Woke up late this morning, but that's only to be expected when I didn't fall asleep until around two. I tried to hard to stay awake while reading my scriptures, so even though my phone screen glowed, I left my lamp on thinking that would help me stay awake. I've never fallen asleep with my lamp on before in recent memory. I woke up around 4:30 and managed to turn the lamp off before I drifted off again.
It was around 7:30 when I next woke up, but close to ten when I finally elected to close down the Google Docs app and get out of bed for real. Although I did fritter away more of my morning than I really should have, I did find the time for studying today.
Additionally, I checked my grades online and found out I never turned in an assignment for my behavior class back in September. What? I e-mailed my teacher about it, and he wrote back saying it was something that he had told us about in class, and that it was an online assignment.
That came as a surprise to me, since Canvas, the online assignment-submitting and grade-managing program used in many if not all of the Utah schools, has a sidebar that displays your upcoming assignments a week in advance, and lets you click on them to go to their information pages. I've been checking my Canvas daily or semi-daily, or at least I thought I was. It was due around a busy week full of homework, right when I was having a Connections class, experimenting with that study group, and participating in the SI super session... but still, I really shouldn't have missed it...
One of the features Canvas offers is that there's a page where you can view the grades you've received on all your assignments for a single class. Here you can "change" your grades by clicking on a grade and typing in a new number, and thereby generating an "updated" hypothetical grade so you can see how your grade will be affected by upcoming assignments if you score well, or how scoring better on past assignments may have helped you. Good news: If I work hard, I can still manage to pull an A in this class.
That relieved my anxiety a bit knowing that I haven't been doomed just because I missed one ten-point assignment, but I still don't like seeing that awful zero. I don't miss assignments. At least, I didn't think I did.
Later this afternoon, Demetria and I made the attempt to attend the annual Pumpkin Walk held at Elkridge Park. Mom told me that if there was one event I should definitely attend while at Utah State, it would be this one. We had seen advertisements on the shuttles and looked up information online, so we thought we knew what we were doing.
Unfortunately, we didn't realize until we stepped out to the curb that there was a football game going on today. The stadium is right across the street from Blue Square, which meant it was closed off for tailgating. A yellow flyer had been attached to the bus stop sign informing us that the bus would not be coming this way today, and the nearest stop was down at Lee's Marketplace.
It wasn't a terribly long walk down there - it's maybe ten to fifteen minutes - but this meant that we had to wait twenty-five minutes to half an hour for the bus to arrive. It dropped us off at the Transit Center, where we had to wait around forty-five minutes for Bus 15 to show up. I finally got around to downloading the Bus Tracker app, but it drained my battery too quickly to justify watching the bus make its slow crawl down from Springfield. When it came in, the bus driver told us that she wasn't the bus that would take us to the Pumpkin Walk, despite the insistence of the Internet.
A little irritated now, I called Mom and asked what she knew about the situation, since the Pumpkin Walk was apparently memorable enough to stick out in her Utah State memories. We talked for awhile until the bus that would take Demetria and I back to the Blue Square area rolled in. For whatever reason, all the other buses had arrived fifteen minutes prior this, and had returned to their routes, and were making their return trip. Bus 15 showed up alone, because of course it did. So we had fifteen minutes to wait for the other buses to come back.
After stepping onto the Route 2 bus that could bring us home, we asked the driver if he knew how to get to the pumpkin walk. He did. Route 5 would take us to a stop where a special shuttle would then take us directly to the Pumpkin Walk. But it was about 6:00 by now, and he warned us that the buses would stop running by 6:30. What? That seems odd, but I guess they run later on the weekdays than on the weekends. You would think it would be the other way around.
Anyway, Demetria and I agreed we'd try again on Monday. I was frustrated with a lot of things. First, there was that questionable missing assignment. Then the Internet telling us to ride Bus 15. Then all the time wasting. I don't handle sitting around and killing time in general, but I also had homework to do! I'd almost brought the book I needed to read for class, but had changed my mind because I didn't want to carry it. Wrong choice. I say this constantly when someone scolds me for bringing books to family gatherings and things, but there have been hundreds of times when I've wished I had a nice reading book when I didn't have one, but never one when I had a book on hand and regretted it.
The bus couldn't take us back to Blue Square, and due to driving on the other side of the road from Lee's, it dropped us off even farther away. That wasn't really annoying in itself, but it was the last little sigh of a long, wasted, irritated afternoon. I got up late, so this day seemed like it slipped through my fingers too quickly for me to really enjoy my three-day weekend. At least I had work on my Google Docs app to fiddle with and Demetria to talk to, and we didn't get lost in the cold with groceries and need Alison to pick us up. So it's okay.
Back at our room, Demetria and I split our separate ways to work on homework. I had six chapters of my book to read (I'd thought it would be four), and luckily it's a fairly interesting book on autism and wasn't that bad. I just need to write a half-page summary by Monday morning. After that, I studied some notes for my chocolate and horticulture classes.
I also looked up information on housing and the renewal of the Regent's scholarship. Housing applications for Blue Square will begin to be available November 29th or so, and it looks as though they'll be given to us directly (since we're residents here already). I'll keep my eyes on that.
As for the Regent's scholarship, I have to send them proof that I'm meeting certain requirements (Taking 15 credits, a minimum GPA of 3.3...) each semester. February 1st is apparently the due date for winter semester, so I have some time. I'll look into the actual sending process when I have a little less to do around here. For now, I really want to keep on top of my assignments. I can't afford any more slip-ups!
