General Academic Irritation

Yeah... I'm back in the Complaint Department, but not about the essay this time. The essay was finished yesterday- I stayed in my pajamas until about 3:30 because I woke up, sat down at the computer, and worked on that essay. About halfway through that time, I checked the assignment description and realised that I wasn't explicitly doing what it asked and so I had to go back and restructure the entire thing. However, despite all the frustrated growls coming from my desk area, it is technically finished at 2,700-something words. I shall look over it one more time tomorrow to make sure it's actually readable; my eyes were beginning to cross by the end.

But yes... things besides essays. Or that essay, anyway, for part of today's problems involved a different one. But let's start at the beginning, because if Julie Andrews says that that's a good place to start, who am I to argue with her?

After a week of no classes, wandering about beautiful England (who knew it was possible to fall MORE in love with this country?), I kind of forgot what it was like to be in classes. I didn't want to re-learn, especially with RT. I really don't like RT. But because I am a goody two-shoes, I went to class, only to find out that my instructor had apparently sent out an e-mail about today's class procedure. I didn't get this e-mail because I don't get e-mails from professors- that was the first annoyance. The second was that my teacher didn't show up for class, asking us to get into groups and form a presentation. This had nothing to do with the reading we had to do over Reading Week, which had nothing to do with our class whatsoever. And since she announced that she wasn't going to be in class, most of my classmates didn't show up, since they know one another and can contact each other outside of class.
While we were waiting for the possibility of classmates, a fellow American student and I were talking to an English classmate and griping about how we wanted the essays back that we had turned in a few weeks ago. Our English classmate looked at us oddly and said, "They've already been given back." He told us that unlike every other essay I've seen turned in in the department, we don't get the hard copies back- our grades are posted online. He showed us how to get them, which was great, but why weren't we told about this? We were told tha QMUL was very aware and therefore attentive to their international students. I don't need to be coddled, but being told how to get my grades is kind of an important detail.

The other annoyance has nothing to do with QMUL, but my home school. We have to take this ridiculous Global Reflections course. It's worth two credits and is more work than most of the classes here. We have to read or watch these long, seemingly pointless things and then write responses to them, all of which are full of made-up things because there's little to actually respond to. The most frustrating part is that, rather than use one website to keep all of the assignments in order, they use three, none of which are the best sources they could be using. It's all very time-consuming and annoying, and I wish we were just allowed to enjoy our experience abroad and focus on our classes here.

Anyway, I'm done complaining. I made a vlog today, and you can watch that here!