12 December 15, 2010 + Over the Edge Lessons Learned A sequel to embarrassing stories, these tales capture when life goes wrong ECATERINA CIUGUREANU FEATURES EDITOR Lesson Learned: Don't mess around with medicine _ cabinets. After a painful break up, | transferred from SFU to UNBC to stay with my parents for a while until | regrouped. By the end of my first semester at UNBC, I had developed some sort of sleeping disorder. The night before an 8:30am exam, sleep was not coming easy. | knew my dad had been taking sleeping pills, so | snuck into his shaving kit to steal one. However, instead of falling into a deep sleep, | fell into an entirely different world of pain and frustration. What | had thought was a sleeping pill was actually, in fact, a pill for erectile dysfunction. Needless to say, | didn’t get any sleep that night, nor did my next day’s exam go as well as it could have. Lesson Learned: Take time to de-stress Ok. So ultimate FML. Feel free to publish this. | thought you would appreciate this story. Ok, so | am in the library trying to finish 1 of 238y6472386483 papers | have due this week. Yes, 238y6472386483 is a real number. I'll set up the scene. One free UNBC refillable water bottle with questionable looking water inside, an extra large half coffee half french vanilla, cause I’m a fatty like that, several pens ONLINE SOURCE and highlighters, and a very delicious bread-guy coconut cookie (granted, half of the crumbs are either on my pants or on the table), but | digress. As | continued to plug away at this monster paper, and contemplated several times about throwing myself down the GR Weller stairs, | had an epiphany. For the past 35 minutes (between facebook- ing and online Christmas wish-listing) | could be heard repeatedly cursing at my Toshiba, mumbling “seriously. Why can’t | find any sources comparing these two topics. This is bullshit. Hate hate hate...” until i discovered/came to the realization that “Holy. Shit. Bags. You can’t find any articles comparing these two phenomenons because they are the same, they are the EXACT SAME THING! YOU’RE WRITING A PAPER COMPARING TWO THINGS THAT ARE THE SAME. OH MY GOD. HOLY TITTY FUCKING CHRIST ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME?” Then, after a good cry and a few swift kicks to the ol’self esteem, a male acquaintance of mine walked by and said the three worst words you can say to a girl “ You. Look. Tired.” a.k.a “You look like a box of shit”. So not only is my “intelligence” (i use that term loosely) completely undermined, but now ONLINE SOURCE my physical appearance has also taken a swift kick to the hypothetical balls. Like | said. Ultimate FML. Lesson Learned: don’t underestimate | have a bunch of funny stories from my exchange at UNBC, like the one where our suite got raided by the police because of a snowball, or the one where | had to write an apology letter to my neighbours because | wanted to get laid. But, they are not safe for work, so another one came to mind. At a basketball game, | saw my friend Max [another exchange student from Norway] talking to an elderly woman. | yelled at him in Norwegian why he was standing there hugging old women. Turns out, she was Norwegian! That's innocent enough, | guess. Lessons Learned: Patience Perhaps like everyone in the world, | had too much fun at the Rugby Halloween Dance. | woke up missing most of my Halloween costume AND my phone. The former being the epitome of cheap, the latter being my brand new Android, a creation almost as beautiful as baby Jesus. | immediately started playing Nancy Drew. | call the Roll-a-Dome, where a woman with a smoked out voice swiftly assured me my phone was not there. The cab service tried to play broken telephone with me, consistently re-directing me somewhere else. It was hopeless. My friends flooded my missing phone with messages and phone calls, none of which were returned. Prince George was on amber alert. On Monday, | mediated and took action. | bought a new phone. | wish | could end this story at this happy ending but NO. The very next day, my friend received a phone call from SHAW CABLE COMPANY informing her an anonymous stranger dropped off my phone there. This idiot stranger, dropped off the phone in a) A PLACE WHERE | DID NOT EVEN GO THAT NIGHT, 2) A PLACE THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PHONES. A little counterintuitive. Now | have two identical phones. Just in case. : ONLINE SOURCE Lesson Learned: Mindfulness So, you know how professors like to make all things due at the same time, so 50% of the results are due to effort and knowledge and all good things, while the other 50% is due to your ability to function with no sleep and little desire to live altogether? Well, | only had two 30% 20 pagers due in 2 days (honestly, not even that bad). My nutrition value during that week consisted of caffeine and sodium...FROM MY TEARS. | fell asleep standing while printing those papers. What a breath of relief, yes? No. | had one in. Awesome, great! Then stare at the left over paper in my hands prior to the other class, with that “Yes, | will have time to brush my hair again” kind of look. Then, BAM! It hit me. Like a pile of Oprah Winfreys. | handed in the wrong paper!!!!!! | was so sleep deprived, | no longer saw letters...or symbols...or colours...just the finish line. And although that situation was fixable and my heart only stopped for 23.7 seconds, | would not wish that moment of realization upon anyone.