Semester

The semester is almost over, so hey! It's time for an update. The buzzwords for this semester:

STRESS, ANGST and FAILURE.

Yeah, so, now that I got that F-word out of the way, here's the long story.

I started the semester taking Russian I, Native American Religion, Calculus III and World Civilizations I. Two classes into Native American Religions, I realized that the professor was going to teach a class in a way that was patently disrespectful to me and my beliefs, so I went and had a chitchat with the head of that department and the dean of my college. The short, polite version of that story ends in me switching from Native American Religion to Computer Tools for Physicists, and still wondering if I'm going to be able to find a class to satisfy my multicultural affairs requirement.

I was warned early in the semester that Russian would be OMG hard. The truth? Not terribly hard, for me at least. I'm (to the annoyance of others in my life) a natural linguist, so with what I'd consider minimal effort, I'm sitting somewhere around a high B, low A. The final is Monday.

Computer Tools (my next Monday class) is an annoying class with a good professor. The class is generally the sort of thing I like to puzzle out on my own with a book (it's basically How To Use Maple 101), and so my attendance and effort level has been sort of low. I'm behind with the homework, but I purchased my own copy of Maple yesterday and am catching up rather quickly. I just hate hate hate the chairs in the lab where the Maple computers are, which has been making me very reluctant to go in and do the homework. I have no idea what I'll get in that class, though I suspect a decent grade. The professor's a fair guy.

World Civilizations I is easily my favorite class this semester, with a professor who loves tangential relationships between things, and discovering the true causes of problems and conflicts. I'm probably going to get a B in that class, which could have been an A if I'd have studied a smidge more.

Then there's Calculus III. I failed. The final hasn't happened yet, but even with a perfect score on it? I can't pass the class. This is entirely my fault (with some contributing factors which are nonetheless not the cause). The professor's voice and the ambient temperature in the room made me fall asleep in class, but more than that - I just didn't work at it. I've never had to really work for a grade; I could mostly just slide through a class with an A, or at worst, a B or B-. By the time I realized how hard I was going to have to work, it was too late - I was already massively behind.

So! I'll be retaking that next semester. I'll be taking:

Calculus III
Mathematical Methods of Physics
Optics
Economics (Micro)
Ethics
Experimental Physics IV

I'll also be teaching two labs. Fun stuff.

...more later, maybe, when I'm not in an angsty, surly mood.