I'm back...

Forget that this blog is a monologue of my travels far and wide, today I will be talking about my life in the ever-so stationary city that is Provo, Utah. I can't say that I ever dreamed of living in a place where there was snow, but being from California probably had something to do with it, but then again I had never been one for the beach (until, of course, I moved to Utah). Location mini tangent aside, I have a story of epic proportions, where to begin?

I could just start tearing into the housing situation for college students in general, but I will spare you the drama, and describe a situation (not far from death) that epitomizes how I feel about living in general. Here goes...

A couple of weeks ago our bathroom sinks (we have two) began to spit up some sort of nasty water filled with what seemed, to me at least, like charcoal. Actually, it only happened in one sink, the one that isn't mine, I was quite proud actually, my sink also is, after all, the better one, the one with actual water pressure, so obviously I tapped my faucet a congratulatory tap worthy of its faucety-ness. Cleaning checks rolled around, and we decided that the momentary lapses of to-clog or not-to-clog the sink was suffering was enough to alert our landlady.

She came in the other night with a bucket of some "miracle powder" (which seemed much like something else, if you know what I mean) that would unclog the theoretical clump of hair that was so obviously disrupting the flow of our water into our sinks. Except, PROBLEM, the sinks weren't having trouble draining, contrary, they were having way too much fun reversing what was so nonchalantly deposited in them in the first place, as was evident by the overflowing of our TWO sinks last night at ONE IN THE FREAKIN' MORNING!

Cause? Unknown. But I will tell you one thing, I hate hair in my sinks. Point is, I was laying in bed trying to decide whether or not I had to go pee ENOUGH to get up, I reluctantly rolled out of bed and went, came back in my room, and as I began to relax I heard a faint waterfall-like sound. I whispered to my roommate, who had also recently gone to bed, and asked, "Shauna, are you awake?" to which she replied with a groan, " yeah I hear it." And so began the hours of mopping up the nasty mystery water, which may I add, was also detergent-y smelling and slightly gooey...again, cause unknown. ( No we don't have a washer or dryer in our apt.) We called up our landlady once again and told her that her so called miracle white powder would probably have been of better use elsewhere.

She came as 1:30 AM rolled by, and began to work her magic. And my magic I mean, she used a vacuum...what she did with that vacuum was beyond me, I was exhausted and quite willingly dosed off with the noise of the hose sucking up who knows what out of our sinks.

I woke up this morning to find both sinks clear and clean. Success? sure, why not. I still hate living situations, especially when I don't have a plumber's phone number on speed dial. Also, I should add it was quite decent of our landlady to show up at all, but still, did I mention the water was black? Yeah... I felt death was eminent as I crouched down to mop up. If I get sick and die...you can probably guess why.

The End.

MCOM 320: A Learning Experience

The semester is coming to a close and so is this assignment. Although, I have many travels left to document, so I suppose I will be checking in from time to time. 

In the beginning Professor Thomas created the paper and the presentation.

And the class was without grammar and void; and confusion was upon the face of the students. And the torment of commas and hyphens moved upon the face of the students.

And Professor Thomas said,  Let there be groups: and there were groups.

And Professor Thomas saw the groups, that they were good: and Professor Thomas divided the groups from the confusion.

Parody aside, what I liked the most and found most effective about MCOM 320 was being assigned to groups. This became extremely helpful when it came to reviewing, and in some cases relearning, grammar. Although the assignments seemed tedious at times, they allowed me to practice writing short, concise paragraphs, which is something I struggle with. The overall organization of the class and the assignments were easy to follow and easily understood.

The only constructive criticism I have to offer, is to go over the grammar section of the course in a more helpful manner. We would read the book, take the practice tests, and come to class to correct them between groups, but not much attention was put into explaining grammar concepts unless we had specific questions. I think it would have been helpful to give a brief overview of most common mistakes or most helpful hints before we split up into groups. A lot of times I felt like no one really knew WHY the answer was correct, we just looked at the book and accepted the answer as correct. I understand, however, that the difficulty in teaching grammar lies in the different strengths/understanding of students; therefore, I believe that the assignments and the instructions of which, were perfectly decent and helpful for me.