Another Year

Now that I've got a few weeks under my belt, so who wants to hear about school? (btw, what a strange expression-- under my belt. Where'd it come from?)

My schedule is really nice. My earliest day starts at 10, and my latest day gets out at 3:45. I'm taking 4 classes, 14 credits, and in between each of my classes, I've got at least an hour break for lunch. And, as a nice bonus, I know someone on the buses to school! On M/W I ride with my friend Jon, and on T/R I ride with my friend Luke! It's pretty awesome.


On Mondays and Wednesday, I have college algebra and then freshmen comp. I don't really like my algebra teacher. She doesn't really understand our questions when we try to ask them, and then she doesn't really know how to answer the questions. So one girl couldn't figure out how to factor something that had a coefficient before the x² (ie 2x²+3+1) and so the teacher tried to explain it a few times. None of the things helped this girl. I told her I would help. Which I did and she was grateful to understand.

But that's another thing. This is college algebra. I learned how to factor in 8th grade. What is the matter with my class?

The math teacher, though, she doesn't go through examples very well. She'll explain something, and we'll do a fairly easy example, so I'm pretty sure I've got it down. Then the next example is something way hard, so now I'm beyond confused. There's no transition. Bleh. I feel like I'll be reading much of the math book this year.

My English class is fine, though. Teacher's nice, a little crazy, and he sometimes seems to have trouble finding his words, which is not usually comforting with an English teacher, but he's nice enough and the class is pretty easy. We read short stories from this one book I have and then we seminar about it for 10 or 15 minutes. Nothing too deep, which is alright. And we write essays. No problem, so far.

And, against the odds, this kid Michael is in the exact same classes I am. We have the exact same schedule Mondays and Wednesdays. It's kinda cool, he's pretty nice.


On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have gen chem and intro to psychology. Man. These days are infinitely better than my other days. Gen chem is really interesting. SO much better than high school. I did not learn one thing in my high school chem class. I didn't actually fail that class, in fact I was only a few points away from an A, but I felt like I was failing, so it wasn't fun. The teacher could've said "ok, figure out how to do this on your own while I try my hardest to distract you and keep you from doing your work." He was interesting and a good guy, but not a good teacher.

So in my first day of gen chem, I learned more than I did all year in high school. It was really neat. I understand these things, so it's not totally overwhelming. It's really interesting, and I'm feeling much more confident with my major choice (chemistry with an emphasis in criminalistics). My teacher is really good. I sat in his lecture the first week, taking notes, and then I read chapter one. It was neat, because he had covered all the material in chapter 1 in class. There was just one thing that the book cleared up a little for me. This is my favorite class so far.

Psychology is pretty cool, too. On the first Tuesday, my friend Luke was telling me about his psychology teacher and how she's some crazy little Asian lady and he doesn't really like her teaching style. So when I get to class I'm just worried that I've got this crazy Asian lady teacher. Some guy walks in, and at this point, I'm just relieved it's not the same person haha. He starts writing on the board "PSY 3240" and I get a little confused, but it's a psychology class and it makes me really skeptical of what people do, so I think it's some kinda experiment to see how long we take to say something. He keeps writing "Adolescent Psychology" and everyone in class is whispering to each other, more than a little concerned-like. I turned around and some girl asks me if I was here for intro to psych, and I told her that I was pretty sure he was doing it on purpose.

He's kinda scanning us looking at our reactions, and some kid shouts out, "Isn't this intro to psychology?" And he looks at us. "Is everyone here for Intro?... Is anyone here for Adolescent?" No one says anything. "Well, we'll go with majority rules. I'll go see where I am, and if I'm here, I'm gonna come back to yell at you." It was pretty sweet. I'm glad students aren't the only ones who get lost. Anyway, so I'm back to worrying that I've got the crazy Asian teacher. But about 5 or 10 min after class was supposed to start, our real teacher walks in. (btw, a few kids were freaking out, wondering where the teacher was, and I thought this was another experiment to see how long it would be before we left.)

He was nice. Didn't really care much about getting the psychology book. There's a paper due in his class, originally it was about some article called "15 Reasons Not to Say 'Good Job'" and it was supposed to be 5 pages. He changed it to being about anything psychology related (ie a paper on Finding Nemo, exploring Nemo's daddy-issues and his gimp fin) and it should only be "a couple of pages." It's due the last day of class and you can turn it in whenever. He's pretty funny, too. I generally like that class.

So, that's how school is going. I love campus, I like hanging out in the Tivoli and watching TV between my classes. I get all caught up on American Chopper, and if I want to stay after class to watch more Discovery Channel, I can watch Dirty Jobs, and then Cash Cab. Awesome. Actually, I was almost late to freshmen comp because I was so into Dirty Jobs haha. Woo.