Hello All,

It is Friday afternoon and I am writing this from the slightly cold interior of the VUW library. Being a Friday afternoon and a Tech student, naturally I am in the library.

Anyways, the week has been good. I will just highlight the days as they weren’t too terrible amazing.

Tuesday was average. In two of my classes I am preparing for exams in the next week, so that is kinda stressful. I had a marketing meeting with someone who was really inflexible and just hard to work with. That was very dissapointing. I did however get the second season of 30 Rock which is wonderful!

Wednesday is always busy. I had classes, had to ship a package, and then was going up to the O’Keefe’s for dinner and volleyball. Class was fine, my tutorial for International Business was wierd as usual. The tutor didn’t know if she was allowed to give us the grading sheets back. So being an American and more importantly a Problem Solver I called the Prof up and asked him. We had 15 minutes of discussion over something that was solved in 2 minutes. I got my gradeback and got a 6.5. The median was a 7. Needless to say I wasn’t too happy. I’m not used to being in the bottom 50%.

After class, which ran about 10 minutes longer than the alloted time, I ran over to the tutor (TA’s) office and picked up my eval sheet. She stated that my paper was off topic. I thought we might get into this argument, it seems to happen often enough, so I had preivously specificly cleared my argument with the Professor. I contact him today (Friday) and will drop it off for reiew sometime next week.

I then sent the package home (8-25 business days!) and caught the proper bus to the O’keefes. We had a wonderful dinner and conversation! I then proceeded to play volleyball with Ross for 2 hours in two games. Apart from the first game (I couldn’t pass worth shit) I played very good. But really volleyball is a team sport and because a few of the people had played together before, we were very effective.

I got home and had a craving for something sugary. So I had my coke for the month and collected my wash off the line.

Also on Wednesday (Maybe it deserves it’s own post) I stopped by in my rush by the smoothie place I frequent. I realized I really like having some place where I am a regular. It is a good feeling and we had a nice conversation before I power walked to class.

Thursday I aimed to get as much work done as possible. I brought my laptop, course notebooks, and textbooks with me to class. I went to class which went well, did some studying, had a marketing interview with a very pretty girl, and then started studying some more. I went to the lab to continue working on my IBUS review and about an hour into it the power failed. I hadn’t saved in a good 20 minutes. It was funny as there was a collective sigh from the room as data dissapeared into the dark.

We all were in a secured lab that could only be access by RFID card (out Student ID’s) and when the power went out we were locked in. After about 10 minutes someone came and opened the door. They propped it with the trash can and I waited another ten minutes before giving up. I was planning to stay for a cultural event put on by the international folks, but I decided to leave due to the lack of power.

Strangely enough, my mp3 player also decided to die at that same time. So my walk back was quiet. All of the power was out for the area, including the traffic lights, so there were lots of car. I arrived back in my flat and decided to do some reading, a new book was on my to do list!, and read for a few hours till the power came on. I didn’t get anymore studying done the rest of the evening unfortunately.

Then came Friday. It has been a good day so far. Woke up, talked to my birth parents (that sounds wierd but is correct) went to class, and have been studying for the rest of today.

In my last post I mentioned posting more interesting things. Events are good to note, but not necessarily my entire experience. I find that I continue learning more and more each day from a ariety of sources.

I felt that after I had finished backpacking on Stewart Island, I had regained a sense of my old personality. I used to love talking to a variety of people, but it had waned much sense its former glory. I felt like I got that fire back.

I read in Habits ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People) that motivation and visualization are strong tools to help reshape and remould behavior. I have thus been using those for a couple of weeks now to help rewrite some of my scripting. I think it has helped, especially with apprehensions/anxiety.

I really don’t think I am a good dancer nor singer. My ability to carry a tune is pretty awful. I do still enjoy singing along with songs though! Maybe I should use singing as a threat more often!

I have come to realize that a lot of people experience anxiety and we all deal with it in different ways. I myself tend to withold lots of myself until I am fairly familiar with the circumstance. I am trying to become more comfortable in more situations. However, I have realized now that it is much more common than I once though. I also don’t get anxiety attacks fyi.

I have come to appreciate the resources and intelligence of the Tech community even more than I did before!

I think studying is very hard because it doesn’t have a finite beginning or end. You could have always studied more. I myself haven’t every worried too much about it, but I have found that lots of people use it as an excuse. There is most certainly a difference between effective studying and ineffective studying.

I really like to take naps. In Fall 2010 I would nap 2-3 times per day. I have found that they can be quite effective at re-energizing your body and mind.

I think that traditional attempts to schedule as much as possivle in your life fails completely. I have found that I need a fair amount of transition time (especially after arriving back after uni) to just let the mind rest. This normally entails some sort of interent trolling (such as FB or maybe even this blog ) or watching some TV. Thus to try and hold yourself to some crazy standard of effectiveness and goal setting without leaving yourself time for the spontaneous and the troll times in life only sets yourself up to fail. In fact I think a lot of the brillance and fun in life comes from unplanned activities.

I don’t understand why my privious pair of shoes lasted for close to 4 years and my current pair is already terrible after only 6 months. It is kinda dissapointing.

Anyways (that is my wrapup word and devoted to my Mother who uses So Anyways as here conversation filler word) those are some more of the thoughts and events in my life. More to come I’m sure.

Also, if anyone gets a postcard from me, please let me know so I know I didn’t just pay money to put them into a dark abyss.

All the best!

-Mathias Rost