Please, Just Give a Sh*t

Well I'm back....again. That was fast. I'm just in a sour mood because I'm just really annoyed at people right now. Tomorrow is my final presentation for my Danish class and to say that my group's presentation looks like crap would be an understatement. Our topic is immigration in Denmark which is actually a pretty interesting and complex thing to talk about, but right now, I can only imagine how our actual presentation is going to go. Two out of five members in my group have literally gone AWOL and the slides they made for the presentation have nearly three paragraphs worth of text on them. Rule 1 of Powerpoint is to not have too much text. They teach you that all through HS and college, c'mon guys. Problem is, me and the other people can't edit the slides because at least for me, I'm sure they haven't bothered trying to memorize one bit of what they are going to present. I know it's the end of the semester as people really just don't give a crap anymore, but it's still 10% of our grade, which, when I last checked, is still important.

What's also frustrating is that I also just caught literally what could have been the most blatantly in your face BS statement I've ever read in over a month. I'm not going to delve into what exactly happened, but sometimes people are so bad at hiding they they are bold-faced lying, that it just makes me want to punch a baby deer (okay, fine, maybe a stuffed one so I don't go to jail or whatever). If you're going to lie, at least be good at it.

Back to he point, the most I can do now is to basically just go in to class tomorrow and try and present my slides well and be professional about it and just let my other group members do their bit. At least I can try and come across as prepared. I seriously can't wait to be back home and with people who actually care about doing work even if they are studying abroad.

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In a related note, can I mention that I'm kinda annoyed about the grading structure in one of my classes? In my Nordic mythology class, the professor who teaches isn't the one who is grading the assignments. This is something I find fundamentally wrong in my head. Now, this isn't like the whole teaching assistant grading quizzes type stuff; I mean a completely different professor, one who is never there, is grading our exams and papers. How on earth does that make sense? In addition, out of gut instinct and based on how she has graded some quizzes, the grading professor is a pretty picky to begin with. Coupled with the fact that she isn't there to witness how the material is being taught, the level of engagement, or is available to talk to after class, I don't see how our grades can accurately reflect how well we actually are doing in that class. Just yet another frustration of study abroad life.

Alright, I've gotten most of what I wanted to say off my chest. Sorry about ranting, but like I've said a thousand times before, this blog is one of the few places where I can actually rant relatively openly so thanks for being patient with me.

G'night,

JP

Geek Stuff: What One Day of Public Transit Looks Like

Hey y'all. Haven't been writing much but I'm alive and well, just been busy and all. Finals time is rolling around here and I'll be home in the US in less than three weeks. The past two weeks have been pretty cool. It's getting really cold but I went on my first gay bar crawl with a friend in Copenhagen last weekend among other things, but I'll cover those another day.

In the mean time, here's something kinda geeky I found via Buzzfeed. It's a video showing what one day of public transit looks like in Washington DC though you can find many other cities on the Youtube channel of that user. It's pretty cool to look at and won't eat up too much of your time if you're looking for something to do.


Washington D.C.


And here is New York and Vancouver for comparison



New York, NY


Vancouver, BC, Canada

Anyways, hope things are going well.

Vi Ses,

JP

EuroWasted

So the Dansk-Thanksgiving was a great success, with lots of food, good conversation, and lots of fun in general. My good friend and also fellow housemate Eric and his girlfriend are currently visiting Copenhagen at the same time as my mom and aunt so I also invited them to join us. Afterwards we went out to Copenhagen along with Jackie and Kate to show them more of Copenhagen nightlife. We ended up at a bar called Billy Booze (great name, eh?) which specializes in cheap drinks while also having a nice dance floor/club area. We stayed there for a while and danced, people watched, and tried and failed to understand Danish music, but otherwise, it was good, fun night.

Now on the way back, things started getting weird. First, my train was absolutely packed. Like, no seats left, no room to breathe packed. Weird thing #1 was a guy who boarded the train wearing a pink metallic wig shouting something about "swag" in Danish for a solid 5 minutes. Then a group of also really drunk guys, who looked exactly the same (balding, larger, wearing the same style NorthFace), started shouting loud as hell which started to annoy me and had me dreading the train ride home. If that wasn't enough, finally stumbled in a guy who, to put it lightly, looked like he was about 2 seconds away from hurling chunks over the entire train...and of course he had to stand right next to me. I was scared to hell that he was going to vomit all over my coat, jeans, and shoes. I ended up squeezing over to the "silent zone" of the train which is basically full of angry old people with little tolerance for fun. The sick guy was swaying everywhere and almost fell into the lap of some guy who was near the door of the silent section and that caused an entire scene of yelling for him to GTFO by a 70-something man. Eventually he did which was a relief, but still, tonight's scene, plus many previous nights witnessed, and experience in four other major European cities just have solidified in my mind that Europeans are just as loud, obnoxious, and rude as American are despite the reputation that American are bad.

We get the bad rap for being the unclassy douchebags of the world, but I've seen more than enough during my time here to say it's easily a two-way problem. Sure, maybe we are a louder and ruder while sober and being tourists, but I swear, get one drop of alcohol in a European, and you end up with an American x2. Honestly, I've seen better behavior late at night in most American cities than I have in Europe. Citizens of Copenhagen, get your acts together, jeez.

Just an observation I made.

JP

Life Lessons Through Kesha

Kesha - Die Young (deconstructed)

I've never been a hardcore fan of music traditionally popular among the gay community - meaning Lady Gaga, Kesha, Katy Perry, etc. While I do occasionally find their music catchy, I easily get tired of it and revert back to my play lists of less pop-heavy music like Cartel, One Republic, and the like. Nevertheless, sometimes I do get surprised by what these singers do as I was here.

Kesha, that glitter spewing, drunk, blond haired explosion of trashy dance pop, actually left me speechless after listening to one of her songs. Above is what she calls a "deconstructed" version of her recent single Die Young. Compared to the original version, which I posted at the end of this post for comparison, the deconstructed version is very interesting and personally much better to me. While her singing ability isn't spectacular, hearing her voice sans the software modifications and heavy synth background is refreshingly raw and pure. For people who have only listened to Tik Tok or any of her other mainstream singles, they likely wouldn't even recognize the voice because the image of Kesha as the trashy party music singer has been so firmly ingrained in their heads. It's a shame really, because she actually has some talent which I feel many aren't giving her credit for.

The reason of this post I guess is to highlight how we as people really need to make sure to look past the mere surface impressions of people and see who they are underneath it all. Don't Judge a Book by its Cover basically. I honestly can't believe I'm using Kesha as an example to illustrate the importance of this, but for someone who actually keeps up with music like I do, seeing an artist do something unexpected is really, really cool. While her music will probably never be my favorite in the world, in my mind, I'm giving her more credit as a singer for what she did.


Kesha - Die Young (Original)

All the best,

JP

P.S. - I made a new poll on the right side of the page. "When Did You First Come Out?" (btw, "less than 16" is inclusive, poor labelling on my part. My bad) 

Internships, Growing Up, and Geek Stuff

So the deed has been done. I've decided to go ahead and change my finance major to a marketing major. While it isn't official on my transcript and I still need to get a good deal of paperwork done when I get back to school, the classes I signed up for basically put on the marketing track and off the finance track (track being the series of courses I would need to take to complete the major). Basically everyone I asked about this said to do what I would be most happy with, passionate about, and would enjoy doing, rather than what would make me the most money. It makes sense though it was still a difficult pill to swallow. Nevertheless, I'm glad I did it.

My focus now, well, apart from preparing for the arrival of my mom, aunt, and some friends, is figuring out what I need to do when I get back to the US. Mostly, I need to figure out whether or not I want an internship in the Spring when I get back. My gut tells me I should, but many of the internships require a level of time commitment which I'm worried would eat into time I would be spending on classes otherwise. Unlike my senior year, where I will basically be taking 3 classes a semester (maybe 4 if I have to for credit requirements), I have 15 credits (aka 5 classes) this semester. Combine that with the work I will be doing as Publicity Director for the theatre group I work with, the grilling club, and any other activities, it may be a tight squeeze. I'm thinking I might try and find a job on campus right now so I can earn a little extra spending money on the side but doesn't require overly high time commitments instead. Then in the Spring, I will work my ass off to find an internship for the Summer which can potentially continue on into senior year. With most deadlines for Spring internships being this week or within the next two weeks, I also don't know/think I want to dive into this without preparing as much as I think I should. Stressful stressful...

Gah, this growing up thing sucks.

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In other news, I am still focusing on finishing the semester here in Denmark strong. One of my classes is already done so I only have four to worry about. I'm not too concerned with two of my classes: I-Marketing and Danish, but I am more worried about I-Finance and my Nordic Mythology classes. My finance course is simply difficult but my Nordic Mythology class is more a struggle to stay interested and up to date. You'd think Vikings and Norse gods would be cool....wrong. It's surprisingly boring, especially after having the preconception of it being epic painted in your mind because of Hollywood movies and comics. A paper I wrote and turned in for the class really wasn't the best in all honesty and I'm kinda worried about how that's going to turn out. I had the option to pick a topic which was most interesting to me, but once I started writing, I realized that picking a more conceptual and abstract topic was much more challenging than a simple research topic based one. Plus, what seemed very interesting on the surface didn't have enough substance I felt for a full 8-10 page paper. That paper in addition to a final exam are the two main causes of stress for me in that class.

Finally, beyond class stuff, I've also been reconnecting with my geeky side lately. I've been obsessed with this Youtube Channel:

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/scishow

 

 

Basically, this channel is hosted by Hank Green who I recognized from this:

 



In the SciShow, he discusses a variety of topics, all science/history/math related which I absolutely LOVE. Basically, as I've mentioned before, I'm a huge geek for anything car, science, or tech related. This channel, along with a few others I won't mention, has been eating up so much of my time the past few weeks it's unhealthy. But anyways, if you like that kind of stuff too, check out SciShow for sure.

Also, I really want this:

http://www.amazon.com/Pokemon-Rocket-Symbol-Black-T-shirt/dp/B0058L7TGY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352933283&sr=8-1&keywords=team+rocket

I might actually ask for this for Christmas.

Yeah, judge me all you want.

All the best,

JP