Today was the big day. The culmination of my entire Human Rights class project. The big day where we stood outside and gave out free coffee and got people to sign our petitions. I was not looking forward to it at all. Last night I found out that we had made a mistake with our petitions. Unless you have a little blurb on every page of the petition about what you're lobbying for, the signatures are void. So of course I'm concerned about this, and I send out an e-mail so that our petitioning today wouldn't be totally useless. And everyone got all pissed off. I got the rudest e-mail I've ever received in my entire life from one of my class mates telling me that everything that could go wrong with our petitioning was entirely my fault. I think I clearly saved our asses. Imagine how upset everyone would have been if we had stood outside in the cold and rain for eight hours just to find out all the signatures were void? Bastards.
I was out there from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon getting people to sign our petitions to help us lobby hospitality services on campus to exclusively sell fair trade coffee. And man some people are just jerks! After a few hours I started to get irritable. When people would pass by I'd call out "would anyone like to sign our petition to bring more fair trade products to guelph?" and some people would say no, which I can respect, but some people would walk by and ignore me. So when that happened I started to follow my statement with "... or you could just keep walking and pretend I'm not here." Oh the frustration. It was worse when people wouldn't even listen to what we were trying to do, but would just yell insults. That's lovely. Nothing like crushing social change with lame uneducated insults.
By three I was ready to pack it in. I believe we reached out goal of a thousand signatures though, but we still have to verify. I was cold and grumpy when I got back, but thanks to the magic of rez there was a group of people ready to pass me a pillow and a blanket and invite me to join them in watching Pirates of the Caribbean. Nothing like Captain Jack to make you smile after a long hard day of trying to change the world. And now I just have to get through one more quiz, two more classes, and three exams and I'll have completed my first year of university. That's a wierd business.