Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Monday, September 8, 2008

English, Math Lab, Math Lecture, and Chem Lab

Mondays are probably the most demanding days of the week for me. I am able to put up with all the work that these classes give, it just seems like I go to school all day long. I woke up earlier today, thanks to my roommate. I just kinda laid in bed thinking about how the day will go on, is it going to be a good day, or a bad one, I asked myself. I was kinda reluctant wanting to go to English at 8 in the morning though, never was easy for me to wake up with the sun in the morning, and go to class. I went to class, however. It was not as bad as I thought it could have been. It was a fairly boring class though, he lectured us what we did wrong on our essays and the common mistakes and corrections for college-level writing. I was not particularly enthused to get back my essay and have a page-long note on the back telling me what I was doing wrong, but it's okay. I did get a compliment on my essay by my teacher, and the person that I was peer revising with. Other than the complete waste of time given by our teacher 30 minutes combined to work with our partner to go over our essays. The class was pretty instructional. I left the arts and letters building and headed back to the dorms. I had a 1 hour break between classes. Then, I went to my math lab. I was so glad that our lab leader let us hand in our worksheets during class because I spent almost an hour on them in the library. I actually worked. I was brave enough to show an example of synthetic division of polynomials to the class. I went a little more into detail than what the question asked. I started to factor the polynomial and go all the way. All that was required though was to divide it. The lab worksheets this time look a little more challenging, but I suppose they always will until you've actually learned the material from the book. From the lab, we have to make a cross-campus hike to the lecture. I stopped inside Einstein's and got a chocolate milk, that was actually pretty tasty. My friend Janelle and I walked to the lecture together. The lecture was a repeat of what we did on Friday, I was pissed! I hate having repeat classes. What's the point, and I'm paying $300+ for repeat classes?? I had a couple hour break after the math class was over. Then, I had to go to the chemistry lab. The longest class that I have is 4 hours. It happens to be the chemistry lab. The first hour is a BONDing lab, where you do some worksheets on stuff you're learning in class, it's supposedly suppose to help you with the class. After bonding, we started the fun part. I found out about 15 minutes before the lab that we were supposed to do a safety quiz, I had to scribble down some answers for about 20 short answer questions, though, it was not that bad. I loved doing the actual lab, my numbers were pretty acurate to what they were supposed to be. We were finding out which element we were given using mass and volume to find the density, and then to match the density to that of what is in a table of elements. I had aluminum. I had guessed I had aluminum based on the physical properties of it. I was the second one finished with the lab around 4:30pm. I turned that in, and got out of there as fast as I could. I went back to my dorm room, and went to dinner around 6.

Friday, September 5, 2008

English, Math, and Lunch

It turns out that I have a love-hate relationship with my alarm clock, as I'm sure a lot of other people do as well. I went to bed last night with the intention of waking up early, and going to breakfast with a friend of mine, however, that ended up not happening as my alarm clock went into a snooze mode for some unknown reason, and I'm waking up 15 minutes before my Class is starting. I make a lengthy morning routine rather hasty this morning brushing my teeth, washing my hair, and getting ready in 5 minutes, also, I had to print 3 copies of my paper that I started and finished the night before. And to my surprise, when I got downstairs it was raining. The windows in the dorms do a great job of keeping out any noise, but in this case, that's not a good thing. I was very shocked to see that it was raining, and it was not something I had prepared myself for. I ended up having to sprint to class, which is over in the Arts&letters building, by the time I got there despite the fact that I was running at full speed I was still drenched from head-to-toe, and figured that I was not going to get dry any quicker than by the air, I did go to the bathroom and freshen up a little with the papertowels fixing my hair, and getting the water off my body. Now for English class, I hate English with a passion, I don't know what it really is but I don't like writing, nor do I like reading, especially when it's assigned reading. Some of the college level reading that we're given is not even something I would pick up to read out of self interest. But the class went by very quickly. I found to my liking that the class was not teaching new things at all, it was more instructional, and what our teacher expects of us in our writing, he covered in more depth the criteria on which he will grade our writing responses and essays, and how he feels we should be writing our responses and essays. The fact that we were only in there for 30 minutes of the regurly scheduled 50 minute class says so much.. It was still raining, but not as badly as it was before class. I ended up walking briskly back to the dormroom where I helped my roommate write a work's cited page for his own paper. Between the classes, I worked a little bit on math, and editing my own essay for the final draft soon due. It was not very constructive. At 10:50 I figured it was time for me to make my way to my math class. I was not really looking foreward to this class, as I knew that the one person that I talk to during the class would not show up. On the premise that it was still raining. I'm hypothesising that she does not like getting up early, going to class sick, or walking through the rain. The class went by rather quickly, and the lesson seemed much easier than the previous. In this session we learned about simplifying rational expressions. We are still in the review chapter. But we're almost done. A couple more sections, then we have our test on Friday, and we'll move into chapter one. After math class I had agreed to meet up with my buddy Hector and have lunch. Normally, when you invite someone to lunch, they'll have lunch with you. I looked like an idiot having him come all the way over to the breezeway cafe just to sit there and watch me eat lunch since he told me that he had food at his house, and he would eat there once he got back. After lunch, we walked together to his car, and he and I went our seperate ways, I got back to the dorms and took a two hour nap. RELEIF!

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Chemistry and Psychology

I arrived promptly to General Chemistry at 11:00am to find for the 3rd time in a row that the seat that I sat in last time had been taken by someone else. It really does get on my nerves when someone else happens to not sit in the same place they did last time (I do it, why can't they). So the entire hour and a half I had to sit about an inch away from another person on my left and my right (generally I sit on the end, so I can have space). As I was sitting there in my confined bubble, I was lectured about the periodic table, cations, anions, how to form ionic and molecular compounds. The rules and laws behind forming ionic and molecular compounds, and the nomenclature of ionic and molecular compounds. It was a fairly interesting class. I remembered a lot of it from high school chemistry. We were only assessed twice in class, with our iclickers. I can't remember both questions off the top of my head, but the second had to do whether or not Chloride was a ionic compound. I was very annoyed during the ionic nomenclature exercises that the girl sitting next to me would think about each exercise orally. I wanted to lean over to her and say, "shut up!" but I didn't, I walked out of class maybe a minute early as I was walking and other people were still seated. I made my way to the Nursing building where my Psychology class is lectured every Tuesday and Thursday. I'm trying to figure out the fastest way to get there, I don't think I've found the fastest way to get there, but I am still experimenting different paths, and either to walk around the front of a building or the back. I found to my pleasure that in this particular hall that the seat I had last time was open, therefore, I took the seat. It's not on the end, because these seats have more space than the ones in the chemistry lecture, so I sit kinda in the middle. The class has enough open seats where I had one open on my left, and one open to my right. In class we were lectured on the different methods for brain scanning. With the different instruments such as a CT scan, and MRI, an fMRI, and a couple of others. Professor Jakubow continued the lecture of neurons and sensory neurons. We discussed some of the brains anatomy relative to each of their phychological outputs. We were assesed twice like in chemistry with our iclickers, one of the questions I remember vividly was the question of whether or not someone can go blind if knocked in the head, but with no damage to the eyes. The answer is yes. You can go blind becuase you can damage your occipital lobe. We also watched a short video at the end of class about a cure for epilepsy, with it's after affects being that of not being able for your brain to communicate between different hemispheres, as you need the left hemisphere to control the right side of your body, and the right to control the right side of your body. There are some discrepencies in the theory as well, with the right side being able to refrence a face and such. But it was a documentary on a man that has two brains becuase the one that he had was seperated, and each functions seperately without any communication to the other like ours. After the video class was over and I headed back to the dorms.