I love school. But not today. First days of class are o.k. as long as the teacher keeps it short. 8 a.m. class, and the really boring and hard to follow (granted nice) professor begins a "review". I've already had a lot of this material, so I don't know what kind of "review" he'd call this. He didn't make much sense. Everything was vaguely familiar, but he wasn't really reviewing the concepts in a graspable way. We just went over a bunch of equations that didn't mean much, and you realize how pointless this is if you've been in engineering. Most professors stress the learning of the concepts and basic proofs, not all of the equations. Because you always forget the equations. So this was a little backwards. My second class was nice and lite on the equations for the day, but after spending two hours in the previous class, I was so tired I was falling asleep. Well...not really, but for all intensive purposes I wasn't really there. But my first impression: easy quarter. Woo. I then proceeded directly to my advisor's office for a meeting with a professor from the chemistry department. I have to work in conjunction with her to make the ceramic/metal composite that I'll be testing. We discussed the various options available for depositing the metal into the porous ceramic layer, the viability on a larger (i.e. >micron) scale, and what I would start first. And of course my advisor wanted to talk about testing apparatus. I would rather work on the material first, it's an area I don't know much about that has a real practicality for my research. But the day was (is) good. The workers at Whole Foods were really nice today, and I was also feeling very amiable towards them. There was a car that wasn't moving along Westwood Blvd., and someone was about to have a hernia on top of their horn. I and a few others at the corner had a good laugh about that. I met a few nice people in my classes. I skipped the safety meeting I was supposed to go to, I'll go tomorrow. I finished two loads of laundry, and I've even studied for the past two hours. Actually, I've been reviewing the material I should have gone over earlier this month, just to refresh my memory. "Stress transformation...principle stresses...uhhh," I thought to myself in class this morning. Luckily, I have my notes and book from MEN 507, a class I took two years ago, which covers a lot of the relevant material for both of my current classes. So I'm going to look that over, and start some homework. The few times I have been on campus, I have gotten more comfortable with the location of the labs, professors, classes, and important buildings. The more I am comfortable with the campus, the more comfortable my overall attitude seems to be. This is very very good, it lays a lot of my fears to rest. Soon, I will be overbooked with social activities and outings. And for dinner, red beans and rice, lemon pepper asparagus, strawberries. Listening: Him/laundry dryer buzzing |