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Aug. 29th, 2012 06:19 pmThis is a lovely and beautiful day of having very little to do. I got Isaac and Elise up and fed and dressed and ready for school; I set Jake up with breakfast and various educational things. I took a nap. I read to Jake and Elise, after I picked her up. I went to the health food store for probiotics and rice dream pies. I read fanfiction and looked out my windows at all the shifting green. I sat around laughing at playing cats with Ananda and Aaron.
Can you believe we lost a banana tree in that silly not-even-a-storm? I think it's natural selection; that fool ass tree apparently had to go.
Yesterday I started my fall classes, the experience of which I will now review:
Taking Classes During Weekdays: I give this a C; on the one hand, it's nice to be out and about during the day and to have a lot of people on campus. On the other hand, it's 95 degrees instead of 82 as I walk around, and I suddenly got WAY older because (apparently) all the 18-20 year olds take their classes on weekdays. So yesterday was the first day of 13th grade and everyone was outfitted in true Miami fashion. Like I'm the only person with a backpack? Not a total loss since I can go to the office to do administrative things while I'm already there and not on a special trip.
Kendall Campus: Eh, I don't know. I personally prefer Homestead, which is far more air conditioned, and green. At Kendall you are constantly surrounded by concrete; wherever you go you're covered and surrounded by all this weird extraneous concrete "architecture". So, blocked in with no airflow but still outdoors O_o They also don't bother to cool places like bathrooms or elevators? WTF, Kendall? I also liked not having to walk 2 miles between my parked car and my classroom (I mean heck I liked being able to bike over to school...) It's also sort of a drag to not be able to spend my last semester at MDC running into people I've gotten to like/know, which I would have down here (they weren't offering any of the classes I needed). *shrug*
Spanish 2 is full immersion level. Teacher and students only speaking in spanish. Cons: it's in a subterranean, windowless, TINY classroom that's basically under the pool - the teacher was half an hour late because he couldn't find it. We're required to spend x amount of hours PER WEEK, in the lab, as it's 4 (rather than 3) credits. Pros: I think I'm in about the upper 35% of people, comprehension-wise, and I want to learn more spanish anyway. Also it's one of the rare classes with a flat surface big enough to set books on, for desks.
earth science is JAM PACKED, there are like 50 people in the super tiny stupid desks that are actually physically uncomfortable for anyone who isn't skinny and where you can't set anything down without keeping a hand on it or it hits the floor. The teacher is this droning guy who is gonna lecture us all semester in his dry and neverending way. He is sometimes unintentionally entertaining when giving us permission to "bring in tape decks" if we want to record him, and saying we should really look into "That financial aid" since it's come a long way and now, in addition to money for classes and books, he hears you can sometimes also get some extra to put towards "Gas for the old jalopy." Syllabus looks like a breeze.
abnormal pysch is AWESOME. The teacher is a no-nonsense, really culturally with it woman who got burnt out working with homeless drug users at a local halfway house and decided to teach for a break. We're doing hypothetical case studies and analyzing music and talking about DSM diagnostic criteria and ethical problems and I am just all about it. Also, this class has psych prerequisites so everyone in it is a psych major, so it's full of weirdos and that is great because there's a lot of discussion time and if there's anything I love, it's interacting with other weirdos :)
ALSO, school related - I got the statistics bs worked out and can drop that for the fall and have it done and over with! Not thrilled that it only went from an F to a C (I got As in my other two summer classes), and not sure what criteria they used to determine the new grade, but I get where the math chair is coming from - he can't give me an A for a subject I freely admit I wasn't really taught. I think that based on my own studying the final I took in the math department after the class was over earned a C, and so he's just leaving it at that. This is a big relief, as I really didn't have time or resources to devote to it this fall but didn't want to push my graduation date back for a variety of reasons (surgery in the spring, we might even be moving around then).
Can you believe we lost a banana tree in that silly not-even-a-storm? I think it's natural selection; that fool ass tree apparently had to go.
Yesterday I started my fall classes, the experience of which I will now review:
Taking Classes During Weekdays: I give this a C; on the one hand, it's nice to be out and about during the day and to have a lot of people on campus. On the other hand, it's 95 degrees instead of 82 as I walk around, and I suddenly got WAY older because (apparently) all the 18-20 year olds take their classes on weekdays. So yesterday was the first day of 13th grade and everyone was outfitted in true Miami fashion. Like I'm the only person with a backpack? Not a total loss since I can go to the office to do administrative things while I'm already there and not on a special trip.
Kendall Campus: Eh, I don't know. I personally prefer Homestead, which is far more air conditioned, and green. At Kendall you are constantly surrounded by concrete; wherever you go you're covered and surrounded by all this weird extraneous concrete "architecture". So, blocked in with no airflow but still outdoors O_o They also don't bother to cool places like bathrooms or elevators? WTF, Kendall? I also liked not having to walk 2 miles between my parked car and my classroom (I mean heck I liked being able to bike over to school...) It's also sort of a drag to not be able to spend my last semester at MDC running into people I've gotten to like/know, which I would have down here (they weren't offering any of the classes I needed). *shrug*
Spanish 2 is full immersion level. Teacher and students only speaking in spanish. Cons: it's in a subterranean, windowless, TINY classroom that's basically under the pool - the teacher was half an hour late because he couldn't find it. We're required to spend x amount of hours PER WEEK, in the lab, as it's 4 (rather than 3) credits. Pros: I think I'm in about the upper 35% of people, comprehension-wise, and I want to learn more spanish anyway. Also it's one of the rare classes with a flat surface big enough to set books on, for desks.
earth science is JAM PACKED, there are like 50 people in the super tiny stupid desks that are actually physically uncomfortable for anyone who isn't skinny and where you can't set anything down without keeping a hand on it or it hits the floor. The teacher is this droning guy who is gonna lecture us all semester in his dry and neverending way. He is sometimes unintentionally entertaining when giving us permission to "bring in tape decks" if we want to record him, and saying we should really look into "That financial aid" since it's come a long way and now, in addition to money for classes and books, he hears you can sometimes also get some extra to put towards "Gas for the old jalopy." Syllabus looks like a breeze.
abnormal pysch is AWESOME. The teacher is a no-nonsense, really culturally with it woman who got burnt out working with homeless drug users at a local halfway house and decided to teach for a break. We're doing hypothetical case studies and analyzing music and talking about DSM diagnostic criteria and ethical problems and I am just all about it. Also, this class has psych prerequisites so everyone in it is a psych major, so it's full of weirdos and that is great because there's a lot of discussion time and if there's anything I love, it's interacting with other weirdos :)
ALSO, school related - I got the statistics bs worked out and can drop that for the fall and have it done and over with! Not thrilled that it only went from an F to a C (I got As in my other two summer classes), and not sure what criteria they used to determine the new grade, but I get where the math chair is coming from - he can't give me an A for a subject I freely admit I wasn't really taught. I think that based on my own studying the final I took in the math department after the class was over earned a C, and so he's just leaving it at that. This is a big relief, as I really didn't have time or resources to devote to it this fall but didn't want to push my graduation date back for a variety of reasons (surgery in the spring, we might even be moving around then).
