| College Saga part 5. Where's part 4, you ask? |
[23 Sep 2006|02:00am] |
College Saga part 4 is hidden within a private entry that will probably later be "revealed" once everyone has recovered from despising me for complaining so much. So in the meantime I shall provide you with some college fluff so that the weighty issues don't get you down. I realize I'm probably talking to myself at this point.
After being a little less guilty about not partying, the weekend has brought me to be a little more guilty about not partying. There it is! I can see it! It's within grasp...a social life....if only I could shower and put on some makeup and....no wait, too much effort.
The Nap is one of the greatest things ever invented, along with bread, but that's for another entry. After every day of classes, especially the evil MWF set, I indulge myself in The Nap for a period of 2 hours or more. I set a college record today by sleeping for 4 hours after classes. Of course, I have yet to break my high school record, which was about 19 hours after a certain nonsleeping period thanks to Schmidt.
My newest plan is to utilize the Whiteboard. Here at princeton, fancy whiteboards are already set up for you next to your door, with your name on them and everything. Mine is now covered in various hall grafitti surprisingly NOT all drawn by me. But it's going to say something like "Tell me what's going on:" with a cute backstory about how I'm lonely and single and IN a single so that I won't be always left in the dust, henceforth [and a fortnight].
So indeed, there is a Thing called classes at princeton and an Adjective called difficult that not-so-surprisingly corresponds with said Thing. Here's the fall '06 lineup in its schedule format:
Monday
10:00 - 10:50: Advanced Spanish (SPA 108)
11:00 - 11:50: Calculus (MAT 104)
12:30 - 1:20: Introductory Logic (PHI 201)
Tuesday and Thursday
10:00 - 10:50: General Computer Science (COS 126)
1:30 - 2:20: Computer Science Precept
Wednesday
SAME AS MONDAY except Introductory Logic Precept at 2:30
Friday
SAME AS MONDAY except no PHI 201
Now if any of you read that, you'd see that all of my classes hover around that nice little lunchtime time and that I have no night classes (yay!) or early morning classes either (yay!). This bodes well for my soul and general well being. It does not bode well for my eating lunch, because that rarely happens in full. But food is for a later entry of the college saga.
So in lieu of digressing, which would have probably happened by now if it weren't already occurring, I shall actually explain the horror and holiday of my classes.
SPA 108 is the last spanish class one has to take before fulfilling the requirement for a language here. So far it is relatively easy and no homework has actually been checked. The homework might be checked at some time though, because my professor only speaks in spanish and may have mentioned that someday, sometime. Anyway, the homework is ridiculously long and is sometimes 100 "questions" a night. I am starting to understand most of what my professor says in class. My class size is 7 or 8 kids, so it's nice, like spanish 5 was last year.
MAT 104 is the 2nd level calculus, almost equivalent to BC in high school. This class makes me wish very very muchly that BC option/track was offered at clearview when we were there. The desired teacher of this course switched sections so that our section is now taught by a younger, more russian guy, who is nice but a little too theoretical and his u's look awfully a lot like n's and I just heard the toilet flush from another DORM building.
For example, all you AP neiswender kids probably vaguely recall integration by partial fractions (the A B C thing) . Today we reviewed that and about half the class had not done it in high school and the way he explained it made ME even doubt my own understanding of it. Essentially, I am used to the luxury of Neis' way of teaching that would probably enable my 12 year old brother to learn calculus. His name is lenny, by the way, if you didn't know.
COS 126 is computer science, and it's very difficult but fun. My professor is nerdy-funny and my preceptor is reallynerdy-adorable. I have so far made five programs that do various conversions and interactions and it's really cool, so far. The programming assignments are very difficult because the way to do them is not taught outright, so there is a lot of thinking involved. a lot. I spent 5 hours on my first programming assignment. (I got a 100%, though :) )
PHI 201 is notoriously the boring intro philosophy course and the lectures are somehow interesting and boring at the same time. Basically we're converting logical statements into weird symbols so far. Who knew logic could be so weird.
I miss music soooo much. SOOOOO much. It's the biggest reason why I've been sad here. Once wind ensemble starts I guess I'll be better, but the wind ensemble isn't hardcore like, say, that of rutgers. If I didn't actually like this school somewhat I would transfer in heartbeat to Mason Gross. I am not even kidding you. I would transfer from princeton to rutgers just for the music.
That being said, i have yet to take a music CLASS here (I tried but they were closed) so hopefully in the spring semester I'll feel better. Why is mr. tomlin right about everything ever.
More on my musical groups in another entry, but I'm in the "Band" which is a marching/scramble band and has to be completely explained for one to even understand but if you're particularly and surprisingly interested, go to www.princeton.edu/~puband and look up the show scripts and watch a bit of a show.
What I enjoy about college is that so much of the work is independent/self taught, it makes it hard and long and crazy but in the end it's sooo satisfying. Not that the teachers don't teach, they do, they just don't teach exactly for the purpose of one particular assignment. And I'm sure it's like that at other colleges too.
So the fact that I eat salad/veggies/soup twice a day (and the occasional ice cream), along with my long walks to the math/compsci buildings, would lend you to believe that I've lost weight. I think the opposite has true. I think my body is putting on weight because it thinks I'm starving all of the time, I'm dehydrated and on the verge of dying regularly. Considering I take bc pills and have odd sleeping habits I'm not surprised that my stomach is so rolly all of a sudden. The true test comes with I go home for sunday and actually weigh myself.
HOME!
YAY!
FOOD! PIANO! CLARINET! BASSOON!
Ah too much to say. Until Saga part 6, I bid you adios.
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