, but honestly I don’t think I was in class enough to really care.

The oppressive heat got to me eventually. I eventually gave up and stopped going to class. I just lay in bed, in the sweltering apartment, and sweat the afternoon away. The apartment wasn’t air conditioned, so everything was just so damned humid and hot. To put it lightly, life sucked! Moments of happiness came when I was socializing with S, or playing video games with R when he was around. Otherwise…that term sucked.

Soon, exams came around, and I was in a panic. I had to play catch up in a major way. Before doing so though, my parents came by to move some stuff back early. S told me to send my Physics text book back because he had his that I could borrow. So, I did. When the time came to cram for Physics, I asked him for the text. He started looking for it, and in a panic, he suddenly realized that he had sent it home with his brother earlier.

I cried.

Exams were already quite tough on me. Now this. He managed to snag an old copy of the text from the library, but it wasn’t quite the same. Still, I vowed to not fail the course. When the exam rolled around, I did my best with what limited knowledge I had. By the end, several people in the class were bemoaning the tough exam. “See you in this class next year” they exclaimed. I laughed on the outside, but in the inside, I ached. I don’t blame S (entirely) for my poor showing. It was just a big kick in the teeth.

In the end, I didn’t fail any of my courses at all. However, technicalities can be a pain in the ass. Will elaborate perhaps in the next entry.