U of O Entry 4
Let the classes begin!
I left you on Saturday night with shopping with my new friend Allison. In this blog I promised you juggling club and fantabulous nonsense, first class and the coffee I was drinking. Since then there have been more classes, chores, more shopping, and my more friends!
So, to be perfectly honest with you, I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened on Sunday night. The university put on some event that was fun, but not fun enough to be worth mentioning. I did some partying, followed by an insanely long walk (long because people learned to hold parties further from the university after 8 parties got broken up by the cops within 1 mile of campus after the big UO win against Cal, 42-3 for those who don’t pay attention). This was followed by the movie watching in the previous blog, which was in turn followed by sleep. Lots of sleep.
Monday! Which for some reason my computer won’t let me type in all CAPS because it is too smart for me to take literary license with my blogs. Side note: The Ting Tings are fantastic for writing to. Monday I did some more organizing, some more shopping for school supplies, and a whole lot of doing nothing. Went to dunch/binner with Andy before juggling club. But do I go to juggling club on my bike? No. On my own two feet? No. On an aero-plane? Hell no. I jogged… on my stilts. For those of you who have never been to the university of oregon, it is very hilly – so as to say that when you are running down hill in jumping stilts, you can clear about 20 ft. in a single stride. And let me tell you, if you think you’ve gotten weird looks for how you dress or talk, you know nothing as to the looks I got taking strides bigger than an elephant is long. Friggen’ awesome. Well, juggling was a blast, I got to see some familiar faces from introDUCKtion, and some new ones too. I am not the best by any means in any discipline (except contact juggling, I am the expert, w00t) but I brought up the idea of a professional company and one of the guys (Dan) was really interested in that, and wanted to learn acro. So we are going to base each other and start the company! Exciting times. AND!!!! I learned how to pass 7 clubs with Dan. For the jugglers reading this (nobody really) you do a split timing 2’s pattern with doubles. Code for “pass every other club, throw it very high, and throw it as soon as you get the club into that hand. And if you see a club coming you can’t catch perfectly, don’t try – just duck. And run, and cry when it lands on your head (been there, done that). Then I jogged back on my stilts, and promptly died of exhaustion. And even though I was exited and exhausted I did not forget to set my alarm, and I got up exactly when I needed to (7:30) without anyone else’s help (yeah, Mom. I told you I could!)
MARTES! A day which had nothing spanish in particular about it except a girl’s phone went off in class and she told someone not to call her during class, and she said it in spanish (¡no llamame cuando estoy en clase!) and I just felt like yelling across the room ¡No traegalo el telefono a la clase! (for those of you who don’t understand that, it was don’t bring your phone to class).
I only had one class on Tuesday, and it was Differential Equations at eight bloody ay em. And then I was done.
For those who have not taken Diff E, it is fucking hard, and takes a lot of energy to understand the semi-abstract concepts presented in this class. For those of us who have taken 6 months of Diff E before, it is going to be the biggest snooze fest. The first two thirds of the course is review. Yeah. Easy as pie, one might say.
For the rest of Tuesday I went to lunch with Allison when she had a break and… well, God, I don’t do anything these days. Or I do and then I forget about it. AH! I did laundry, yes I did. I did laundry and did my homework that isn’t due till next Wednesday. The teacher (who is a sub, because our prof gets back in town on Monday – great vote of confidence for this guy, misses the first week of classes) told us that we would learn how to do these problems over the next week. Well, I had two hours to kill for laundry, and so I just did a little reading for some of the harder problems, and I did it all. Because I am that smart. No, in reality, because Ms. Kolesikova kicks such a large quantity of ass as a math teacher. Cheers to you.
I still need a good name for my dragon picture, so if you have any good ideas for dragon names, please do tell me. And I need help with a puzzle. When you have a 4x3 poster (too heavy for sticky tac) and your walls are made of concrete (no push pins) and you arn’t allowed to use the ceiling to hang things, how do you hang up said poster. I am accepting all suggestions. Because right now my amazing favorite poster of Van Goghs sunflowers is sitting under my bed getting flattened (on purpose, but it would do a much better job on my wall…)
MERCREDI! There was absolutely nothing french about Wednesday, none of my friends are taking french, except for the fact that after *sprinting* from one class to the other because I didn’t know exactly where they were and twice went into the wrong building, if someone had asked a favor of me, I would have responded with “but I am le tired…”
If that person had said “well, take a nap, ZEN FIRE ZEE MISSILES!” it would have made my day. Well, now I know where all my classes are, so I will simply be walking quickly instead of sprinting (getting the building right on the first try will help).
Class 1: Diff E, same story as yesterday. Cept he had us do some problems on the board, and when I didn’t go up to try them out, he asked me “you not want to problem on board?” (he is Chinese, in keeping with my tradition of learning math with non-native english speakers – the proffession is hardcore Russian too…) and I responded “oh, I already did them yesterday.”
“Oh, well… Sih- here an sure ever-one elz dus right”
I can understand Czech accents like they are not an accent at all, but you put a chinese accent in front of me, and I take the next 30 seconds decoding it… I hope I can do better with Russian, because if this guy tried to teach me something I didn’t already know, I would be f*%ked.
Class 2: Elementary Linear Algebra. I don’t really know what I expected of this class, to be perfectly honest. I think when they designed the class name they said “what is the most complicated way to say ‘math designed around linear equations?’” Yeah. Linear Equations. As in, no square roots, no multiplication of variables, no squaring variables. Just linear variables and (for the most part) whole number coefficients. The most complicated it is gonna get before November is solving systems of three equations and graphing two equations at inequalities. To anyone at BASIS: didn’t we finish that class in like 8th grade?
Class 3: Linguistics. In 2 words: seriously cool. The proffessor is Prof. DeLancy, and he is a crazy old man with long hair and a crazy old man beard. And he uses sound effects in his lectures. He is fantastic, excited about everything, and has a serious sense of humor. I’ll come back to linguistics in a bit.
Class 4: Organic Chemistry. Yes, I took this class already too – in 9th grade and 10th grade. I read through the book in a skip reading fashion, and the syllabus and I will not learn anything new for a month and a half. We are going to spend 3 weeks alone on naming and Lewis dot structures. In addition, the number of people in this class is >300. Pardon me if I didn’t take the time to count. But he said “all… well, more than 300 of you, have taken Gen Chem before yadayadayada.”
I looked at one of his homework assignments, and it will be an easy class.
We all looked at my schedule before I left for college and said “wow, you are gonna have no free time”
Well, it is the opposite. At least for the first time, I am gonna have SO MUCH FREE TIME!
And now, for the irony of the whole situation. Is it not sad that the most interesting class, and the one that is teaching me things from day 1 I didn’t know is the only class that does not contribute worth a damn towards my major?
So, more on linguistics. Linguistics, for those who don’t know, is the scientific study of language. So now that we’ve got that cleared up, we can start learning. That was what Mr. DeLancy said, and followed it with “but honestly, what the hell does that even mean ‘the scientific study of language?’” So we defined some terms, laughed at his drawing skills (he started it) and really defined linguistics, and why we study it. We talked about how human language (spoken) is different and superior to human language (written) is different and superior to animal language. I would love to explain all of this to you, but I do not have a 50 minute lecture’s worth of time to write. I’ll do it in person if you ask. It is complicated. When it takes 50 minutes to explain what the title of the course means, you know the class is gonna be complicated and therefore fun as hell (if you are like me and love learning).
So, bright future in classes one fourth. Hopefully I’ll get into better ones for winter quarter.
However, due to increased time, I accepted the job working at Bounce Gymnastics, and I am drinking some coffee at the Eugene equivalent of Café Milano (but way cheaper) called Café Perugino, and it has free (fast) internet and amazing coffee, which I have been enjoying for the last hour. Around 5:45, I will hop back on the old cycle, and pedal myself over to Bounce, where they are going to hang up my trapeze in the only place they have room: OVER A BLOODY TRAMPOLINE!!! CAN YOU IMAGINE THE CRAZY S*%T I AM CONSIDERING DOING WITH THAT?!?!?! And then my trap will live there in peace and harmony and I will never have to carabiner it to my backpack ever again. Thank God – that is tough to do while on a bike…
So, that’s all in terms of updates except the plans for a vampire movie night with Allison tomorrow night (Interview with The Vampire or True Blood, season 1 – we havn’t decided which yet) and the new friends. I met a girl named Tina Foley who reminds me in a somewhat creeepy way of Sarah W. from BASIS, and she is fantastic. And I met one of Evan’s friends whose name is Callie, and she is fantastic. I am including a picture of Evan taken from his facebook so you all can see what he looks like.
Thats it for me folks, sorry that was so obscenely long, I’m sure not even my own family will make it through this one without falling asleep…
Until next time – be safe, have fun, and LEARN MORE THAN I AM GOING TO! PLEASE!
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