Diary

In the morning, I submitted RFI #7. At noon, we had our mining engineering class, where the instructor gave us a final review. I don’t care for this teacher and find his explanations to be confusing and disorganized. After the mining class, I had to prepare for the concrete exam that evening. I felt completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content and didn’t know where to start studying. The first three hours flew by quickly, and then the two and a half hours I had left before the exam also vanished rapidly. ...

This morning, I polished and submitted RFI 7 for the Concrete Materials in Practice course. In the afternoon, I focused on reviewing class lectures to prepare for my final exam. I attempted to use Copilot to develop a Zotero plugin that would export vocabulary words directly to Eudic, but unfortunately, it performed very poorly (or didn’t deliver good results). After finishing my work, Amir and I made our first-ever trip to the Cameron Library. ...

In the morning, I was working on RFI 7 for the course Concrete Materials in Practice. Around noon, I had my Principles of Mining Engineering class. During lunch, Amir took the initiative to offer me a spoonful of curry. The dynamics between us are definitely better than before. Amir and I are building a new, stable relationship, which is making me feel much more comfortable. For dinner, I boiled a bag of instant noodles and fried some French fries. Afterward, I finished RFI 7 by remotely controlling a PC in the office. ...

Today was a fulfilling day! I woke up early and found that my preparation time was much shorter than usual, thanks to having the microwave. I spent the morning finalizing the slides for our group presentation. As is often the case, I didn’t enjoy the group meeting, and I realized I might have a somewhat unhelpful mindset. I’m constantly worried about the professor’s judgment of me. Worse, I find myself adding my own negative personal thoughts to what I imagine the professors think, which then reflects negatively back onto myself. This cycle leads me to underestimate and doubt my own abilities. This process is genuinely damaging to my self-esteem. ...

The daytime is extremely short in Edmonton during the winter! I woke up at 12 PM and then cooked some food for lunch. After that, I took a shower and took some time to relax. By the time it was approaching 4 PM, the sun had already set (or the sun was gone). I spent some time studying my textbook, Writing Academic English. I recently discovered Zotero and found it to be a very good tool for taking notes and managing references. I plan to use it to take tons of notes going forward. ...

My roommate decided to cut his own hair, but he failed spectacularly. He ended up knocking on my door and asking me to take a look at the damage. It was hilarious! In Chinese, we’d say his haircut looked like it had been “eaten by a dog.” I bought a secondhand microwave last night, and the seller dropped it off at the Southgate station this afternoon. The microwave was so heavy that I was sweating by the time I got it home. ...

I love Fridays! It’s not just because I get to have a relaxing next two days, but also because I truly dislike Thursdays. Today, we had the final lecture with Mr. Mohammad. He was such a nice person and always cared for his students. I really admire him and hope to become someone like him one day. We left school early today, and the sunset was absolutely beautiful—the clouds were so warm and vibrant. ...