Yes, that’s really what St. Thomas looks like. We took that photo with our camera. The trip was amazing. I had no idea how wrapped around the axle I was about life in general until I got out on the beach. We arrived at the airport in St. Thomas, it took us a couple of hours to get to our hotel (there’s no sense of urgency out there), we ate, then hit the beach. I had a stack of books to keep me company though and, for the record, I did get out into the water a lot and even got sort of a tan. Not much, though. You know me: Fear of the sun. I marinated in sunscreen.

YES THAT IS ME WITH A TAN AND TOM WITH A SUNBURN! I DID GET SOME COLOR ON MY SKIN! STOP LAUGHING!

Since I returned from St. Thomas, I haven’t had the desire to do much of anything. School kicked into high gear the week after we got back and I was flung back into my overwhelming list of priorities, to-do’s and other obligations. Although I was excited and motivated to do these things previously, when I came back from vacation, nothing made me happy. I backed off of almost everything on my plate and the things I didn’t back off of were just ignored completely. It took me a while to figure out my problem, but I finally did.

I have time to do lots of little things half-assed, and zero time to do them all in the way I want them done. Everything I do feels like it’s only as half as good as it could be, because I don’t really have enough time to invest myself fully in everything. When I get an inspired moment and I want to try something new, I sort of throw myself out there, feeling around as I go, but with no real focus. It’s fun for a while, but I start a million new projects and then can’t finish any of them.

And now I’m living with the mess, unsure of what I should finish first.

I’m going to take a semester off from school. Next semester. I emailed the head of the Interior Design program about it. Though I can feel his reluctance in the email, I think it’s just something I have to do for now. But I’m not going to give up - there’s a lot of my house that I started and haven’t finished yet. For example, the kitchen. The first month we lived in the house I started ripping up the wallpaper and started painting cabinets. It’s been sitting like that for two years. Ugly. Depressing. I couldn’t stand to spend time in there - impacting my cooking and baking hobbies. I like cooking and baking, but I can’t stand to be in the kitchen. Result: No cooking or baking. Ripple effect: I haven’t posted on AwK in a long time.

On Friday, I took a half day off from work and used it to work in the kitchen. The walls are mostly painted, one side of the cabinets are sanded and primed and given one coat of paint. They need one more coat of paint and the doors are going back on.

For the record, my kitchen walls are a neutral brown/khaki color with white cabinets, black hardware and appliances, and small touches of earthy green (teapot, etc.) and it looks awesome.

One section of a wall needs to be finished in the Cliff Rock color, and I need to sand, primer and paint one side of the cabinets, but it looks so great with some color in there. I’m excited at the progress and it’s actually motivating me with other ideas on how to finish the rest of the house - but I won’t act on them until the kitchen is finished. Unfortunately I have too much going on over the next three weekends and won’t be able to get back to the kitchen until December, but I’m looking forward to having it finished before the end of the year.

Though I haven’t been blogging, I’ve been writing. While out on the beach of St. Thomas (no, I won’t horrify anyone with bathing suit photographs) I started reading some mystery books that helped me to look at story creation in a new way. I also picked up a copy of “Plot and Structure Techniques And Exercises For Crafting A Plot That Grips Readers From Start To Finish” and it was really helpful. Through the summer I had been kicking around a story idea in my head, and after I got back from vacation, I had it. About a month ago I sat down to write it, and I’m already on chapter 6. This is the fastest work I’ve done to date and different than anything I’ve done yet, and I’m very excited about it. It’s first person and takes place in Rochester, NY.

More about that later.

Church worship has its ups and downs. Since we last talked I have a totally new team, and a woman who is leading worship once a month. Though she is going through the learning process, she’s getting better every time, and that makes it worth it. She is up again to lead this coming Sunday. Starting next year I would like her to alternate leading every other Sunday, that way I can start focusing more on planning and developing other people. Eventually I would like this to mean that I get at least one weekend off every month, but with Tom doing sound every week, I’m not sure what will happen. I’d like to get another sound volunteer so he can take break, too.

That’s it for now. I’ll be back with more, later. I promise.

Now that I live on the other side of the country from my family and friends, I have relied on the internet more and more to communicate. In fact, that’s the entire reason for this blog. As I’ve continued my schooling for Design, more and more friends and family are asking me for design advice of rooms I have never seen.

One of the Directors where I work unscrewed one of her kitchen cabinet doors and brought it to me, along with a sample of her counter top and flooring, the entire catalog of Benjamin Moore paints and a scribbled diagram of her kitchen, and asked me to choose her paint color. She indicated what Benjamin Moore paint numbers were in the adjacent rooms, and said if I could get back to her with a paint selection she’d be grateful. Seriously.

Wow. She said she wasn’t afraid of color, and the room had a tendency to be a little dark, so I selected three paint combinations: One playful option, one sophisticated option, one neutral option that could be spruced up with different colored accents. I have never seen this room, nor do I know her style, but she seemed really excited about the playful option - a twist of lavenders. She has a young daughter who really loves purple, so she seemed super excited about the choice. Hope it works out.

It’s these sorts of instances that have made me wonder just how viable “distance” design is. I had never heard of such a thing before. When I looked around for Design schools, none of the accredited schools offered distance learning for design, so I was beginning to think this sort of practice was frowned on.

This morning, while going through my blogroll, I came across a very interesting article on Decor8 about this very topic. It is apparently picking up in the design world and even has a name: eDecorating.

Apparently, being hired to design a room you’ve never stepped into before is becoming a bigger and bigger phenomenon. It’s a little cheaper than hiring a designer to come in, consult and do it all for you, and for the homeowner it’s a bit more DIY - something that is also growing in popularity.

Depending on who the designer is, the services being offered and the prices all vary. For some of these services, to have one room painted with an eDecorate service is $600. Just to paint a room. I guess it makes sense because the designer would have to call a contractor in the client’s area and hire them, then bill their profit on top of that. No clue if this fee also includes older homes that need decades of wallpaper removed. Let’s hope it does.

Other designers offer flat fees for consultations, three different design boards and themes for a client to choose from, and there are some who can arrange to have it all installed for you - for an incredible fee. Depending on the designer, the client is asked to provide a range of information - photos of the room, dimensions and placements of heaters, air conditioning units and outlets, links to inspiration for the room or links/photos of things that inspire the client, etc.

I don’t know if I am so interested in charging $2500 to put together three color boards (holy crap), but I am definitely curious about how to make something like this work. How would you even present a color board to a distance client? Do you package them up and send them over? Do you put them on a protected client-specific web page for them to look at?

I’m looking at my color board via internet and, although I’ve received all kinds of flattering feedback from friends and family who read this site, it isn’t as nearly as exciting as it is in person. I’m a touch and feel customer - especially when it comes to fabrics.

I can see how this would go very, very wrong for someone, but I can also see how it could go right. I have been interested in this method for helping my mom make design decisions for her house, but sort of shied away from it because I didn’t think it was kosher. Apparently it can be. I’m glad, because I have some ideas on how to make it work.

Today was the “big day” for my interior design rendering class. All 18 of us got up and presented our rooms to the class, the head of the program, and the two rendering teachers. I waited until the last possible minute and ended up being the second to the last person to go. Of course I was completely nervous, and paranoid about my design - and I still am. We won’t get our grades back until tomorrow at 2:00, so of course I’m going to be stressing out until then. When I stood up, I put my color board and rendering up for the presentation, and about half the class said, “Oh my God.” So that’s good, right? What I’m mostly nervous about is that there are some glaring errors in my rendering, and when Randy, the head of the program, gets up close to grade me, he’ll see them all. I have no idea how my grade is going to turn out. The paranoia is now that I am so proud of what I did, and I spent a lot of time and hard work on it. If I don’t get an A, then I’ll know my best isn’t good enough. So that’s the fear.

So without further ado, here’s the design. It photographed a little dark, so I tried to adjust the picture settings. Not sure if I was successful or not.

Color board:

Rendering:

With two classes left before the final project is presented, I’m still making tweaks and changes to my design. I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if I was making the claimed “tweaks”, but they happen to be substantial changes - like the entire ceiling. It’s not that big of a deal, since the ceiling changes happen to be added molding and paint, but it’s a huge deal to draw out.

I also changed the chandelier.

Hear me out on this - when I usually find something I love, I find that it’s the concept that I love, more than the actual piece. So when I’ve found my concept, I have learned to keep searching until I find the piece that’s right.

The new chandelier will be a bold statement against the creamy walls - now I just have to decide what colors I’m going to slap up on the ceiling. Right now, I’m thinking dangerously bold…

And sconces to match.

Couch fabrics (smooshed and color-warped by the scanner):

And the couch that these fabrics are supposed to cover (couldn’t get a black and white pic to look right, so you’ll just have to try and imagine this upholstered with the above fabrics):

There’s also a small, light sage colored fabric that goes as an accent pillow (the small, rectangular pillow in the front) and will also go on two accent chairs, but the fabric color doesn’t come through all that well on the scanner so I won’t post it.

The walls are a light cream color that picks up the golden tones of the couch, and will act as a nice backdrop for the sconces and chandelier.

Flooring and area rug: I chose a warm, wood floor that has a lot of the golden tones in it. It’s hard to see the little yellow additions in the scanned sample, but they are there, and beautiful.

On top, a handmade area rug from Aga John.

And more things - curtains, sheers, club chairs, a wine bar, plants, art, a fireplace that I won’t bother scanning the tile for… The drawing for this must be finished tonight. I’ll snap some pictures of the finished product and post it next week.

For the final project of my Interior Design class, we have been given dimensions and details to a room that we were asked to draft on a large sheet of vellum. Then, we were told to get all of the furnishings, paint, accessories, lighting, colors, fabrics, etc. for the room and put it together. In this room, we must include two sofas, two to six club chairs, a baby grand piano, a coffee table, end tables, art, accessories, lighting, and more. There’s barely any room and I have to fudge my sofa dimensions to make everything fit. Out of that, we must draw the room in a 2-point perspective with color renderings to show fabrics, color, shadow, shading, textures. We are also to do a “color board” where all of our colors, fabric samples, furniture samples, floor plan, etc. are put together and presented to the class and teacher/head of program. Because of the grand piano and large-scale fireplace, I made my room traditional and formal.

I pretty much had my furniture and colors all done until last night, when I was looking around the internet for some art, I found a new chandelier. I already had a chandelier that was adorable and classic, nice curves and somewhat sedated. But this chandelier is spectacular. I love this chandelier. I must have this chandelier in my room.

Now, none of my accessories and tables work. Plus, the teacher originally told me I didn’t have to have the baby grand piano in there, but now that I have the chandelier, the room is screaming for the piano!

It’s “Make It Work” time, people.

My friend at church with the recording studio asked me to come over again this Saturday and do a new take of that song, but I don’t think I am going to have any time until this project is finished. The rest of the week/weekend will need to be devoted to finishing the drawing and getting my samples together for the board, so I can spend the rest of my time on the rendering process.

At this point, I’m not sure if I feel good about the project or not. I’m definitely behind in schedule of where I’d like to be, but since I’ve been working on it every night, the situation isn’t grim. As long as I can finish up the color board and the drawing before Monday, I should be fine. We’ll see how it goes.

To decorate a home on a small budget is no project for the faint of heart. I started out with the same idea that my mom has: One room at a time.

Unfortunately, I am extremely impatient and I want instant results. More rooms have been started and not much has finished. I started out with the dining room and downstairs half bath with success. The superficial is done: Wallpaper has been removed and the rooms have been painted. But what makes a room truly come together are the little accents and artwork.

What most people do in this case is run out and buy a bunch of impersonal knickknacks and pretty artwork that they find in their local stores, creating a sterile, impersonal room - sans Pottery Barn. I would love to be able to do that, but in my own home I require pieces that I truly love, so I can’t just go out and spend hard earned cash on objects that don’t really move me. And so, my nearly-finished rooms sit barren, waiting for the artwork and little accessories that will grab me. I know they are out there, but they can often take a lot of time to find. Sometimes years.

It’s excruciatingly painful for someone who prefers instant results.

Decor8 featured a neat little website called BlueFlip Art, a website that aims to sell artists’ work as prints for low prices (most of their prints are under $20 - which is almost unheard of). When you buy a print, the artist donates a portion of the money to a charity of their choice. The charity is also listed on the site, so you know where your money is going before you purchase.

This print by Jen Lobo caught my eye, and I immediately fell in love with it:

The blue background of the print is the same color that I painted on one of my bathroom walls. It’s pretty fierce. Tom found a coupon for free shipping and ordered it for me. I hope it gets here before my mom does.

I wanted to wait until I was able to post pictures along with this, but I think I just really need to get it out of my system: Yesterday wrapped up the first semester of Architectural Drafting.

For the first half of the semester, we learned basic drafting techniques (with pencils and vellum, not with CAD) from the head of the Interior Design program. The majority of the class didn’t like him. The class is filled with 18 year old girls who are fresh out of high school and whine a great deal. They don’t understand the concept of being on time, reading syllabuses and assignment sheets rather than having someone spoon feed things to you, etc., and the teacher was pretty adamant about these things, as they are all things he preferred in his classroom. Everything was to be turned in on time at the beginning of class and no later or it would not be accepted. His office hours were rigorous and he insisted that appointments should be scheduled if you could not make his office hours. Most of the class couldn’t stand him.

A changing of the guard occurred during the second half of the semester, when we no longer learned drafting and switched to model-making. This is when we ended up with the batty teacher I had last year for IDE 101 & 102. I like her as a person (most of the time), but she is constantly making things exponentially more difficult than they need to be. She’s unorganized and forgetful, and tries to cram everything in at the last possible minute.

Homework assignments were given out, and she completely forgot she had assigned them. “Rough sketches” were insisted for our sketchbooks with the criteria that these should be rough, freehand drawings, and when they were returned to us, we found them graded harshly and received a huge lecture about how much better they should have been. I was the only person to receive an A on the assignment, and that is because I had taken her before and went through great pains to carefully draw with a ruler and measure — even though she specifically said we weren’t to do that. Quizzes were scheduled and then forgotten. In fact, she was supposed to give us a couple of quizzes but never did so gave us a rush quiz on the last day of class after we turned in our final projects - she’s not organized at all. Assignments were given out with little instructions and then when we received them back, we were marked down on things she admittedly forgot to teach us. And, for the grand finale, instead of receiving the instructions for our final project when the other classes were receiving them, she held off for two weeks to give us other model assignments as filler and “practice” so we wouldn’t have the model to work on over the Thanksgiving holiday. And then when we finally received the assignment, her instructions were exponentially more difficult and required much more than the other classes were required to do - with less time to do them.

On the last day of class, before the teacher came in, I was in a discussion with a group of girls who were comparing the teaching styles of our first and second teachers. Everyone in the discussion (except myself) agreed that they liked the second teacher better. Why? They said:

Because she’s a girl, you know, so she’s, like, more understanding.

I could hardly believe it, either. Their grades were worse with her and the assignments were exponentially more difficult, but because she’s female, and because she lets people take breaks whenever they want and eat in the classroom, they find her to be a better teacher.

I couldn’t stop laughing to refute the argument and just had to let it go. But the good news is that this second “better” chick teacher will not be teaching anything at all next semester, and we will be getting the first guy again, who I liked better. I can’t eat or drink in the classroom but he shows up on time and gives assignments back on time? I can live with that.

But anyway, this final project. All semester we had been learning to draft this house - the same house. For the final project we had to build a foam core model of this house, 1/2″ = 1′-0″ scale, of a two-story 40′-0″ x 20′-0″ house. Our model was required to have the ceiling come off, as well as the north and west walls come off — oops, she changed that to north and east walls a week before the project was due — so we can take a look inside. We were required to turn in a practice model of the staircase and roof, at the very least. My practice staircase was disassembled and my practice roof was not good enough for her, so it was severely marked down.

One and a half weeks before the project was due I had all of my exterior and interior walls cut out, but had not yet done a staircase and roof — and there were girls in the class who hadn’t even started with exterior walls yet. Needless to say I felt pretty good about where I was at.

Tuesday night, the night before the project was due, I sat down to do the stairs and roof, cut out the windows on my final exterior wall, and assemble. I thought I’d be done by 11:00.

We got done at 4:00am. The entire night was a series of things that just kept going wrong. Tom stayed with me the whole night, changing the music CD, making me coffee, beveling edges, gluing and pinning and piecing together my entire project.

He has won the Best Husband Award of 2007, which is good because there are only a couple of weeks left in the year and I was getting worried.

Seriously though, he was amazing. I don’t think anyone else would have done that for me. Well maybe my Mom would — I can think of a few school projects she did with me until the wee hours of the morning (I love you, Mom!). But those I procrastinated on, and this one I hadn’t procrastinated on.

In the end, my project looked pretty beautiful. The windows were beautifully cut, the beveled edges of the house were perfect, and it really was one of the best models that were turned in.

The next morning I made it into class 30 minutes early so I could review for the test we were supposed to take. My brain was only half functioning at this point. I walk into the classroom and there are a half-dozen people in there, frantically trying to finish up their projects which look horrible. Immediately as I walk through the door they’re begging me for pins and glue and supplies — and of course I happily donated whatever I could to the cause. Most of the girls couldn’t figure out how to attach the ceiling to the roof (because we were never told how to do this stuff, just that we were to do it) and I said that in the end, I pinned them together instead of gluing. I had purchased a $20 beveling gizmo for the ceiling, so it would glue to the slanted ceiling, but it just wasn’t working. We pinned it. I told the girls what I had done, and they all started lining up so I could pin it.

Now, when I pinned mine, Tom and I did it carefully so we wouldn’t pierce the ceiling. Of course by then I was so tired that I did make a couple of tiny punctures in the top, but I fixed it so that at least no one would get stabbed. One of the girls said she didn’t care, grabbed pins and started stabbing the ceiling into the roof so that four pins were sticking straight out of the top. And when I flipped her roof over you could see that she had, at one point, cut herself badly because there were smears of blood all over the model.

It was quickly dubbed the “Stephen King House.”

Most of the other houses were messy and many of them didn’t even have exterior walls that came together. Even though I was really proud of my house and I did a great job, it did not receive the A- that I had expected. Because I ended up not taking the additional 4 hours to install skylights and vaulted ceilings in my house, nor did I give the assembled practice staircase and an acceptable practice roof, she gave me an 87.

Everyone was marveling at what a great grade that was, because she was pretty harsh in her grading. I was furious. Absolutely furious. Maybe because I was tired, I don’t know, but I think it at least deserved a 91. And, admittedly, I was so exhausted that I couldn’t think. Everyone had stayed up as late as I did, and some hadn’t even gone to bed yet (like the Stephen King house girl).

The beginning of the semester was fun, and I really enjoyed myself. Drafting was fun and I felt like I was learning something cool, but when the second teacher took over, I found myself caring less about doing well, and just wanted to get assignments done. I know the other people aren’t looking forward to having him back in the classroom next semester, but I am.

Last year I went back to school and got a few of my art classes out of the way. I applied to the Interior Design program at my school, and started classes for the program this year. The Interior Design department only offers classes during the day, that is, during the usual business office hours of 8 - 5, but my boss (who is awesome) likes the idea of me going back to school and lets me go. So, two days a week, I leave work around 3:00 and come back at 5:00 to make up my work day. It actually works out nicely because my boss can get so busy that we don’t end up catching each other until the end of the day. The 5:00 hour can be the most peaceful and most productive, since most everyone else has retreated from the building.

In my class, we have a crazy person. The neat thing about her is that you don’t know she’s crazy until she starts talking. At that point, crazy is all out in the open and pretty hard to hide. She’s older than most of the students - not that she is old, she’s just older than a lot of the kids who are fresh out of high school. I would guess she is in her 40’s. We knew she was a little nuts because of some of the odd things she decides to interject during lectures, in an attempt to raise her “participation” part of the grade, which is worth 25% of the grade (basically, the participation grade is showing up to class, not being rude, asking questions, that sort of thing).

Allegedly, a lot of the IDE 101 students are failing the class. The course grade is mainly decided by three tests, each worth 25% of the grade, and then the 25% participation grade. Halfway through the semester we had only been given one assignment, so in all essence, the grades were riding on the tests. A lot of students bombed the first test, so our teacher decided to assign some homework to help prop up our grades. So we put together what is called a color board, where we were given measurements that we had to have for fabric swatches and the board that the fabric is mounted on, and the idea was for people to get colors and fabrics together on a presentation board, called a color board, which is then presented to a client. Our teacher was trying to get us to learn how to lay out our items in a way that makes sense to a client, and then receive feedback from peers.

Crazy came out for the project in a whole new way. She was the second or third to present, and her board was a bit like her - crazy. Nothing on the board fit the measurements that were on the handout; first of all, her board was about 1/3 of the size it was supposed to be (11×17). So no one could really see it. When that, with a couple of other things, were politely brought to her attention after her presentation, she was like a woman scorned! To everyone else who presented after that, she would raise her hand to give feedback and she would say, “I don’t like that at all. I think it’s ugly.” Thanks for the constructive criticism, Crazy!

During today’s class, it was a new and interesting day for Crazy to botch up the lecture. And did she ever.

About a third of the way through the lecture, someone’s phone starts ringing. Loudly. And not in one of those regular tones - some extremely loud and annoying little pop song. The teacher stops speaking and we are all looking around for the culprit. Meanwhile, Crazy is gazing stupidly up at the presentation screen, as if nothing is going on. Finally, my teacher says, “Whose phone is that?”

Blinking, Crazy looks over at her and says, “Oh, that’s mine.”

A brief pause ensues while my teacher stares at Crazy, waiting for her to get up and stop the offending phone. She doesn’t.

“You need to turn it off. Now, please.”

But Crazy was just too crazy to understand this request. “Oh, I can’t - it’s up front, behind you. It ran out of battery so I plugged it in up at the front of the room…”

Another pause from my teacher. “You need to get it right now.”

Crazy gets up from her seat, squeezes herself between the lecture tables until she can make it into the aisle, bumbles, stumbles, and shuffles down to the front of the lecture hall, and retrieves her phone. Then she has to repeat the process to get back to her seat. Meanwhile, we’re all waiting for her to sit down so we can continue.

A few minutes later…

RING! Her phone is ringing again. We all stop and look over at Crazy. My teacher, now pretty angry, says, “You need to shut that off right now. Please do not ever have a phone on in class.”

Crazy mumbles her response (she’s always mumbling and no one can understand her) so we try to pick up the lecture where we left off.

But wait, there’s more! A little while later…

A strange noise! Our heads pop up like marmots as we’re trying to figure out where it’s coming from. It’s Crazy, snoring at the front of the lecture hall! Yes, that’s right, now Crazy has fallen asleep and is taking a few minutes out of her hectic schedule to have a little nappy-poo. My teacher, now thoroughly annoyed, walks over and begins to tap on Crazy’s shoulder until she wakes up. “You need to leave,” she said. “Right now. You really just need to go. Please go.”

“Okay,” is what I think Crazy mumbled - who knows. She gathers up her things and proceeds to shuffle/stumble out of the room in a dopey and sleepy stupor.

It took a few minutes to recuperate from all of that, but we finally managed, and it’s a good thing, too. We’re on the final stretch to the end of the semester, and things are getting intense. Apparently a lot of students are not doing well, and the people in my particular class have been dropping like flies. The final grade is based on the 25% participation grade, and three tests, each worth 25%. Originally, each test was to cover 3 chapters out of our book. However, when so many people did poorly on the first test (History of Interior Design/Architecture - I admit, that test was fairly intense) she decided to really dig in and cover the next two chapters. In fact, she went back and presented the same lecture twice on chapter 4, just to make sure people got it. Because we spent so much time recovering information, she gave the next test based on two chapters, as there was no time to squeeze in a third chapter.

Again, a lot of people did not do well. I didn’t do as well as I had expected either, but I was still doing well in the class overall so I wasn’t too worried. The day that we got the grades from test #2 back was the day we did our presentations on the color boards. After that day, people started missing from the class, and continued to disappear. Registration for next semester started, but not many people are signing up to take the continuation class (Interior Design 102) - my guess is it’s a reflection of people doing so poorly in this current class. Before every class, my teacher has been asking people to sign up for the next class, because the school is going to consolidate the two classes into one if people don’t sign up.

In an attempt to bring grades up, we are now receiving “Extra Credit” assignments to turn in, that have a real “project” feel to them - they’re quite time consuming. She says they should only take 15 minutes to do, which I am sure is the case if you have a Masters Degree in Architecture like she does. For the rest of us, it took hours. At any rate, I was quite pleased when she mentioned in class yesterday that at the end of the semester she will add up our grades, and then whatever she decides to award us for the Extra Credit assignments, she will just add across the top. Her example was that if she decided to give us 10 points for the project we just turned in, and we were getting an 80 as an overall class grade, we would now get a 90. That’s a pretty big boost, so I’m wondering just how poorly people are doing in the class - or just how desperate she is to get people to sign up for next semester.

The funny thing about it is that the semester ends next week, and she now has to cram 4 chapters into this next test. Our class is on Tuesday and Thursday. She wants to have the test on Tuesday, which leaves us with one more day to cover the rest of the information — nearly two chapters worth. She’s desperate to get our grades up, but on top of the four chapters we are racing through, we also have these big projects piled on top of us to do for extra credit work.

This is not making sense to me, and even though her new and nifty extra credit points are going to solidify a good grade, I’m really nervous about this upcoming test. I’ll probably take a day off before the test to study.