Day 10: Finally Friday!

The first Friday of my first co-op started with a series of disasters and ended with a fantastic party.

I was going to get up at 6 and get ready for the day, but my alarm didn't go off, since for some reason, my phone restarted and reset the date. So at 6:45, my roommate knocked on my door, asking me if I was supposed to be up by now. I grabbed a little bit of food, including the oreos and the rest of the tomato bread from yesterday and ran out the door.

I made it to the 6:58 bus with a couple minutes to spare, but was still slightly panicked. Sitting down, I decided to try to rest once I caught my breath. But my fate was not to be so.
A professor sat behind me, and started planning out his class with his graduate assistant in English, which surprised me a bit at first, but quickly turned into annoyance. He was mentioning cover papers and writing, so I figured he was an English teacher.

But then he started complaining about the Chinese students and how they don't know how to work hard.... and about how the University of Cincinnati sucks, and how the students were all worried about co-op, etc. (At this point, I figured that he taught English to the JCI freshmen.) Then he also mentioned how UC TAs sucked, especially the one he had had the previous year, and I was mildly offended. At this point, he decided to tell his whole life story to his GA, and he said that he grew up in the 1950s in America to a Spanish speaking family and that he had to learn English himself, and that the Chinese students should do the same. He even disrespected the Chinese culture by saying that not defying their parents (by choosing a different major) was a sign of weakness. I was sitting there thinking that, no, respect for their elders is ingrained into their culture, you moron....

At some point, I just needed to know what this ignorant idiot looked like, and let him know that I was bothered by his incessant complaining. I turned around to see a guy in his sixties, bald with a thick gray mustache, and who had been steeped in academia so long he regarded his opinions as fact. I resisted the urge to say anything, and resigned myself to my fate. When we pulled up to Campus A, I practically ran off the bus to rid myself of him.

Going to class, I told Pablo about what had happened, and he didn't know the guy, but said that his TA that he didn't like was probably from JCI. I sat through heat transfer (which, for a fourth year class, I'm understanding pretty easily) and then stuck around for embedded systems (a fourth year EE class, but I was intrigued by it nonetheless, and would like to learn more of the elementary concepts behind circuit gates as well).

Then Robert, Suri, and Celia (who had come for embedded systems) offered to show us where to fill our card with more money. We went over, and I learned how to do it for next time.

Form to put more money on my student card

Then we went to a different dining hall than before, and I got a variety of interesting options. I got rice, a potato, pork and green mix, and then some tomato chicken. The chicken however had a very very sweet tomato paste on it, and it tasted like someone had dumped a bottle of ketchup on it. At first, it was ok, but it got disgustingly sweet as time went on, and I couldn't finish it.

 Heading back to campus, I decided to make my way to the library to get the wifi. I got lost for a bit, and sidetracked by the gorgeous pond again and other cool things around campus, but I found my way quickly. I'm still getting lost on the CQU campuses occasionally, but it's less frequently, and I can find my way back more quickly. It turned out I could get 7 Gigabytes a month for 15 quai, so I went ahead and purchased that.

this type of walkway is pretty common (jumping from block to block) and possible failed experiment

I wish we had this at UC, showing which classrooms are open

Campus D library

 Right after, I sat down for an hour and tested it. The UC vpn even worked with it, so I could access all my favorite sites from home. Then, I decided to head back and grab the snacks for the Star Wars party that we were planning on having later that night.

Once I was home, the UC Vpn decided not to work (possibly because they were doing maintenance, since it was early morning in Cincinnati), so I eventually gave up and got 76 pages into a really good book called Firefly Hollow on my e-reader and ate the leftover Kung Pao chicken from yesterday. But my phone data did work now, thank goodness.

Around 7:00, our guests showed up, including the 4 UC TAs (myself, Jessica, Dom and Nick), the four JCI TAs (Celia, Alexandra, Suri, and Robert), Pablo, and Suri also invited my friend Rebecca, who had been a SOL with me the past summer. And they also brought snacks, which was even better!
Dom and Nick went out for food, and we all stood around talking until they got back.

Then we started to start the movie, and we ran into a lot of technical difficulties (10 engineers in a room still can’t play a movie on a laptop without 15 minutes of technical issues…..) But we eventually got started. About 2/3 through Star Wars Episode 1, they had to head out, to take the last shuttle back to Campus A. I talked to Rebecca a bit longer, and then she went back to her apartment as well.

After they left, us four UC TAs finished the movie (only halfway paying attention) and then we cleaned up, putting extra food away as well.

Another successful day had, I cleaned up, finished up some online work, and went to sleep, planning to have some video calls in the morning.

-Zoe