Ladies and gentlemen, children and pets, today marks the first all-nighter of the term! It's freakin' 6:52AM and I'm still up working on my Software Engineering document. As if last night wasn't bad enough (didn't get to bed until 4:30am), today was even worse. Not to mention I still have CLASSES today. HAHAHAHAHA..

Let's hope I finish this in time so I can go to class, maybe get some sleep this afternoon so I can start working tonight again.

*sigh*

Still in the lab. 6 hours later. Still working on the same report. 30 pages later. Still have to go through the report once more to make sure we have covered all our points.

People are going insane in the labs. I started laughing for no reason, non-stop, for about 5 minutes. Then everybody joined in. We sure love labs.

Midterms are over - now on to labs and reports. Within these two days I have to churn out two reports.. ugh. This just never ends.. hahaha.

I read everybody's blog almost daily - sometimes when I get bored I even read them twice just for fun. I have found a consensus though - we all need some sleep! Everybody is complaining about the lack of sleep - we're just THAT busy. It's crazy, isn't it?

I just wish everything would stop for a moment to let me catch up.

Yay, last midterm to write today in about 6.5 hours. Then I have millions of other things to finish.

Last night Evelyn spent the whole day studying with me - and only fell asleep once! What an accomplishment for her. Now let's hope she continues the trend and reduce her sleeping hours from 20 to 18. :P Anyhow, that was really sweet of her to spend the day with me, even though I had to stay in the library for the whole day.

Back to cramming for Analog Control.. ugh..

I really hate to put a damper on things, especially on my birthday. It's supposed to be a happy day. R-I-G-H-T. Anybody that says Happy Birthday to me will get a witty reply, such as "How happy can you be when you spend the entire day in the library?" or "Would you be happy if you were me!?"

I'm starting to believe that birthdays are just a milestone. Just a day that marks the end of one year and starting of the next. It holds no special significance at all. Nothing. Especially when you're a student and there's a midterm tomorrow. It just loses all meaning. Maybe I shouldn't care too much about it anymore. After all, I'm just getting older. It's not special or anything.

So I've been here since 11am - but I did get an extra hour of sleep because of daylight savings time. So my birthday lasted 25 hours today. Yay. I should celebrate. This is ridiculous. I'm wasting my life away here in this Davis Centre Library. It feels like my youth and energy is just slowly dripping away.

Never mind me, I'm just ranting because I had a crappy birthday. Well, at least some people remembered. Some people even went out of their way to get my friends together for a birthday dinner two nights ago. I should be grateful. At least some people care. Oh and I got a phone call at 12:02am. That was very nice of them. Then again, there are people whom I once thought would be there for me regardless what happened, and now I don't even get a simple 'happy birthday' from them..

A year ago I started my blog.. through the eyes of a bystander.. to record my journey through life. My birthday resolution last year didn't work out quite well - there were periods of my life when I did not record my thoughts and feelings on my journal. Who says resolutions are always followed?! :) Since the beginning of time, resolutions were made to be broken (much like promises). This year, I promise myself to be a better person. I want to be all that I can be. (I sound like a military commercial on TV)

Seriously, I have to pick myself up from 'my so-called life' and put my life back together. Twenty-two years later and here I am - still unsuccessful in everything I have pursued. I have to realize - hey, I'm not getting any younger by sitting around doing nothing.

Happy Birthday to me!

Have my law midterm sometime later today.. been studying the whole day for it. After been through three really technical exams (Communication, Software Engineering, and Digital Systems), this is actually quite refreshing. I mean, nobody likes studying for midterms, but it was kinda interesting to read and trying to learn it by integrating it with my life. For example, now I know certain things are illegal in practice that people do everyday without thinking that it's wrong.

I think taking arts courses gives us engineering students a different perspective on things. Not everything is black-and-white and defined with equations and greek symbols. There is a whole world out there to us to learn about.

Live and learn :)

Feel a little bit better now, probably because I missed all my morning classes and get more than 3 hours of sleep last night. Ah well, I'll catch up eventually. Just have to sacrafice a couple more weekends and I'll be back on track. Midterm in about 50 minutes, and I always feel so unprepared yet bored of studying around this time. I just know how to come online, blog, and tell the world how much I dislike doing this over and over again.

I think I can count the number of people who reads this regularly. In fact, my life is so boring that nobody would read this and make a habit out of it.

Wish me luck. Haha.

Let me rant a little more now about my stupid degree here at Waterloo. They really don't understand how much stress they put us under - and sometimes I wonder how so many of us are still sane. Yeah, so I'm in my fourth year of university, I should just suck it up and take it. But this is the point when I just decide ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. First of all, we have midterms. Fine, they come and go every semester. Then right after midterms (which ends next Monday), my lab report is due on Monday, prelab exercises are due on Tuesday, lab project report (~20 pages) due Wednesday, my software design document (~25 pages) due Thursday.

To make matters worse, I found out today I failed my work term report. Which means I get the joy of figuring out what went wrong, re-write it, and hand it in within three weeks. Great. On top of all those I still have classes, regularly scheduled labs, and other academic obligations. Oh did I mention that we have a fourth year design project presentation in two weeks? Plus we have to actually implement our software design, and finish coding up a microprocessor from the hardware level.

I am usually not the one to complain about the amount of work, because it comes with the notion that we *learn* from all these activities. However, I question if all these 'activities' are doing our mental health any good. They say they want us to have a balanced education - bullshit. I don't call spending two weeks in the library, having irregular eating hours (I have varied from having no meals to one meal a day, at various times throughout the day), maintaining an average of 3 hours sleep, and stressing 24/7 a BALANCED education. Instead of looking at the statistics, maybe they should interview the students and find out exactly what the workload is like.

[/rant mode off]

Remind me later to tell you about Mabel's birthday thing last weekend. It was kinda funny, but this is really not the time to type too much more.. time is ticking away.

Yay, in about 45 minutes I'm going to write my first midterm of this semester.. great.. I feel really unprepared. Even though I have been studying for the past couple of days, and I mean, I _studied_. Library has become my second home (my first home is the lab), and I pretty much get kicked out every night when they close. I'm usually the first one in, and the last one to leave. Well, and then I leave for class/food. Sometimes I wonder why I still do this when I question it all the time. I guess there are things you *WANT* to do, and then there are things you *HAVE* to do.

Oh Happy Birthday (belated) Michelle! :) As for Adrian, I'll be cooking steak/porkchops every night when you get back in Waterloo. Uhh wait, I have midterms the whole next week. Forget that. :P

Too bad I sold my laptop, otherwise I'd be blogging with my laptop in the library instead of standing here at the public terminal typing away. My first midterm is fast approaching - Friday to be exact. I haven't done any homework this term, so I guess I have three days to totally catch up three chapters worth of materials and try to make sense of it all.

I shouldn't be complaining though, because for my law class, I have 10 chapters to catch up by next Friday. Hahahahaha.. I think right about now I will shut up about how arts courses are 'laid back' and 'not demanding'.

Still not finished the lab.. but what the heck, I have to start studying for my midterm this coming Friday. Blech. Feeling kinda sick.. I swear it's something in my room. It's been really dusty since I moved in.. so I'm not surprised if bacteria or whatever virus has been occupying the room before I moved in. I started getting sick as soon as I moved in - and still sick. Oh well, no time to clean. Gotta study.

In the lab right now working on a lab report. If it seems like that I only talk about school, then you are correct. School *IS* my life. I sometimes think I allow school to consume me completely, and in this regard I think I'm relatively weak. Just because society decides that 'School is important. High marks are important. Being competitive is important.', I have to blindly follow that. Who are we kidding? We all love to come out on top. For what though?

I know I shouldn't be whining, but sometimes I think my life is such an irony. I'm going through the process of interviews and trying to find a job for my next co-op work term. Last year I got a total of _ONE_ interview during the entire job search. Now I am faced with not one, not two, but THREE interviews tomorrow. Great. Don't get me wrong - I am grateful of the fact that interviews are flying my way. Just that the amount of time it takes to prepare for each interview is much larger than you think.

In this day and age, to stay competitive in the job market, it pays to be a little more aggressive.

Back to reading company histories and product overviews..

I hate labs. I truly, truly do. Especially when I can't figure out how to do something.

Just trying to sort out my life.. been really lazy and falling behind on everything lately. Bleh. I really need to pick up the pace and get back on track. That's one hard thing to do.. catch up after falling behind.