I'm a betting girl, I guess

Other than some family trips to Reno and Vegas, I've only been to a casino once. I didn't spend a cent, and I just left feeling depressed with humanity.

But that's because organized gambling is BORING. I like under-the-table bets, whispered during class:

"That's not a correct usage of the phrase 'begging the question.'"
"Yes it is."
"5 bucks says its not."

I like pompous challenge bets, yelled while standing on a chair, swearing. I like bets with dangerous consequences, or based on trivial pieces of trivia. I like bets where the winner gets money, a favour, food, or just gloating privileges.

My favourite running joke in How I Met Your Mother is the one about slap bets. I like slap bets because if everybody's poor, you can't take each other's money. But slapping is free. Slap bets get paid, you know?

At Oktoberfest a few weeks ago, I made a bet with a male friend to see who could flirt out way into somebody giving us their Oktoberfest hat. Most people were wearing one, and my friend and I felt left out. Neither of us made any effort at all to flirt with the drunkies on the polka-floor (psh, what? No, that was not effort. That was joke effort. I wasn't trying for real. Please.) but a few "Let the games begin!" were dropped. It wasn't about the win, but about the fun of challenging.

Today I made a bet with a New Best Friend on who could make a certain prof laugh first. We met in this class, and we're both always bored. So when the prof asks questions, we try to give hilarious answers. To win the bet, one must say something that receives 3 laughs (ha-ha-ha). Three distinct sounds. We haven't decided on the winner's bounty quite yet. I love bets.

Options Schmoptions

Sometimes I wish I had fewer options. Maybe if I had a dream from when I was little, like being an astronaut, then it would be easier to plan my life. I could just use this handy flow chart:
And all life's problems would be solved.

My issue is that I don't know what I want to do, and I have way-too-many-million options. Such options include: go to law school, go to masters in policy, try a parliamentary internship, get a one-year BA (i.e., stall), or live in a box.

These options then have subset follow-up questions. I have this really smug little person sitting in my brain that punches every decision in the face. "Oh yeah? You're leaning toward a masters in public policy? Well, what school? What country? What country do you want to work in? Do you need to take and standardized tests for that? How many years do you want your program to be? What kind of course work? A focus on qualitative or quantitative? Are you interested in policy or legislature? Don't know the difference? Then don't make a decision until you've done your research, missy!"

Then I sulk for a bit. Play a bit of spider solitaire. You know.

Alternatively, instead of focusing on how bad all my decisions might be, I imagine all the fun times they each might lead to. Some of these options would allow me to live in Ottawa! And I'd see one of my favourite aunts all the time! One of these options would allow me to take a million (read: 15) courses that I've always wanted to take, but couldn't, because the engineering accreditation board is mean! So much possibility!

I'm sorry this blog has turned into "OMG MY LIFE" except for that I'm not sorry at all. I hate making major decisions! I'm in a tough spot!

Choosing 4B year courses

So, enrolment for next term opens next week. This means I have but several days to decide on 5 technical electives (TE) and one complimentary studies elective (CSE) (that is, non-engineering).

Now the problem is that a bunch of mechanical profs seem to have gone on sabbatical this year, leaving us with hardly any technical electives from which to choose! By hardly any, I mean 13. But we have to choose 5! And more than 8 are awful! And two that I want to take overlap each other!

This is how I make my course selections. I choose a course with an interesting sound name, and then:

(click to enlarge)

So far it looks like I'll be taking Energy Transfer in Buildings, Combustion, Turbo Machines, Biomechanics, Gender Issues, and then I just need one more TE.

Lookin' forward! (ish.)