Problem solved

I got 100/102 on my chemistry midterm. I also reinstalled my wireless drivers and it fixed a problem I'd been having. I didn't really expect the solution to be that easy. I was stressing and having a hard time with my latest philosophy paper, but today I had a brilliant insight and now I have a full draft so I'm in good shape. It's pretty rough and will need at least one serious revision before it goes in, but it's only Wednesday. I'll worry about Thucydides next week...

Fall break is over and second quarter is tomorrow

Fall break was nice, overall.

The beginning of the week was a little rough. I don't adjust well to suddenly becoming less busy. Suddenly becoming more busy isn't the greatest either, but I think I handle it better. When I suddenly run out of obligations, first I worry I'm forgetting things, and then I realize I don't have any backup plans or the backup plans I had no longer seem adequate/interesting. I also think I was suffering a little bit of PMS.

Little Sister went to Camp Hancock and then came back. E reminded me of how I came back from Outdoor School with annoying camp songs, but however shaky my memory may be I'm pretty sure she's more of a pain in their ass than I ever was, if for no other reason than she's been bringing back silly songs for years.

Philosopher-Linguist invited my family over for dinner and it was lovely. Both sides like each other which makes me happy. It was also really fun just preparing the dinner. I masterminded the pasta and he did the roasted vegetables.

I had lost my glasses while at my parents' house and got really frustrated by it. My mom found them and brought them back to me at dinner. Well, yesterday as I was riding home I slipped on some leaves on a corner (damn variable coefficients of friction!) and in the ensuing tumble my glasses were broken. After all that trouble. My helmet isn't visibly damaged, but I did hit my head so I should get a new one. Incidentally, when I got my physical last week they had me fill out a questionnaire and after the questions about alcohol, smoking, and drugs was "do you feel you engage in risky behavior?" I checked no, but wondered what they were driving at. When the nurse went over it with me, she said "now this one is really about wearing your helmet." I got out of yesterday with just a headache, but it gave me a stark look at what I'd be risking if I didn't wear the thing - it would have been bad. It's the first time I've needed that protection.

I read about half of the Odyssey. I don't really mind that I didn't finish it. Halfway is far enough that I'll be motivated to continue and not frustrated even if it has to be slow.

I'm already starting to worry about next semester, when I'll have more class and math at 8am. On the other hand, I'll be trading philosophy for math, which should be a lot easier. My philosophy professor assigned us a paper due the day after Halloween, which kind of puts a damper on the plans I was trying to wrangle up.

Midterms are over and fall break is here

I got 40/40 on my physics midterm. The average was 31, he said. E-chem and philosophy were 2-hour take-home exams, and humanities was a 50-minute timed essay.

Over fall break and I'm going to read the Odyssey, the rest of the Oedipus trilogy, and do some homework I can get ahead on. I thought I might also reread the Oresteia, but I think the Odyssey will take up enough time.

Went to see high school science teacher at Cleveland on Friday. Senor Evergreen is also in town, so I hung out with him and LS last night. Going to the pumpkin patch today withe Philosopher-Linguist and his mom and sister. He's inviting my family to dinner later this week. Roomie is gone for the break.

Been listening to my Beethoven CDs and really grooving to the 9th symphony, 2nd movement. I also finished Dexter season 2 last night. It's a really fun show. When I catch up to the present, I might start watching it as I watch House.

Drafting

Another thing that's going on academically is I think I'm learning to write my drafts rougher. This paper, I didn't even finish what I consider a complete draft until last night because I couldn't work on it very much last week, but it was long and rambled in the middle and generally was more pliable because it was less polished. I wonder if the sort of "write a bunch of shit down but don't worry about organization or a thesis" brainstorming I do is something other people would call a rough draft. But anyway, drafts that are less "together" have more room to reevaluate and change them without troubling any crucial aspects.

Science rules

Just finished my physics midterm and I feel great about it. There were four problems in 50 minutes and it was very much like the practice exam we did in conference: problem 1 was qualitative and in two parts, 2 was purely kinematic, 3 involved forces including friction, and 4 was on circular motion with a little bit of entangled gravity. The first three were pretty straightforward and reminiscent of previous conference problems. 4 was a familiar situation, but it asked to find a quantity I don't think we'd solved for before. I didn't know exactly what to do at a glance, but I worked it out, and my faith in things canceling out came to my aid. If it hadn't worked out correctly, I might have ended up with a dangling theta somewhere in my problem, or even a dangling mass (though masses tend to cancel), but my intuition told me I'd get a tangent in one place that would cancel with the tangent I had in the other place, and I did.

Around junior year my mom told me her theory that I have spatial and linguistic phases. Apparently when I was a kid I would draw OR write for alternating periods, but not generally both at the same time. Considering that in the last couple of years I think it's a pretty good theory. Anyway, I seem to be going back into a spatial phase. I've been taking notes on my reading with concept webs, where placement and size and arrow connections remind me how things are related. And on my midterm to show my train of thought, in quite a few places I would bracket equations I'd written previously and then draw arrows to the place where they explain something new I was writing down. In a linguistic phase I might just get it all straight and then write them down in an order that makes the connection obvious, or write notes explaining what I'm doing.

Health and such

Last week, as I wrote, was really busy and kind of stressful. After decompressing this weekend, on Monday I got up at a gentle hour of 7am and went for a run, followed by breakfast at Commons and a single hour of homework before class. I've followed the same schedule each day since then, except today when I only went for a mild jog/walk a few times around the dorm because I woke up with a sore-ish knee. I'm eating serotonigenic (caution: may not be an actual word) food and feeling really good. I have my physics midterm tomorrow, and next Friday one in class and two take-homes due, plus a lab write-up for the open-ended lab. My humanities paper is also due this Saturday at 5. I finished the whole Oresteia early, though, so I only have one more thing to read for humanities all next week. Then it's fall break.

Been watching House with LS at his house on Mondays.

Roomie had the flu for a couple of days and is just getting better. When she told me, the hand sanitizer went in my pocket - I do NOT want to get sick during midterms. I could have easily been exposed before she got sick anyway, but I figure as long as I don't wake up sick tomorrow, then it'll either hit over the weekend or by Monday be long enough that I'm in the clear.

Roomie also is maybe going to transfer to art school next semester. I wish she wouldn't go, I like her - and I also wonder what would happen with my room. Would they move me somewhere else? Would they put someone else in here with me? Do they get spring term transfers here? It's an awfully big room for one person.

Wow I'm busy

This week is some kind of unholy convergence. We've had the mother of all reading loads for humanities every single lecture this week, a paper due next Saturday, and I also have a paper due this Saturday for philosophy. It's ridiculous. On the other hand, the chemistry assignment for this week is atmospheric modeling with some Excel-based software, which is really cool, but it doesn't make me any less busy. In fact it might be slowing me down since I elected to work on that earlier today and now I'm too tired to focus on reading. So I'm going to go to bed and finish in the morning.