Books over toys

Day 7: Your favorite childhood toys

I honestly don't remember having any favorite toys. I remember having barbies, but they were always put away. I remember having Polly Pockets, but they were always in my bottom desk drawer. My favorite toys were books. I loved my books. Dictionaries, encyclopedias, fiction, anything I could get my hands on.

Yes, I was a very strange child indeed.

I still am very strange. Half my moving out and moving back in when we were recarpeting involved books. I had more books than anything else. I was too ashamed to count how many boxes of books I actually had. Not to mention binders and notebooks...

I write. I read. I love words. I can't remember a time when this wasn't true. I knew how to spell hippopotamus in kindergarten. I was exempt from a spelling test in 4th grade because I was the only person in the class to spell chlorophyll correctly. I took pride in spelling acetylsalicylic acid correctly in the 6th grade, antidisestablishmentarianism in the 5th. In high school, I almost made it to state, but rendezvous kicked my butt, although I got flibbertigibbet, among other words (we didn't get those back). I've taken pride in learning hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia and pneunonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

I continue to search. My bookshelf hasn't stopped growing. My love for books hasn't, either. Even when college textbooks were abound, there was always an astray fiction book...I couldn't let go.

In that way, I'm still a child. I still play with my toys. In a way, I'm becoming more of a child, because I love stuffed animals so much more now. I'm attached to my sock monkey- he's even been featured here a few times. As for actual toys...I still haven't come up with any really. Are rollerblades toys? I went rollerblading when I was a tween, with my friend. I'd never go back there, though. Or maybe we could consider my laptop a toy.

OK, I'm sounding way too geeky now.

Deuces!!

Group philosophy

Teachers and professors like to give out group projects. They say it helps develop teamwork or something like that. That's a complete bullshit lie. It does nothing for teamwork. It does develop skills where you can sense when a person isn't going to pull their weight and you are going to have to do their work for them, and it also helps those people develop the skills of picking a group member that they know will overachieve and do all the work for them so they can sit back and relax. That's what it does.

It also creates a larger assignment where one person ends up doing all the work, while the others pretend like they're doing all the work, and perhaps they contribute a scattering of information, but for the most part, the brunt of the work is left to the smart, hardworking, or, if you're in college, jobless group member. Usually, it ends up being me, because I end up getting exasperated with the other people waiting til the last minute to start, then not contributing much. In fact, I get the feeling one of my group members from the past has gotten a failing grade on a project we did together because I was persistent through the semester in letting the professor know what was going on, and she could see it when we were working. Thankfully. But not all professors are like that.

Sometimes, they make ways to circumvent this, like "oh, well you won't have to speak during the presentation, how does that sound?" OK, so you've cut yourself, what, 5 minutes of work compared to my research and preparation of a PowerPoint presentation and usually a paper and bibliography to accompany it? Sure, that's fair! Or I'll get "I'll put together the PowerPoint if you just give me all the information!" Ok, so I gather all the information, and you'll just put it on the screen for me? How nice of you!

It has made me have a very bitter taste for group projects. I tried to get into another group for this one, but the others already had their idea in place and were vigorously working, and I didn't have any choice left. I knew when they tried to put me out of the group that they would do this to me. I don't know; they may already have something put together behind my back, because they're pretty close friends, and when they turn it in, they'll make it look like I didn't do any work at all on it because I'll be clueless as to what I'm doing. Yea, that would suck too.

Alas, I have to learn to work with groups. I have no problem with working with groups, so long as the other people are pulling their weight too. I've had a few that had everyone pulling their weight, and the outcome was fantastic! This doesn't seem to happen very often, though, and it's depressing when you realize after a few weeks that your group isn't going to do anything, and you'll just have to pick up the dead-weight.

This means that my last few weeks, I've got a huge project to complete, by myself basically. They've got the summary of the idea, but they haven't contacted me at all, and all they have is an outline of the idea. They have no sources, no structure, nothing. I'm disappointed.

Last tidbit of information: My last social work class that I have to attend is August 9, and my final for abnormal psych is August 11. I have 18 days, 12 hours left until I'm done with my classes. YAY!!!!!!!

Deuces,