Apparently I use this solely as a procrastination technique, so that when I have a lot to do but am not completely crushed, I write something; and when I am either crushed or bored, I don't.

Okay. So. Many. Things. Have. Happened.

1. I finished my thesis, which involved a poster (which was surprisingly difficult), a presentation (which was petrifying, but ultimately went all right), and a long, drawn-out process of editing. But I survived, barely, and the Roommate and I watched Korra in celebration. Yay!

2. I finished all of my classes ... barely. I had two final papers (for biogeography and intonational phonology), both of which I finished late. But I passed both classes, so apparently the professors didn't mind too much. (And in all fairness, they weren't that late, only half an hour for the one and 10 minutes for the other.)

3. My brother got stomach flu; I didn't realize it was contagious, so I promptly got stomach flu. It was actually kind of amazing how much it flattened me. Also, I lost ten pounds of water; and I only regained about half of that back, which is probably the result of basically not eating for five days. Oh well.

4. Senior week! It was surprisingly fun: we didn't do hardly any of the normal activities. The Magician and Fortitude and I went to laser tag, where we happened to run into Other Me; then, on Monday and Tuesday (May 20 and 21) we all (me, the Roommate, the Magician, Fortitude, and the Tower) went to Block Island. It was AMAZING. My pictures are crappy because my camera didn't handle the mist well, so 1) I am going to get a new camera, and 2) I will have to steal pictures from everyone else. But! We walked around a lot and saw a giant cemetery, and then biked to the south lighthouse (where I almost passed out for some reason that I'm not sure about). Then we biked to the north lighthouse, which was great fun. There was a 9/11 memorial there, too, which seemed a bit out of place. Also, the sea gulls were nesting, and became very angry if we got within a few feet, but they still refused to move off their nests. It was really cool, over all.

5. Graduation! I did it. It is over. It was kind of fun, considering all the tromping around we did in cap-and-gown. I got sunburned on half of my face, which was fun. Also, because we have departmental ceremonies instead of the president reading off everyone's name (thank God!), they had one person from each degree category go up to accept their degree symbolically for the whole of the class. I didn't realize how it worked, however, so I stood up when they called bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and dual degree folks. It was exciting, especially since they didn't really tell us dual-degreers to stand up or sit down ... we kind of just did whatever ...

6. North Carolina! I went home, and I cleaned my WHOLE ROOM. Actually, not quite, but almost. You can actually see the floor! I also met with a lawyer, who spent about ten minutes talking about clothes and clearly wanted to eke as much money out of us as possible. Oh well. I am going to have a living will, yay?

7. I returned to Providence! My room is kind of strange, it is basically a second common room that is convertible to a bedroom if needed. That means it has many windows and is very light in the morning, has no closet, and is huge. In some ways it's great: the Hermit came and visited this week, and there is a couch-like object in my room that can serve as a guest bed; and Fortitude is going to stay here on Sunday night, so it has already gotten a fair amount of use. Unfortunately, the doors have very little noise control, but so far this hasn't been much of a problem.

8. I ... finally decided to apply for a Fulbright to Ecuador! I found something to get excited about: volunteering at biological stations across the whole country! I started writing a letter to this guy there whose research looks interesting, but I haven't finished yet. I will finish by Monday, though ... I have to if I actually want someone's sponsorship. :( But I also found some programs for teaching English in various countries across the world, so I am starting to feel like I will actually manage to make this thing work—next year at the Smithsonian, the following year abroad, then graduate school. Yay!

8.b. On the topic of grad school, I went to visit my cousin at Harvard on Wednesday, and saw the Harvard OEB building. It is BEAUTIFUL, at least on the outside and in the corridors. I wish they had research there that is closer to what I want to do; I will probably end up applying, but it really isn't the best school for my area. Oh well ...

9. Newport! I am about to go to Newport with Fortitude and the Tower to visit the Roommate and do Cliffwalk and visit the mansions and things. Yay! I want to buy a new camera, so I wish I had gotten around to this before leaving for Newport, but oh well. Hopefully the Roommate will take lots of pictures.

That's about it. I should go get ready.

Oops

Mar. 12th, 2012 03:07 pm
I had a meeting with my whole thesis committee (what, me? a COMMITTEE?) this afternoon, and I think I might have annoyed the retired member of my committee because I didn't actually have my data all finished. Oops. I knew I should have gotten a little farther, but seriously, I spent six hours counting slides this past weekend; I don't feel like I've been slacking too much. I will, however, finish counting the rest of my slides before Wednesday afternoon, at which point I will (hopefully!) generate my first pollen diagram. Ooh, exciting.

On the other hand, I now feel like I have a ton of work to do, because once I actually get a chance to play around with my data, I will have to spend LOTS AND LOTS OF TIME looking at it. This is my biggest problem when it comes to class projects—I spend all the time getting the data (seriously, ALL THE TIME, by which I mean probably fifty or sixty hours) and not enough time actually looking at it and understanding it. This is triply sad because I spent so much time getting the data, enjoy playing with the data the most, and deprive myself of that opportunity precisely because I spent so much time getting it in the first place.

I won't do that with my biogeography project, or my linguistics project, or my thesis, I won't!

Also, I did so much work this past weekend—I counted three slides, I read six articles, I cleaned out all my emails, I sent a bunch of emails I didn't want to send, I saw my father, I walked 31,000 steps, I inquired about summer internships, I read Other Me's story, I started to read the Hermit's NaNo, I didn't watch very much TV, I didn't play very much Dominion. And then this morning I counted another two slides, had two meetings, studied for my linguistics exam, and am now taking a break. But it won't last long! I've decided to be productive in my life, and here I am, being productive!

Lastly, my brother's girlfriend got in to Harvard, and was uber excited. She was so excited, she was shaking. I think it is her life's goal to go to Harvard; I'm sure the program there is good, but unless it just so happens to be the best in her field, she seems a little overexcited. Perhaps I have just gotten over the awe of Harvard a bit, but she is way too invested in one school. The Juggler was much more relaxed about it, and aware that there are other programs that might even fit her better; but Harvard has the great advantage of location, which is the main reason why it is still on her list. I don't know, I probably shouldn't mock my brother's girlfriend, seeing as I too will probably want to go to Harvard when I decide whether I want to do ecology or social psychology, seeing as both departments have people who do almost exactly what I would want to do. But I sincerely hope I won't be shaking from excitement, that would be way too pathetic.
I am supposed to go talk to my plants professor in a couple of hours about doing an independent study with her on the plant fossil record, but I am really not sure I want to do it. It seems like it will just be a lot of hassle, and since she doesn't know much about the topic I would pretty much be learning and reading and writing a ton by myself. That isn't necessarily a problem, but while I have the opportunity to take classes with great professors I feel like I might as well take advantage of that.

So ... I am going to be enrolled in my thesis class, intonational phonology, biogeography, sociology (deviance, crime, and social control), and my thesis advisor's graduate seminar. That's five, yes, but I will probably drop either biogeography or the grad seminar; the grad seminar might not even run if there aren't enough students, so then I won't have a problem.

Biogeography looks really interesting, though it will probably stress me out a lot at various points in the semester. Nonetheless, it seems like a great capstone course to a huge amount of the material I've studied in college, so I am looking forward to it—and the discussion we had yesterday was actually pretty good. Hopefully it will continue being good.

I think I will ask my plants professor if I can work on my final project for the biogeography class with her, and/or get her input—that would be a good way to continue working with her and learning from her without forcing myself to do an independent study. I'm still a little worried about recommendations, but this seems like a decent solution.

Ugh. I might try to go talk to the deans to get their input, but it doesn't sit right with me to take a class with a professor solely so that I will have taken multiple classes with the same professor.
So, I have decided that I just won't go to the class ("Plants on a changing planet" or something like that) that I told the professor I would go to. She won't really care; there were plenty of people in the room, so my presence or absence will have no effect on her happiness.

Ha. That means that I am officially done with shopping period—at least, to some extent. I know three classes I am definitely taking: my thesis, intonational phonology, and a sociology class called "Deviance, Crime, and Social Control." For a fourth class, I am deciding between three things: my thesis advisor's graduate seminar, the biogeography class, and an independent study with my plants professor from last term.

So, no more shopping. It's down to the elimination phase. My professor's graduate seminar may not actually be offered, since only four people showed up and at least one was on the fence about the class. The independent study may not happen, because it depends on whether I 1) get my act together, 2) am allowed to, and 3) actually want to. I am pretty sure I want to, though I am equally sure that I will regret the decision later in the term.

Anyway ... yay! I am now able to do homework just for the classes I know I will take, rather than doing readings for a class that I know I won't take. (Yeah, I know: I was doing readings for a class that I wasn't planning on taking and wasn't really enjoying? Crazy?)

On another note, I am getting a little obsessed with criminal profiling. Criminal minds has ruined me; I am going to spend the semester thinking about something other than what I should be thinking about, namely my thesis. But is there really anything wrong with being interested in something? No, I tell myself, though it would be nice if my obsessions had a bit more timeliness to them. Why couldn't I get interested in this over the summer?
The last week or so has been crazy busy—what with transfer orientation wrapping up, and the first few days of classes, I am glad the weekend is here so I can spend some quality time with my books trying to figure out what to take.  Thus far, I haven't been entirely sold on any of my classes—I know I am taking my thesis and the intonational phonology course, but those are requirements I still have to fulfill.  Otherwise, I am looking for a science class, and there are four major options:  my thesis advisor's graduate seminar, an independent study with my plants professor from last term, biogeography, and a class on plant adaptations to climate change.  The last of these I doubt I will take, if only because biogeography is slightly more interesting and, to be honest, less work—I've already read half of the textbook, so I have already done about a third of the reading.  To be fair, though, I've probably done the easiest third.  Hopefully I will get to do an independent study, which will make my decision a lot easier (and my workload a lot more manageable).

I've also been looking into a sociology class on deviance, crime, and social control.  The social control bit is a little less interesting, but most of the topics seem fascinating given that I wish the class were on psychology and the law; I suppose I could talk to one of the professors in psych to ask about maybe doing an independent study on psychology and the law, but two independent studies, a thesis, and one class that actually meets probably wouldn't be good for me to actually get things done.  Maybe if either of my independent studies had other people, but I don't think it would be good for me to do them alone.

Anyway, the sociology class looks interesting, even if it isn't quite what I was looking for.  It does look like it'll be a lot of work, and I am trying very, very hard not to crush myself with work this term; so, I will definitely be taking it pass fail if I take it.

Otherwise ... transfer orientation went well, not too many students panicking and registration was a lot easier than normal because there were no other new students to compete with the transfers.

Lastly, I have been consumed by Criminal Minds.  I really, really like some of the characters, and I think they do a decent job on the plots, though by now I have seen enough that it's fairly predictable.  Nonetheless, it's fun to watch because if they mention anything about psych I can 1) look it up, or 2) already know what it is.  They actually did a good job of explaining capgras syndrome, as well as on diatoms; but otherwise, I haven't known enough about many of the topics to actually say how accurate it is.  I ... possibly have a thing for Reid's drug addiction, I wish they had made that a larger subplot rather than just a few mentions here and there, one shot of him about to take Dilaudid, and then suddenly he's at an AA (equivalent) meeting saying he's been clean for 10 months.  But that's okay ...

Okay, off to run errands.

Success!

Dec. 23rd, 2011 12:03 pm
I FINALLY MADE JAVA DO SOMETHING ON MY COMPUTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have literally tried to get Java to display "Hello World" about ten times before, but have never had any success. I have successfully gotten it to print out to the terminal, but that doesn't count. SO YAY I CAN PROGRAM ON MY COMPUTER!!!!!!! Also, I am currently on lecture 4 of the Stanford intro CS class, which is awesome—not only is the prof really clear, but the whole thing is just very well done. The only problem I'm having is connecting with the Stanford stuff, so I might just go through using Swing (which is what I used years and years ago when I took our intro CS class). Maybe I actually will be able to take the second half this spring!

On that note, I am now having conniptions about my courses, yet again. I spend way too much time worrying about what classes I want to take. I know I will be taking my thesis and a linguistics class; and I am fairly sure I want to take my professor's geo grad seminar. So, that's three. Now I also want to take the second half of intro CS, which is four. If I were rational, I would just stop there, because CS and my thesis will both take a ton of time, and it would be good to have enough time to actually do a good job on my thesis. But then again, I also want to take biogeography, and my brother suggested that I could talk to the GIS professor about doing an independent study where I go through the whole class just on my own—so those are possibly both options as well.

UGH SO MUCH VICTORY SO MANY PROBLEMS!!!
I have a ridiculous amount of work, but instead I am watching Warehouse 13 and writing here. :P Mostly, I am attempting to procrastinate; but since I discovered the Chrome extension that lets me block websites, Dominion is currently off-limits until 9pm tonight ... sadly, I haven't yet figured out how to make it block Netflix, which is why I am still watching Warehouse 13. Nonetheless, I have been getting some done.

I have a take-home midterm due tomorrow at midnight, which is great because I have an essay due tomorrow that I haven't started. Yeah ... I was totally supposed to read this book for my anthro class, but I haven't, which is pretty much the definition of being behind. I haven't exactly done any of the reading for this class, so it's pretty amazing that I am passing it—but alas. I should really go work on that instead of watching Warehouse 13 ...
This week was incredibly long. I cannot believe that on Tuesday, I turned in my plants final paper—now I just have to get working on those final exam questions, that class will be completely done! It's sad, I've really enjoyed it, and I have even thought about asking Erika if I could pursue my project next semester as an independent study or research (for the record, that would have me taking: thesis, intonational phonology, GIS, plant research, and geo grad seminar ... and not biogeography, so). I think I would be crushed if I tried to do my thesis and research for Erika next semester, but it was so much fun this semester that I almost want to try! If I ignore how much work next semester's classes will be (mostly, GIS and biogeography, plus my thesis) then it sounds feasible; when I start to think about GIS and biogeography and my thesis and> plants research, I start to feel a little panicky. Not good when the semester hasn't even started yet, even if it all sounds fun.

On another note, I talked to someone at the Smithsonian on Thursday about working with him for next year, and he basically said yes! There is still the issue of funding, but at least he wants me to come, so that's exciting. I have a job for next year! Now I just need to get paid!

Lastly, we (me, the Roommate, Fortitude, the Juggler, and the Tower) went to the annual gingerbread competition. Our house totally failed, but it was a lot of fun.
It is practically a miracle. I had to finish my paper on the Santalales for my plant evolution class, and just barely got it done. The actual paper is definitely not my best; I should have done more background research on other groups, rather than limiting it to the Santalales. Hopefully it is coherent, though. At the very least, I got to learn how to use LaTeX, which I have been wanting to do for a while! It is really easy, actually, once you get the hang of it. And it's a lot easier to not get bugs, so that's good.

Otherwise ... I am so far behind on NaNo, but I am close enough that I can practically taste victory!!! I got my NaNo poster today, and am now vaguely inspired to go off and write my remaining 9,000 words.

I really should clean up my room, though. It looks like a hurricane swept through it, and I don't really have anywhere to walk.
For my evolutionary bio sections, I've been a little disappointed at how little people talk—I try to ask what I think is an interesting question, but then no one responds; or if they do, they think there is a right answer and that they'll get the question "wrong". Most of the time, I just want them to think through the question with evolutionary logic.

So today, I decided that it was stupid to ask questions that everyone was too intimidated to answer, so we broke up in to groups and had people talk individually. It wasn't exactly brilliant, in the sense that if I'd been a little more on top of things I would have tried this earlier; but, it worked so much better. The same people talked who always talked, but there were a couple of people new people, too. We didn't exactly stay on target the whole time, but that's okay—and everyone was actually talking and thinking about evolution. So yay!!!! We're definitely going to this next week, too.

In other news, I am proceeding along with my pollen. Given how often we get set back, I think I might not actually finish before Thanksgiving is over; but I'm still going to try. This weekend is going to be hellish because I want to finish making my character matrix for my plants project on the Santalales, I need to study for my plants midterm coming up next Tuesday, I need to catch up on my NaNo (25,000 by the end of the weekend, I think ...), I need to plan my class with the Roommate for Splash next weekend, I need to read an entire book for anthro because I have a paper to write for it that's due shortly after Splash ... is that it? It's also our model UN conference this weekend, which means that a whole bunch of New Hampshirites that I know will be coming in to town, and on top of having games night with the gang tomorrow and movie night on Saturday, I am going to try to get lunch or dinner with my old social studies teacher.

Goodness. I'm getting tired just thinking about it. I need to stop playing Dominion and read about Santalales.
I'm not sure if I've ever had such a long weekend in college. Monday (yesterday, a.k.a. Halloween) didn't feel like class; it seems like the week just started today.

I went to the observatory Halloween party last night—it was fairly fun, with lots of ghosts and dead bodies and decapitated heads and things like that everywhere. Unfortunately, they didn't do liquid nitrogen ice cream this year, which they did two years ago and which was awesome; that was a bit of a disappointment. And also unfortunately, it was cloudy, so we didn't get to look at any stars or planets or things. So ... basically it was a haunted house for lots of children, which was kind of fun but not as much fun as two years ago.

The Roommate, the Juggler, and I also went to the midnight organ concert. It was AWESOME, except for the part about it being midnight. He played roughly eight different songs in the space of an hour, which was so much easier to sit through than the chorus or orchestra thirty-minute pieces; two of them I really, really liked. I forget what they were called, but I have the program so I will hopefully look them up later. He also played a Harry Potter song, which was cool, but it was more cool because he was playing it than because the song was actually nice. (Also, it wasn't awkward, which was an extra bonus!)

I talked to the Tower for a long time at dinner yesterday, which was fun. I almost convinced him to come to the observatory party and/or the midnight organ concert, but alas, I evidently failed. Also, I heard at the House meeting last night that ... er, we may or may not have done some pranking in one of his classes, so hopefully I will see him again before I forget to ask him what happened!

This morning I FINALLY got to sample one of my sediment cores, so I should be starting processing this week, and will hopefully finish processing for both cores before Thanksgiving. Yay! Except that I spilled one of the samples ... luckily, all we had to do was take another sample, but still. Care and precision are NOT my strong suits.

NaNo started today, and I successfully did NOT start last night after the organ concert. I am currently 348 words in, and I have a pretty good idea where I want to go for the next set of chapters; I'm sort of leaving the overall plot to the winds, but I know the broad outline. I just haven't picked all of the specifics yet, which is bad, because those specifics are the ones that are going to make it difficult. The broad outline is easy. But I really like where this year is going!

And on a completely unrelated note, my plants professor likes my research topic! And I do too! It's a win-win!
This week was absurdly long. I spent a lot of time in the lab learning more pollen processing, and got to look at sediment cores (!) on Wednesday. Wednesday night was the second Evolutionary Bio exam, so I spent a lot of time on Tuesday and Wednesday tutoring/TAing (or whatever it should be called). I spent at least three hours on Thursday evening working with one student who completely bombed the first exam, so hopefully she did better on the second one. She got to take it late because, on top of doing horribly the first time, she also had pneumonia for the past two weeks. Talk about a tough time!

On Thursday during Human Evolution section, we got to look at bones. BONES!!!!!!!! Okay, bones are really really cool. It's amazing how it's possible to look at a bone and figure things out about its history—not just in the evolutionary sense (is it a tetrapod? a synapsid?), but also in the forensic anthropology and taphonomic sense. I LOVE BONES. I tried to go to my professor's office hours on Thursday to ask about bones we didn't talk about in class, but he wasn't there; so, I'm going to go back on Monday.

I confess that my enthusiasm for bones makes me think that vertebrate paleontology might actually be something I'd want to study—after all, you pretty much get to spend a lot of time looking at bones. Unfortunately, you might have to spend a lot of time dissecting things too, which is not exactly something I want in my future. Alternatively, human evolution would be cool, but I do NOT want to go to grad school in an anthropology department, so I think human evolution is off the table. Finally, forensic anthropology would be SO COOL, but unfortunately I would have to 1) go to grad school in an anthropology department, and 2) probably have to dissect humans, which is even worse than other things.

Yesterday (Friday) I graded exams in the morning, then went for a meeting with Dimetrodon which she couldn't make because she was stuck in traffic, then went back to grade some more exams, then went to a TA meeting for Evolutionary Bio (whose exams I was grading), then went to class where we started to learn officially how to use Praat (which I already know how to use), then went to a meeting with someone who had worked at the Smithsonian as an intern five summers ago, then met with Dimetrodon about my thesis, then lost my keys and went traipsing around campus to find them before realizing I'd just left them in the lab, then saw a hawk outside of House and spent fifteen minutes staring at it, then went to dinner where I consumed copious amounts of ice cream, then went to the Juggler's a capella concert (she joined Disney a capella), then talked to the Tower for a little while about Merlin, then went to the Roommate's a capella concert, then went to bed.

It was a long day, as that extremely long run-on sentence demonstrates.

Anyway ... I finally this morning sent off an email to someone at the Smithsonian, so hopefully he will get back to me and I will have a job for next year! Of course, hopefully he will actually be able to pay me, but. The Roommate is going to talk to someone one Tuesday about what she would do at the Smithsonian. Hopefully everything will work out, and I will actually be able to call her my roommate without sort of kind of maybe lying.

And now, as a reward for finally finishing that email, I am going to work on my NaNo outline. I should do something important, but alas, I am not going to.
I always forget how quickly October comes upon us. And I always forget to do homework over Columbus Day weekend. :P It was fun, but now I am panicking.

I have to download Mesquite and relearn how to use it. I have to find word lists for two languages for my phonetics project. I have to find out information about my consultants, because I completely forgot to do this ahead of time. Unfortunately, the finding of word lists is difficult, because the book I need isn't online, and doesn't seem to be in the library, either. (HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY NOT BE IN THE LIBRARY?) And the Journal of the IPA doesn't seem to have any indices or anything like that.

And, I have to write up two proposals for the two languages before tomorrow. In the mean time, I have lab this afternoon, then class until 4; tomorrow, I have class at 9, and then a meeting at 10, and another meeting at 11. Then I have to turn in the proposals by 2 tomorrow.

UGH. I AM DOOMED.

Flop flop

Oct. 4th, 2011 10:55 am
Unfortunately, I have an exam this afternoon, and my Plant Evolution class has a field trip. Technically, I can go to the field trip—it's supposed to end before my exam starts. But it's going to be a close one, and I'm more than a little afraid of 1) forgetting about the exam and missing it, 2) getting lost, and 3) biking down the side of the road. I am not a confident biker, and probably won't ever be; biking is fun down bike trails off in the woods, but I honestly think the last time I road a bike was in Florida ... my junior (?) year of high school. Basically, I really don't want to go to the field trip, but I probably should. So I have no idea what to do.

I finished Sherlock and started Merlin. I should really not watch too much TV. Anyway, Sherlock:  Comments. Spoilers. The usual. )

Merlin. It's kind of cute—Magic and dragons, oh my! ) Not sure if I'll keep watching it, but it's nice to have a TV show to watch that is moderately good. (And the accents are cool—I even heard Morgana use a great slit [t]! Her accent sounds kind of Irish, but doesn't have much of the Irish intonation ... I sort of think I might have been placing too much emphasis on the Irish intonation.)
This was possibly the weirdest episode of Doctor Who I've ever seen.  Spoilers, of course. )

I'm glad that we have Doctor Who Sunday this afternoon, so that I can watch it again and hopefully get a better handle on what happened. There was so much switching back and forth in time that it was very confusing.

In other news, last night (yes, SATURDAY NIGHT!) I think I started to partially repair my relationship with one of my geo professors. We had a bit of a difficult time when I was in her class, because I like to ask questions and she thought my questions were stupid; whether they were or not I have no idea. But anyway, she came into the undergrad geo room to get ice cream, and I was there reading for Human Evolution, and we started talking. I explained about how I had started working on my thesis 1.0, and how I'd learned a lot about what kind of lab work I definitely don't want to do, but how I'd also figured out about how much I like doing research. It's all about the most tedious part of the job—if I can handle the most tedious part, it'll be fine. Anyway, it was good to know that not everyone in every department hates me. (Yes, I know, "hate" is a bit of a strong term; more, like they think I'm too much trouble. Which I probably am, but that's okay.)

Well, at least I know of a few professors who like me, and are willing to write me good recommendations. At a certain point, with all the switching around through departments that I've done, that's the most important thing.
After some back and forth on my classes, I've finally settled down to my thesis, phonetics, plant evolution, and human evolution.  Japanese has, sadly, been left behind.  After not doing any Japanese last weekend, and then panicking because I was supposed to write an essay for Tuesday that I didn't do, and after not turning in the homework on Monday, and after missing class two days in a row to go to the dentist ... it just didn't seem worth it.  If Japanese is going to be that big of a headache all term, it's not worth it.  I don't want to spend that much time learning to write anyway, and it meets every single day.

So basically, sad but pretty much inevitable.

On the other hand, that means that means that I am currently only taking three classes, because my thesis hasn't started yet; and one of those classes is Human Evolution.  The class must be filled with freshmen, because the professor thinks we're all idiots.  I can't decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing; it is definitely too low level for me.  Hopefully it will just be this beginning section, where we cover basic evolution and genetics.

Anyway, this basically means that all my classes so far are easy, and I am actually ahead on the reading.  This is actually encouraging, because it means not only will I (theoretically, anyway) have more time to work on my thesis when my advisor gets back, but I also might not actually be totally crazy when I think that I might want to study evolution in grad school.  It depends a lot on how my thesis goes, and how the Year of Staring at Fossils goes (hopefully it will happen!), but I am encouraged by this admittedly short test period for me, studying evolution.

In actual news, I went to a talk yesterday by the authors of Stealing Rembrandts, and, in typical me fashion, asked a lot of questions, so one of the authors decided to give me a free copy of the book.  Yay!  It'll be like reading about White Collar, just ... real, and probably not so high-tech!

Evolution!

Sep. 9th, 2011 07:42 pm
I basically decided that 1) my favorite science is evolution, 2) I should take classes that are fun, and 3) there are classes on evolution this term.  Hence, I am going to take two classes that are evolutionary in nature—Human Evolution (in anthropology) and Evolution of Plant Diversity (in biology).  Since I am literally the last person on the waitlist for the GIS class, there's basically no way I am going to get in.  I will probably keep shopping it, because it will be more useful in actually getting me a job at some point in my life, but at least the other two look fun.  So that means I am taking my thesis, Human Evolution, Plant Evolution, Japanese, and Sounds of the World's Languages.  Human Evolution might end up being an audit class, but otherwise I'm really excited about all of them.  For once in my life, I have actually picked my classes before the end of shopping period!!!

Unfortunately, that means I can't study underwater archaeology.  Very, very, very sad face.  But the professor achieved a degree of repetitiveness that I have never before experienced in class, so although I would probably learn something, it wouldn't be anywhere close to what I could be learning.  It just doesn't seem worth the time, sadly; it has so much potential that is going unfulfilled!

And I went to Juggling Club this afternoon, which was fun, though I didn't get to stay very long.  I am determined to learn how to juggle before I graduate college!
The rest of transfer orientation went well—no major hiccups, though I forgot to pay my portion of the alcohol fee. :P  Which, to be honest, makes me feel bad that other people (presumably the coordinators) paid instead, but is not exactly the worst thing for me to forget to pay for.  They didn't even tell me that I would have to before hand, or give me much of an option to opt out.  Alas.

Blabberings about classes. )

And in other news, we had dinner with the Juggler, Fortitude, Temperance, and the Roommate.  We also invited the Emperor, but she couldn't come.  I'm not sure how much longer I am going to actually invite the Emperor to things, because she never says yes, and never offers her own suggestions as to what to do.  It mostly bugs me because I think the reason she's basically stopped talking to us is because she thinks we don't work hard enough—probably because at the end of last semester, for one, both the Roommate and I had "goals" to finish our papers by a certain date, so when that date arrived and the Emperor saw us in the dining hall, she said "You must be glad to be done!" and we said, "Uh ... no, we haven't finished yet."  She had the most precious Oh-my-God-seriously? expression on her face, like she couldn't possibly believe that anyone she was friends with would fail to accomplish their goals.  And since she tells me I have ADD nearly every other time I see her, I find it a little obnoxious that she's surprised I didn't finish when I thought I would.

But that's okay!  Now I don't have to worry about talking about fun things in front of her. :)  Though it is a bit depressing after everything we went through together, or mostly that we watched her go through and tried to be supportive about.

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lailoken

July 2012

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