Personal essays, cat poop, and a check engine light
My first week of school is now behind me. My classes are pretty much as I expected, somewhat challenging, although the real challenge so far is not the work itself, but the workload. I'm fond of all of my professors to varying degrees, and as of right now I would willingly stick with them for future classes.
I'm going to hold off until my first exams (or essay for English Comp) to say that any of the classes are easy. Although my psych professor did randomly hand out a list of questions today (ungraded) so that we could test our knowledge of the lecture material for the past 3 classes. I knew 9 of the 10 answers and guessed the tenth correctly. The point of the exercise was to see if we were getting it. He said that if we got 5 or 6 correct, we should continue with our current study methods, but if we only knew 2 or 3 we might need to change our study habits to help absorb the lectures. I guess I'll just keep doing what I've been doing, which consists entirely of reading the chapter right before class and taking comprehensive lecture notes.
My anatomy professor allows us to use note cards during our lecture exams, and pretty much gives us our lab time to study independently with our partner. I purchased a set of pre-made flashcards to use as my primary study tool. I plan to supplement these with additional diagrams and other notes as necessary. My only concern with his class is that the material we're going to cover during lab doesn't sync up with the material from lecture. Fortunately, I've had this class 3 times now at different schools, so most of the material is review.
I have daily homework assignments for math. At some point I forgot that I'm really quite good at math. Assuming we're not thrown any curve balls, I should be able to do well on the exams just by consistently completing the homework.
The class I'm most nervous about is English Comp. It's been a very long time since I've written an essay. I seem to be doing well in the class. I'm definitely holding my own during our class discussions, and seem to have a better developed insight into the pieces that we've been discussing. I think this is mostly due to the fact that 75% of the class is under 21, and about half of them graduated from high school this year, like around 3 months ago. Not to say that makes them less intelligent or incapable of extracting the subtle meanings of complex prose, but they are used to be spoon fed ideas and have a more narrow experience to draw from. I'm curious to see how my writing measures up...
In other news, my cat Duke keeps pooping in somewhat random places. He had previously been occasionally pooping in my bathtub. But, I closed the door to that room and the situation seemed to have resolved, until recently. Now he's been pooping on my bedroom floor. Pretty much once a week for the past few weeks, usually on Sunday. He's totally going to the vet this week or next. He seems fine otherwise: eating normally, playing, and looking healthy.
On Thursday the check engine light came on in my car. Much like my cat, Stella seems fine, but the damn light continues to mock me. My gas mileage seems to have taken a nose dive in the past couple of days, and she idles hard until she warms up. The good news is....she's inspected until July of next year, so if it is an involved repair, I have some time to save for it. I'll take it to get looked at in a couple of weeks provided the situation doesn't worsen or resolve (sometimes my check engine light simply goes back off).
The great juggling of work and school is exhausting but I'm keeping afloat so far. I've already brought up the fact that I may need to cut back a few hours if my school work starts to suffer.
I'm going to hold off until my first exams (or essay for English Comp) to say that any of the classes are easy. Although my psych professor did randomly hand out a list of questions today (ungraded) so that we could test our knowledge of the lecture material for the past 3 classes. I knew 9 of the 10 answers and guessed the tenth correctly. The point of the exercise was to see if we were getting it. He said that if we got 5 or 6 correct, we should continue with our current study methods, but if we only knew 2 or 3 we might need to change our study habits to help absorb the lectures. I guess I'll just keep doing what I've been doing, which consists entirely of reading the chapter right before class and taking comprehensive lecture notes.
My anatomy professor allows us to use note cards during our lecture exams, and pretty much gives us our lab time to study independently with our partner. I purchased a set of pre-made flashcards to use as my primary study tool. I plan to supplement these with additional diagrams and other notes as necessary. My only concern with his class is that the material we're going to cover during lab doesn't sync up with the material from lecture. Fortunately, I've had this class 3 times now at different schools, so most of the material is review.
I have daily homework assignments for math. At some point I forgot that I'm really quite good at math. Assuming we're not thrown any curve balls, I should be able to do well on the exams just by consistently completing the homework.
The class I'm most nervous about is English Comp. It's been a very long time since I've written an essay. I seem to be doing well in the class. I'm definitely holding my own during our class discussions, and seem to have a better developed insight into the pieces that we've been discussing. I think this is mostly due to the fact that 75% of the class is under 21, and about half of them graduated from high school this year, like around 3 months ago. Not to say that makes them less intelligent or incapable of extracting the subtle meanings of complex prose, but they are used to be spoon fed ideas and have a more narrow experience to draw from. I'm curious to see how my writing measures up...
In other news, my cat Duke keeps pooping in somewhat random places. He had previously been occasionally pooping in my bathtub. But, I closed the door to that room and the situation seemed to have resolved, until recently. Now he's been pooping on my bedroom floor. Pretty much once a week for the past few weeks, usually on Sunday. He's totally going to the vet this week or next. He seems fine otherwise: eating normally, playing, and looking healthy.
On Thursday the check engine light came on in my car. Much like my cat, Stella seems fine, but the damn light continues to mock me. My gas mileage seems to have taken a nose dive in the past couple of days, and she idles hard until she warms up. The good news is....she's inspected until July of next year, so if it is an involved repair, I have some time to save for it. I'll take it to get looked at in a couple of weeks provided the situation doesn't worsen or resolve (sometimes my check engine light simply goes back off).
The great juggling of work and school is exhausting but I'm keeping afloat so far. I've already brought up the fact that I may need to cut back a few hours if my school work starts to suffer.