Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Antimony, Arsenic, Aluminum, Selenium
I'd like to begin by reminding everyone that the titles to these entries don't necessarily have anything to do with what I'm writing about. This title happens to be the first line from "The Elements," which is simply the names of all the chemical elements sung to the tune of "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General." And yes, I do know all the rest of them. I recently sung them (sang them?) - while playing piano - in the Yosemite Hall Talent Show. It sounds dorky, but people seemed to enjoy it all the same.
I had some very good luck today. I have to start quite a while back in time for you to get the whole story, so this may take awhile. But you can read faster than I can type, so just be thankful for that.
So here goes: I'm taking 14 credits, right? Okay. But I had originally planned on taking 16. There's this industrial and manufacturing engineering (IME) class that I have to take as a support course, but by the time I got to register back at the end of July it had already filled up. So I tried to "crash" it, which is the process of going to the first class and hoping that other people who are already enrolled in the class don't show up so you can take their spot. Well, I went to the class on Monday and again yesterday, but to no avail. So my schedule is left with only 14 credits. My original thought on the situation was, "It's my first quarter in college; I'm still adjusting; There's no need to push myself right now." But having gone to physics, calculus, and music theory and finding them unintimidating, and also printing out the syllabus for my intro to electrical engineering ("electrical engineering" shall henceforth be referred to by the acronym "EE", pronounced "double E") and finding the curriculum to contain "competency in the use of email the world wide web, the library, etc.; review of high-school mathematics; and professional ethics, I decided that my 14 credits were going to be rather easy. So I set out to find another class to take. Most of the things required for my degree have a lot of prerequisites, except for one class: Political Science 111. This class satisfies GE area D1, political science. Normally, I'd have to take a 4-credit class on American and California government, POLS 112. But my AP Gov test allows me to take the 1-credit POLS 111 class that only focuses on California government. (Apparently, the university would like to just give me credit for area D1 but they can't because California law requires all California college graduates to take California government. This class is a simple technicality.) Anywho, this class only meets one hour per week so I figured it would be no problem to fit it into my schedule. So I log on to POWER (Poly Online WEb Registration) and add it to my schedule. The problem is that it meets on Wednesday nights from 6-7. Now, if you'll observe yesterday's entry, you'll see that my Wednesday schedule was just dandy. But now, I'm not finished until 7, right? Well, here's where my luck comes in. I go to the class tonight after buying the textbook from the campus bookstore, and it turns out that it's an "independent study" class. That is, we don't show up to class, we only read two short books by November and then show up for one hour to take the multiple-choice final. So my Wednesday nights are still wide open, but I'm getting credit for a 4-credit class. Isn't that great? But that's not even the lucky part. It turns out that about 20 people wanted this class but weren't able to add it to their schedules because it was already full. They had to go through the crash process just as I did with the IME class. But lucky me, I just happened to log onto POWER right after someone else just happened to drop the class from their schedule.
At any rate, I'm quite excited about the whole situation. Sorry that took so long to explain. Long story short, I'm taking 15 credits, which is pretty average. So hooray.
What else is there to talk about? I don't feel like getting into all the WOW stuff right now...I'll save that for a slow news day. Oh I know! I'll talk about the food here. It's actually not that bad. There are around 15 different food establishments on campus. There's a chicken place, chinese food, an all-you-can-eat buffet, smoothies, a coffee and ice cream shop, delis (plural of deli), and some other things. My meal plan is divided up into a specific number of meals per week and a specific number of "plus dollars" per quarter. There are three different meal plans to choose from, with varying amounts of meals and plus dollars (they're inversely proportional). I got the plan with the least amount of meals (5/week) and the most amount of dollars ($660/quarter, or about $60/week). The meals are only good at three of the restaurants, but plus dollars are good everywhere. Plus, meals expire at the end of the week, whereas the dollars last until the end of the year. Anyway, it turns out that I have much more meal credit than I need. The meal week ends on Friday (and starts anew on Saturday), and by today I have only used 3 of my meals and about $30. There is a mini-market on campus where I can buy laundry detergent and toothpaste and whatnot, so I'll have to start spending my extra plus dollars there. As for the quality of the food itself, it's satisfactory, but not great. But at least there's enough variety to keep it interesting. My only concern is that there are no good fruits and vegetables. There are salad bars, but that's about all. I'll have to buy my greens at the local Albertsons.
So, that's about all I've got tonight. I'm sure that those of you who are still reading are getting pretty tired. But thanks for sticking with me until the end.
Josh
mood: thrilled with my good luck
music: none
location: dorm
I had some very good luck today. I have to start quite a while back in time for you to get the whole story, so this may take awhile. But you can read faster than I can type, so just be thankful for that.
So here goes: I'm taking 14 credits, right? Okay. But I had originally planned on taking 16. There's this industrial and manufacturing engineering (IME) class that I have to take as a support course, but by the time I got to register back at the end of July it had already filled up. So I tried to "crash" it, which is the process of going to the first class and hoping that other people who are already enrolled in the class don't show up so you can take their spot. Well, I went to the class on Monday and again yesterday, but to no avail. So my schedule is left with only 14 credits. My original thought on the situation was, "It's my first quarter in college; I'm still adjusting; There's no need to push myself right now." But having gone to physics, calculus, and music theory and finding them unintimidating, and also printing out the syllabus for my intro to electrical engineering ("electrical engineering" shall henceforth be referred to by the acronym "EE", pronounced "double E") and finding the curriculum to contain "competency in the use of email the world wide web, the library, etc.; review of high-school mathematics; and professional ethics, I decided that my 14 credits were going to be rather easy. So I set out to find another class to take. Most of the things required for my degree have a lot of prerequisites, except for one class: Political Science 111. This class satisfies GE area D1, political science. Normally, I'd have to take a 4-credit class on American and California government, POLS 112. But my AP Gov test allows me to take the 1-credit POLS 111 class that only focuses on California government. (Apparently, the university would like to just give me credit for area D1 but they can't because California law requires all California college graduates to take California government. This class is a simple technicality.) Anywho, this class only meets one hour per week so I figured it would be no problem to fit it into my schedule. So I log on to POWER (Poly Online WEb Registration) and add it to my schedule. The problem is that it meets on Wednesday nights from 6-7. Now, if you'll observe yesterday's entry, you'll see that my Wednesday schedule was just dandy. But now, I'm not finished until 7, right? Well, here's where my luck comes in. I go to the class tonight after buying the textbook from the campus bookstore, and it turns out that it's an "independent study" class. That is, we don't show up to class, we only read two short books by November and then show up for one hour to take the multiple-choice final. So my Wednesday nights are still wide open, but I'm getting credit for a 4-credit class. Isn't that great? But that's not even the lucky part. It turns out that about 20 people wanted this class but weren't able to add it to their schedules because it was already full. They had to go through the crash process just as I did with the IME class. But lucky me, I just happened to log onto POWER right after someone else just happened to drop the class from their schedule.
At any rate, I'm quite excited about the whole situation. Sorry that took so long to explain. Long story short, I'm taking 15 credits, which is pretty average. So hooray.
What else is there to talk about? I don't feel like getting into all the WOW stuff right now...I'll save that for a slow news day. Oh I know! I'll talk about the food here. It's actually not that bad. There are around 15 different food establishments on campus. There's a chicken place, chinese food, an all-you-can-eat buffet, smoothies, a coffee and ice cream shop, delis (plural of deli), and some other things. My meal plan is divided up into a specific number of meals per week and a specific number of "plus dollars" per quarter. There are three different meal plans to choose from, with varying amounts of meals and plus dollars (they're inversely proportional). I got the plan with the least amount of meals (5/week) and the most amount of dollars ($660/quarter, or about $60/week). The meals are only good at three of the restaurants, but plus dollars are good everywhere. Plus, meals expire at the end of the week, whereas the dollars last until the end of the year. Anyway, it turns out that I have much more meal credit than I need. The meal week ends on Friday (and starts anew on Saturday), and by today I have only used 3 of my meals and about $30. There is a mini-market on campus where I can buy laundry detergent and toothpaste and whatnot, so I'll have to start spending my extra plus dollars there. As for the quality of the food itself, it's satisfactory, but not great. But at least there's enough variety to keep it interesting. My only concern is that there are no good fruits and vegetables. There are salad bars, but that's about all. I'll have to buy my greens at the local Albertsons.
So, that's about all I've got tonight. I'm sure that those of you who are still reading are getting pretty tired. But thanks for sticking with me until the end.
Josh
mood: thrilled with my good luck
music: none
location: dorm
