Digital Union

My 2 hour independent study class meets in the Digital Union on Fridays, mainly to teach us web design so we can make a "digital story" when we go to England. This is all well and good, but really, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

First, I was put off by using a Mac instead of a PC. It made the whole new-software-experience element that much more difficult because of the new interface. They said that the Macs will be much more user friendly when we get to working with video, and maybe they're right, but this morning I was in no mood to be without my handy right-click. Learning the intricacies of a new program is frustrating in its own right, but learning it on a Macintosh when the last four years of school as an engineer taught me PC-only material? But I adapted, I adjusted, I kept an open mind, and really it wasn't so bad.

Until... Another person had modified a photo a little bit using Photoshop during the class and wanted to send it to herself, and for some dumb reason I volunteered my email account for this (she couldn't get her account to open for some reason). So I'm trying to use a new-to-me internet browser (Safari) on a new-to-me operating system (Mac) to send a photo from a somewhat-new-to-me program (Photoshop). And meanwhile, while I was trying to figure out how to compress the image into a .jpg file (because the .psd file was too big for my email to handle), everyone left.

And then, even though our class was technically scheduled until 11 (of which I was unaware, but the syllabus says 11:00 and the instructors confirmed that while at the Union), this other group of people came in and started setting up. The lead instructor of the class told me they could move my laptop to a different work station. I told her I'd only be a minute if she would show me how to flatten the image, but that didn't seem to register. She sent a guy to unlock my laptop and move it, but while they were moving mine they wanted to move all the computers so the next group could have a clear table. So I stood there and waited for a while and got very annoyed that everyone had left me when I was trying to do a favor for someone. And they were busy unlocking all of the laptops (each of which required a different key, so they had to try all the green keys for the green locks and all the blue keys for the blue locks and so on until they found the key that worked in each lock), and I felt very brushed off. I wouldn't expect them to give me tons of personal attention, but when the syllabus says 11 and the instructor says 11, isn't it rude to dismiss me just because the rest of the class left? And why was another group coming in to use that room if we had it until 11:00 anyway?

So I left. My email and internet use were still logged on, but the computer was on standby and I didn't want to wait 15 minutes or however long it would take just to do a favor for someone who didn't even stay with me. Fuck doing favors for people. And fuck optimism. When can I graduate?