Monday, May 16, 2005

Ahhhh... freedom :D

Yay! Field school is finally over. I'll recap the highlights

Week 1: half in the field (in fridgid temperatures - it snowed more than once) and half in class rooms learning (most of it was review for those who have takem as many hydrogeology courses as me). On the first day I found out i was in a group with JSO the person I had troubles working with last fall... see this post for a reminder... http://laurajonesdiary.blogspot.com/2004/12/getting-seriously-mad.html#comments
NL (my billet) arrived on Monday night. She was super nice and we got along really well - we also had a bunch in common :) I'll definitely have to look her up when I go to Newfoundland.

Week 2: More time in the field... two day trips, one to Guelph, and one to Borden. Borden was actually pretty nice, I liked it. It will be super pretty up there in like another week when all the leaves are out fully... maybe I can talk my supervisor into giving me some field work up there :) Group dynamics are starting to get a little off. JSO had one question to do on the first assignment and he still didn't get it done until 3 am the night before it was due (at 7:30 am). KCW (another group member) basically had to do the rough draft for him, and he just made it look nice. Missed a bunch of runs, but still got in my 20K long run on this really nice path in cambridge. http://webhome.idirect.com/~brown/webdoc2.htm

Week 3: More group disention. This week was mostly just finishing up the assignments which meant working pretty much from 9 am to 1 am everyday. Note, that doesn't leave much time for sleeping, eating and half marathon training, so I missed another 2 runs this week, and way too much sleep. Mind you, the power outage on campus on Wednesday night did give me the opportunity to watch the amazing race finale that I had taped from the day before... have you seen it yet kbum? can I talk about it?

JSO took way too long to do everything we gave him. basically in the whole three weeks he 1) did the water table map (in good form - we did the rough draft for him) 2) did the organics assignment (that KCW and I had to spend 4 hours rewritting, reformatting and redo-ing all of his graphs) and two questions from another assignment, that again , I had to re-write. Now, when you compare this to everyone else, it was way below par. He spent 8 hours working on one question one day, just to come and tell me he didn't have the data he needed to do it. WTF???? and of course by that time is was 5:30 and the TA's had already gone home (note the assignments were due the next day). Grrrr... I hate group work. But we got everything done and handed in by 5 on friday. We were given an extention until 5 today, but JSO was the only one that could work over the weekend, and we didn't trust him, so we wanted our stuff in by friday. Okay, I'm done bitching now, sorry! There was another girl (MP) in my group, but she wasn't doing the course for credit, she probably did more work than JSO though.

Friday night, I went out with people from field school to celebrate being done, even through we were the only people actually completely done. It was a pretty good time. I think the people in earth science have more fun and are more social than us engineers. I was getting this wierd vibe from KCW all night long... wierd.

Saturday was the shower for Danielle and we had the bachelorette party that night. It was wierd being out in bville again, and seeing people I haven't see in years.

Sunday was back to w/loo and running again on that path from last week. 22km this week, furthest I have gone since march (?) of 2002. The run went okay for me, but I think EK was having troubles (not with the distance, but she just wasn't well enough fed or rested).

So today is back in the computer lab, and back to every day life. It feels so good not to have seen the people from field school since friday... I know that sounds kind of mean, but I just need a break from them.

Oh, and yay about J&G, I'm excited about them coming home from the hospital, I want to see the baby!!!!!

Long post, but I haven't posted much in like three weeks, so there it is :)

3 comments:

BrightDolphin said...

Yay! Sweet freedom! :o)

I always disliked group work too, but luckily for me, I usually worked with C-dub so we got our stuff done! High school was a different story... :oS

I know what you mean about needing a break. If I spend too much time with the same people, I go crazy! I don't know what I'll do if I get married someday... ;o)

Lotus Blossom said...

Wow... what a post!!! Between you and the Exaggerator, I've killed my lunch hour. (Plus, I walked to the bank and found a great, little Bistro on my way back to the office.)

Send pics of J&G's baby!!!

lj said...

Burger just forwarded them to you :) he's a cutie!!!