Subject: Heh.
Author:
Posted on: 2013-09-10 09:38:00 UTC
Every new anecdote about your workplace increases my belief that PPC members are living in a reality several magnitudes weirder than the "normal" reality that's supposed to exist around us.
(Also those are all very horrifying stories. Please don't accidentally turn into a supervillain.)
In light of there being so many people, myself included, who have just started or are about to start college/university, I thought it might be a good time for a thread about it. In light of that...what's the coolest thing about your college or uni? And what's your favorite part so far? I feel like this could be an interesting discussion...
My uni has a sort of pool...with a pair of geese in it. Or maybe they're ducks; I'm not completely sure. But seriously...geese? Wow. Yay Canada! :D
I'm still working on my favorite part, though. What can I say, I haven't even finished my first day yet.
People in middle-school (do we have any?), high school, and so on (work, grad school, etc, I expect) are also welcome to share answers to these questions!
And feel free to have some fun...I myself am working on writing a sort of OFUM-based first-day-of-school horror story which may never be posted as my classes are so far interesting enough for me not to tune out. Bother.
Anyone else? Share your experiences! Make us envy you for where you study! Write chilling tales of terror that will terrify us terrifically...okay, I think academia has started to affect me. But like I said, feel free to have some fun; I'm sure it'll be interesting!
~DF
PS: Two people so far have asked me for directions. Do I look approachable? Comfortable? Like the second-year student I'm not? Hm...
Ooh. That could go in the horror story...
~DF
The air conditioning system was broken at my university today. There was a heat wave. It got up to about 95 degrees and with the humidex it felt like 115. The workers who would fix the AC system... are on strike.
... well, somewhere. I can't actually place the memory - it may be as far back as school (which, good grief, makes it over ten years ago). Wherever it was, we had air conditioning, which was great! Except that there was a six month lag in when they turned the thing on. So it was entirely non-functional in summer, and on full-blast in winter. Yeah, I don't think we were very impressed.
Fortunately, nowadays I have access to the aircon remote... ;)
hS
My university made an enthusiastic post on Facebook yesterday declaring that the AC would be fixed by noon today! Which is great because today it is 60 degrees and no one needs air conditioning.
And also the worst, at times. But mostly the best.
Phobos and I both went to a really small college in the middle of Michigan, so it wasn't exactly the most exciting territory, but the people more than made up for it. The entire campus is no more than a fifteen-minute walk from one end to the other, and that's only if you stretch to the really out of the way student housing, so your friends and any cool activities going on are right there when you want them.
That's the thing I miss most. Chicago is great and there's plenty of stuff going on at any given time, but it's rarely on my doorstep, and my friends are scattered thirty minutes apart or more. Plus, I can't just turn up to something new and trust that most of the people present are friendly or have anything in common with me outside X thing, which makes it really nerve-wracking to make the effort to find the ones that are and do.
One particularly cool thing about my college, though, is that our gaming and anime club hosts an annual con in February, and this year Doug Walker (the Nostalgia Critic) is one of our guests. Check it out if you think you might like to go. Phobos and I will be there, and we'd love to see you. {= )
As for my job, I work from home, so not much to add there. I have a cat, though. He sleeps next to me on the couch while I work, and that's nice.
~Neshomeh
I'm liking my university so far, but the fifteen-minute walk across campus sounds nice right about now--my campus is so huge I can safely say I haven't ever even gone around it, and they don't even stop with residences--they have a village. It's kind of insane. It's a gorgeous campus, though, and they've set up the insides of the buildings fairly well too, so I can't complain about that...
~DF
No way I can get there, though, so there's that. Oh well. You guys will just have to have twice the amount of fun in my stead! :D
(So happy I started this thread...look at all the cool things people are bringing up!)
What's Michigan like? I've never been there and I have no actual preconceptions besides a vague impression of trees. Also, what's your cat's name? Did you have him from kittenhood or after?
~DF
It is indeed full of trees. Trees and fields in the lower peninsula, trees and more trees in the upper peninsula. There are also some really nice rivers, and of course the shoreline. There are some great beaches and some really awful ones. The further north you go, the more rocks there are, which is great if you're into rock-hunting. Michigan also boasts some pretty cool landforms such as the Sleeping Bear Dunes and the Pictured Rocks. Overall, it's very pretty.
Alas, the weather can be pretty terrible. It's... well, kind of a swamp, what with being low-lying and full of water, so it's humid a lot, and "allergy season" is basically all year. And then there's the economy, which was tanking even before the recession hit, not to mention the current government, which seems to be trying its damnedest to kill democracy, but I won't say any more about that. >.>
In conclusion, Michigan's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to actually live there—not right now, anyway.
As for my cat, his name is Merlin, and I have a picture!
Also featuring my right knee and the edge of my lap desk. It's not a great picture. >.>
Anyway! He's a Tonkinese, and we got him when he was a kitten. He's about 13 now, still causing as much trouble as ever. {= )
~Neshomeh
... but you did add a parenthetical (& workplaces), so maybe I can throw out some horror stories from my job at an industrial chemical company?
Like the part where we have a brand new plant for making bleach from chlorine gas, and people keep doing clever things like cutting into active pipes 'because it's quicker'?
Or the part where, for no reason whatsoever, one of our storage tanks decided to snap in half, fall over, knock over a second tank full of hydrochloric acid, and blow HCl fumes all over the nearby main road?
Ooh! Or the time we thought a test reaction would only heat the tank up to 60C (er, 140F, apparently), only we hadn't taken into account the fact that all the chemicals were going in through one small pipe, and accidentally set a 25 tonne tank rocking and rolling as the water boiled inside?
^_^ Chemistry is fun!
hS
You do lead a rather exciting life, don't you? May I ask how many injuries you've sustained at work?
Chemistry is pretty fun, though (says the girl who took a class in it in Grade 11 and then completely failed at sitting in on the Grade 12 class).
I'm so glad this thread seems to be taking off...and the responses have been great! Keep them coming, people! :D
~DF
Every new anecdote about your workplace increases my belief that PPC members are living in a reality several magnitudes weirder than the "normal" reality that's supposed to exist around us.
(Also those are all very horrifying stories. Please don't accidentally turn into a supervillain.)
That is, I think you may have a point, and am drowning in idioms and possibly not using them correctly. What's uni doing to me?
(Also, supervillain!hS kind of scares me. And...pretty much everything you've written in this post is inspiring me to write, mostly for the Badfic game. I don't think I want you to stop, though, it's pretty interesting...)
~DF
There was a PPCer who had to shoo a moose out of her backyard, and while she was at school a bat once flew off with the tissue box she'd had in the window.
I forget what it was about this university that prompted someone to decide that it's located in Nightvale. Possibly the fact that the top floor lounges of my dorm glows in the dark - running through the entire color spectrum over and over. Or the top of the Science building glowing in the dark, that might've done it. Add that to the fact that we're a little valley in the middle of the desert...
So yes. PPCers seem to attract very odd realities. I'm not sure why, and it probably calls for SCIENCE!.
At least there's already a pre-defined aesthetic. The mad scientist supervillain outfit just needs a few tweaks to make it truly one's own, but if he decided to stick to the classic model, it's hard to go wrong with lab coats and giant robots. Just imagine it: a Tolkien elf in a billowing lab coat and thick goggles, standing atop a three-story machine and laughing manaically while it launches acid into a nearby city. I admit it's a little expected, but if someone tries to call you out on it, giant robots excel at looming menacingly and swatting people across city blocks.
Wait, he'd be chemistry-themed. You don't make robots with chemistry. You power them with chemistry, though. That might be enough of a stretch. Even if there isn't a robot, he'd probably need some kind of device, because a science-themed villain often has very weak or indirect supernatural abilities and he's going to need something to fight off the helicopters they'll send after him once he robs the Science Symposium to get the last ingredients to build his superweapon or cloning ray or giant acid monster or what have you.
Hold on... would a cloning ray be biology, or would the necessary biochemical functions to maintain clones allow it to fall under chemistry? Planning for this sort of thing is more difficult than I thought it would be.
Mind if I repossess some of that for the badfic, if I end up writing it? Supervillain!hS gets more terrifying by the second...and I'm pretty sure the badfic game is the place for this story.
...it's a little hard to picture a Tolkien Elf laughing maniacally, though, at least in the crazed sense. Laughing merrily, maybe...
We seem to be overthinking this. It is rather fun, though. Also, he could just team up with an engineer--a sort of minion or sidekick or something...
~DF
... that the Badfic Game is usually about agents in the PPC, not Boarders.
That said, there is an Agent Huinesoron, who shares much of my backstory... not sure if he's a chemist, but hey, it's the Badfic Game - who cares?
hS
PS: Pretty sure I have a picture of myself as a mad scientist somewhere...
Alright, I can write this about Agent hS instead. And rampantly make things up, because badfic :)
Can Boarders make a brief appearance, though? In the sense of 'just when you thought Agent hS was the most terrifying supervillain you've ever seen...along comes Boarder hS to team up with him and the story ends with them making plans to take over the multiverse'? Because that could be pretty awesome.
(I'm quite tempted now to, in the tradition of the Jaycacia stories, have a scene of the real Agent hS reacting to the badfic. Not sure if it will go in, but, out of curiosity, would you be willing to write that scene? You obviously know him a good deal better than I do*...)
Also, a picture? Why? I mean, awesome, but who drew it? Why did they draw it? How mad of a mad scientist?
~DF
*Said lack of knowledge will probably result in even more badficcy badfic, so I'll do my best to just make a series of assumptions in order to write this...
hS
I know we've had agents appearing in the Shipficfest before, though I can't actually recall Boarders wandering into the Badfic Game... still, I'm sure you could get away with it.
I'm willing to write a 'hS reacts' scenelet, sure. They're always fun.
Oops, did I say picture? I meant as in photograph. I'll see if I can track it down tonight.
hS
I actually started at this university in the Spring quarter, so I've been cooling my heels here since the Summer quarter ended... and Fall quarter's at the end of the month. But my favorite thing about campus is the crows. They're everywhere and wicked smart and becoming quite friendly to me.
Really there are cool things all over though, and since I moved here from about 2800 miles East-Southeast, everything about the valley and town is new. Mostly the most awesome thing so far is the church, actually, which also hits "workplace" in a roundabout way - I started tentatively attending, then got informally adopted en masse by about 1/3 of the congregation, and then because I was having trouble finding a job and had nothing to do, I started working on the grounds.
And then, despite repeated warning to not work too hard/take it easy, I proceeded to get really intense about working the grounds, and started spending pretty much all day pulling weeds and wrestling bushes and fallen limbs. An awesome way to spend the summer... and also sort of an awesome way of eating all my time. Which is why I've not been around here as often. Still reading! Just a lot less energy to respond.
My favorite part of the university, though, is the newspaper. It's awesome and the folks are awesome and even though I'd rather be a reporter I'm gonna be assistant news editor starting Fall. It's all very exciting!
I've started my first year of grad school a few weeks ago. My school is in a very large city that attracts a lot of famous people, so there's always a lot going on. I think there's an X Factor audition today because I heard some people talking about it.
Peter S Beagle stopped by my school during the tour for The Last Unicorn movie. I've met him before and he is just the nicest person. If you like his work, definitely try to meet him if you can. He makes a lot of time for his fans and has some great stories!
Hmm. What else is interesting about my school?
There are a couple of bars on campus. I went to a small institution for my undergrad, so it's still amazing that this campus has so many food places. I spend most of my time in one building, so I don't really experience everything.
Does anyone else's school bookstores sell Hello Kitty plushes with your school's logo on a little shirt? I think they're adorable and I've bought them from my undergrad and grad schools. XD
It's a really crazy place, I'll just say that. It's not surrounded by much except a bigger university, but that just makes the area pretty nice and healthy by comparison, so I'll just leave that be.
As for my favorite part... I have two. The one is my current composition teacher (who's frickin' amazing at what he does), and the other is the electronic music room (which has a bunch of synthesizers plus a computer, keyboard, and hard drive full of all these awesome virtual instruments). So yeah...
...is really kinda boring. Except for the group of people that get together for medieval dancing and heavy fighting and what. They're pretty fun. :3
My last Uni was in the home of Rugby League (you can guess which sport we specialized in), and we had the Sir Patrick Stewart (AKA Jean Luc Picard, Charles Xavier etc etc.) as our chancellor, even better? I got to speak to him once (I then joked with my friends "Right that's it, that's all I came here for I'm leaving" and lo and behold I'm not there anymore.) We also had our own Games Studio that released games onto the Xbox Arcade and have a Canal running right through our campus (complete with a lock and the occasional barge).
That's just about it for my University besides the notorious bad weather, but that's England for you.
Sir Patrick Stewart is basically the most amazing dude! (WHAT DID YOU TALK ABOUT.)
YOU GOT TO MEET SIR PATRICK STEWART?!
WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE HOW JEALOUS I AM.
Seriouslyohmygodswhatdidyoutalkabout?
Excuse my blatant fangirling, I just…Picard is my role model, that's all.
I'm going to be honest it wasn't planned or anything. It was after our last exam of term me and a couple of mates had finished early and were allowed out and we were waiting for the exam to end, so we're chatting outside the hall and suddenly we look up the steps to the main block and there he was walking down with some assistants or something like that. Spotting us hanging around he stopped said "Hello" to us, asked why we were hanging around there and then wished us good luck in our exam before moving on.
Best bit is that if you do Drama at the Uni in final year he can even comes in and teach a couple of the classes.
I feel really childlike compared to y'all. I'm in High School.
Anything cool? Well, We celebrated our school's 50 year anniversary. Oh, and it's located in a forest. No joke, for track, we used to go running on the trails in the forest...that our school is located in. It's also next to a power station. And there's a graveyard nearby...I feel a bit scared because GRAVEYARD.
Oh and one year during our recess, we swung on vines. Like Tarzan. I'm not kidding. We also got to explore the forest and trails for P.E and recess and fun. And we see deer a lot.
But I think the best part about my school is the teachers.I've known them for a while due to going to a small private school and the fact that some of them taught me in middle school. They are really dedicated to their jobs and a lot of them have talents/hobbies/occupations/etc. we wouldn't expect; my former Math teacher was a ballet dancer and choreographs the school's musicals, my Biology teacher was a Nurse and a Cheer leading coach. I had two teachers that loved Star Trek and many fandoms in general.
I guess that's all I've got. Kinda plain, but I like it.
You feel young? I'm in middle school. I feel even younger.
My favorite thing about my school is the community. And I mean community. Not just humans. The Greenfield Lizard and that weird quail who keeps crashing into the window too.
I love our school celebrations, too. Especially Pesta Rakyat, the Independence Day celebration. Last Pesta Rakyat, they had the great idea of making the security guards do tug-of-war against the English teacher, Math teacher, science teacher and principal.
I'm currently on my second week of my first year of high school, and so far, it's actually quite good!
For one, there is free (well, included in tuition) lunches that are good for you and very, very delicious, and also tea and bagels in the morning if you want. (It's a small school; about 400 including the teachers.)
Also the location's really pretty; it's in the Presidio, a forest-park-thing right near the Bay (I live in San Francisco) and everyone's very nice, including the teachers.
Lastly, it seems like half the school, at least, knows what fandom is, so that made me happy.
I rather like it.
-Aila
Damn kids! Get off my lawn!
To expand on this: I have been out of college for four years (Aie-yai) and before that I was in college before I joined the PPC (though technically I never actually joined the PPC, more like adopted really) back in the fall of 2000.
You kids seriously make me feel old, but when I say that I've been online (actively) for sixteen years, that says something in itself.
With that said, I loved College. It was there that I learned to drink cold coffee on a regular basis since we couldn't bring the drinks into the classroom due to all the pricey computers, and with hour long lectures at the beginning with the break after, coffee was then cold.
Though my program was a bit on the crazy side (three - five projects a week - due every two), it was fun and I probably would do it again in a heart beat. The friends definitely made it worth while. Even though it was four years ago, a group of us still get together regularly every few months to have coffee at Tim Horton's and catch up or just talk about stupid stuff like new movies and the like.
I also don't think I'm entirely finished with college either. Darn technology; you think you're on top of it, and then they release something new.
~AW~
Phobos and I graduated from college in 2008 and 2009, respectively, though if you were already in college in 2000, you were at it longer than we were. I didn't get started until 2004. I had a gap between high school (class of `03) and my first two years, then another gap between my first two and my second two and a half, wherein I transferred from community college to four-year college.
Still, there's a few of us "real adults" kicking around, though I think we tend to stretch the definition a little in our circles. I figure being a grown-up means you get to pursue whatever silly hobbies you like and no one can make you stop, so I say live it up! Y'know, just as long as the bills get paid and no one is starving or naked. {; )
~Neshomeh
And even if they *are* nekkid, so long as they're fed, right?
I graduated from HS in 2000, and got accepted right off the bat for Television Animation. I found out a year and a half later that I was not cut out for animation and then took a four year break to figure out what I wanted/need/could do. In 2006 I got accepted into the Graphic Design program and did very well. Which is one of the main reasons why I fell off the website updating schedule. That and MMORPGing.
Now I'm just looking for work, while doing odd jobs here and there, making sure I have money for hobbies as well as presents and personal crack.
I was mid-range in age back when I was active in the PPC Boards before. Now I'm supposedly an adult. HA! Say what?! Says who?
Back in the 1880s, my university ran an experiment that became one of the foundations of relativity theory. They literally will not shut up about it- there's I think six or seven different plaques around campus, two named buildings, a small museum of the thing in the department of physics, and a fountain.
We also have one of the largest LARP games of "Humans versus zombies" in the word.
I still insist that the two are connected.
Your school sounds interesting.
It runs at at least one school I know of - Geneseo State University of New York. One of our old lurker Boarders goes there.