Internet Course

This fall I'm going to be trying out an internet course. Since Scientific Terminology fell through, I'm going to take Medical Terminology. But when I looked at the class schedule online, all the stats were TBA. I e-mailed the teacher asking what time generally it would be held at, and she said it would be an internet course so you did it on your own time whenever you feel like it. That sounds pretty neat, but I will regret not being able to meet all my classmates, since there is no class. Now I will have no one to commiserate with. Anyway, I'm going to try out this whole internet course and see if I like it. Who knows? I might take another one someday.

By the way, all my blog posts on Medical Terminology will be under the label Ph. Therapy. Just because. Although, I might get more posts out of the poor neglected computers label with this class.

Over and Done

It is an extreme relief to be finished with my 20-page literature review. It was due Monday, but the teacher decided to delay the deadline to Wednesday because so many people weren't done. After thinking about it for a few seconds, I turned it in. After all, it was finished. What was I going to do to it in two more days? Anyways, I can now chill. It will be nice to not have to know so much about teratomas. Ah. A few minutes ago Mom asked me if I had any thing I had to be working on. Besides for a Latin test tomorrow, a Grant Proposal due next Friday, a paper on the Use of Physics in Real Life due next Thursday, a Genetics worksheet due Thursday and a Genetics test on Tuesday, I have almost nothing to do. Ah, sweet blissful rest.

More Work than Completely Necessary

Does it ever seem to you that you do more work than is really necessary? Last Tuesday, MyChelle from Choices sent me a message on Facebook asking me if I could find out for her who puts together the Welcome Packages, the packages that are given to all the people who are getting a dorm for the first time. Anyway, I waited until Thursday so I could ask Tyler, the SGA president who took care of those. He advised I see "Val from the Housing Department" with my questions. Anyways, I struck out from the computer lab today towards the "Stacy Town Center" until I realized I had no direction where it was. I got directions from a random handy passer-by and successfully found the Housing Department, down on the crook of University Street and McCallie. Alas! They told me I had to go the Admissions Department because they were the people who put those together.
"OK," I said, "Where is the Admissions Department."
"Uh, hold on," the lady dialed a number, assumably the Admissions Department's, "Hey, where are you guys at?"
Inaudible speaking from the phone.
"They're in the UC, right across from the computer lab. You know where the UC is, right?"

Groooooooooan... I can't believe I had to walk all the way to McCallie and back when all it took was for me to walk across the lobby. Blaaaaaaaaah.

Petitions

Hey, if any of you haven't heard, I recently bothered Dr. Davies into accepting a petition for Scientific Terminology. It was tough and it was deferred nearly a dozen times. Anyways, today he popped out a petition and said it was for "Classical Mythology." When I was giving my petition, he said there was simply not enough staff to offer the class. However, when a student asked him if he would offer it, he replied, "No not personally, but I'm sure we can find someone to offer it." Blargh! You two-faced little Latin professor! Here's an indirect statement for you: Puto te mendacem esse!

Thrown Under the Bus

Saturday is usually the day when I make sure that all homework for the next week is complete. Alas and Alack, this Saturday shall be, shall we say, otherwise occupied. Therefore, I'm trying to get as much homework done today as possible. I am fortunate that since Physics Lab finished on Wednesday I have no more Physics Lab type homework to do. Also, although I have two papers in the works, neither is due next week. Although it kills my heart to put them off, I fear I must for the sake of my sister. (ha ha, yeah right. Look at me, dying of procrastination!) There is only one thing due next week, that is Genetics Homework due Tuesday. I swear by my beard, I shall have it done today! And as Touchstone might point out, since I have no beard, I am not forsworn! Ha!

David finished Calculus!

This morning, David finished his Calculus book. I figured it was worth noting because:

a) it is not every day you finish calculus, and

b) it is not every day someone finishes calculus before hitting 100 lbs.

As Dad said, David might be the first person to finish Calculus before reaching 100 lbs since Isaac Newton, who was just a puny squirt when he invented calculus. Imagine that. Of course, he was actually about 15 when he finished inventing Calculus and was probably over 100 lbs, but hey. Who really cares?

P.S. I was 15 when I finished Calculus AP, so I was probably over 100 lbs. Alas.

Vintage Dance!

Alright! Last night's vintage dance was a success! Woo hoo! There were circa 30 people there. It was great. I called pretty much every dance. It was a lot of fun. Everything was terrific. For a while, people kept showing up at the wrong room so we had to keep running out there to check the room for lost stragglers. That was A-OK. Of course, even the family who provided the sound was lost. I was quite worried that they wouldn't show up for a while, but fortunately they were just in the other room the whole time. Phew. Anyways, the biggest success of the evening was the Hat Dance. For some reason, everyone really liked it. Anyways, I'm glad it was a humongous success. Hopefully UTC will let us meet over the summer, although I have a feeling there will be some condition preventing this.

Advisement

Well, I have now been advised. I signed up for a time slot 40 minutes long, and I got out before I was even supposed to start. It was very short. In fact, he didn't say anything about any class I was taking except his own. He noticed that I had taken few 300 level biology courses (almost none) and explained to me that in his class you need a knowledge of all sorts of classes from the 300 level or else you won't understand the meaning of some of the words he's saying, and he typically gives sophomores D's and F's because they lack academic maturity, and people think it is such a good idea to take a non-lab class because they'd have to work less but they don't realize they have to work MORE, blah blah blah, etc. The usual kind of teacher warning: Don't take my class unless you are going to work for it.

Of course, I've never intended not to work hard at anything I've ever done, so I think I'll be fine.

Medical Terminology

All semester long I've been trying to get a petition signed to get a class offered called "Scientific Terminology." It covers Latin and Greek roots in Medicine (and assumably a wider variety of science.) Yesterday, a pair of PHYT major girls I was eavesdropping upon were debating whether they should take "Medical Terminology."

"Hold on!" said I, "Medical Terminology? Is that the same thing as Scientific Terminology." Vapid stares and shrugs.

"It's PHYT 302, now PHYT 3020," said one of the girls.

Hmmm, thought I, perhaps Medical Terminology is the class for me!

Anyway, if my petition does get rejected, (right now it is just being ignored), I will sign up for Medical Terminology as long as my schedule fits. Hoorah! That solves my 14 hour dilemma!

Ah! Forgotten!

Usually I wear a watch. In fact, every day I wear a watch. Every morning I wake up and put my watch on immediately. How can I forget to do something I do every day!? Ah! Now I need to use computers and clocks to know what time it is and I can't set an alarm to go off when I need to go to class! Annoying! I just hope I didn't forget anything else, anything more important...

Class Ladder

Well, here are a bunch of classes I'm looking at. I'll pick one for each time slot, hopefully. It won't be too hard because I don't really have any overlaps.
Monday Wednesday Friday:
8:00 - 8:50
Organic Chemistry with Mebane!!! Woo hoo!
9:00 - 9:50
Organic Chemistry with Kim Jisook... Not really, but I am not going to rule it out because Megan might be there.
10:00-10:50
Quantitative Analysis with Lynch, might be too much, but if friends are here, I'm not ruling it out.
11:00-11:50
Bio-ethics with Dr. Plaisted! Happy dancing!
Tuesday Thursday:
10:50-12:05
Biogeography with Dr. Shaw! And Megan! Hoorah!

You might have noticed that this is 14 hours maximum. Yeah. I'm still looking for another class. Of course, the only classes I have left to take are Biology classes and classes that fulfill Western Humanities requirements. If my friends take any classes that fulfill these descriptions, I'm in. Otherwise... 14 hours isn't so bad...

Registration

Today I resolved to find a registration adviser and sign up. Since I am trying to build relationships with the faculty so I'll have someone to ask for a recommendation letter for medical school, I decided to sign up for my Genetics Teacher's registration. Alas! Her entire Monday section was booked up. All that was left was Friday afternoon the week of the wedding. I told her I'd have to think on it and left for two hours. I came back and all the Friday slots were taken too. I have an extremely popular Genetics teacher. I sighed and decided to check out Dr. Shaw, because I'm taking a class from him next semester. He only has three names in half as many slots. Poor guy. I signed up for a choice time on Monday. Perhaps Dr. Shaw will be the perfect professor for me to build a relationship with because he has so few other students demanding his time.

Ode to Mom

Hey hey hey! It seems like I've been doing a ton of Ode to So and So posts lately. That is because there are so many birthdays to celebrate. It is my Mom's birthday today. Happy birthday Mom! I nearly forgot it was and asked Dad what the cake he was making was for. Lexie laughed at me. Also, in honor of Mom's birthday, I was the only student to get over 100% on Tuesday's Physics test. Ping! As it turns out, Physics was the first subject Mom ever almost got a B in. (She went to the teacher and argued it up to an A-) Well, to Mom! May you live a long and happy life with your wonderful college GPA and even more wonderful children! Ping!

Shirts

Sometimes as I wander around campus someone will comment on my shirt and I will only just realize that I have been wearing a statement. For example, right now I am wearing my shirt with a face of Ronald Reagan on it. Earlier in the semester a random guy in my class complimented me for it. It turned out that he was the president of the College Republicans and invited me to join it. Weird coincedences. I haven't taken him up on it and am trying to avoid talking to him because it seems kind of rude not to show up to a club when you are personally invited.

Other shirts I have include shirts with Winston Churchill quotes on the back, dozens of mildly pro-life shirts, one shirt that is rabidly pro-life: As a former fetus, I oppose abortion!, shirts with Republican logos like Don't Tread on Me! and Viva la Revolucion!, etc.

I also noticed that in class I am always acting like there are two sides to the argument. You know, keep your head down, when your teacher says something slightly controversial and some student somewhere in the back makes some sort of moron comment picking a fight with everyone in the room, just ignore them. Or if I am called upon to answer a question that I could totally pick fights on, usually questions on politics and current events, I tend to give measured answers. However my shirts betray me. No matter how measured and reasonable I act I am in truth a Rabid Republican.

P(Moron)

What is the probability that after you flip 7 coins, all of them will be tails? The answer is 1/2^7, which is 0.7% that all coins will show tails. When it comes to true/false questions, the probability is the same. There is a 0.7% chance that a student guessing totally at random will get all seven true/false questions wrong. The percentage should be even lower given that the student actually studied. Well, people, this just goes to show that you can't trust statistics. I got all seven true/false questions on the test wrong. Because I did fairly well on all the other questions, only losing 1.5% on short answer and 6% on the multiple choice questions, I pulled through with a B. I really need to learn how to tell misleading statements that sound true from factual statements that sound false.

P.S. DNA is negatively charged. Who knew!

Excuses

I'm back from Spring Break, which means I'll be blogging again. For all my dedicated fans who checked the blog every two or three minutes to see if I posted, I'm sorry. I really only blog when I'm stuck at school with nothing to do, like I am now. I am going to go to my Genetic Teacher's office to look at the test soon. The B I got has burned inside me all week long nearly causing me to go insane. I need to know what I did wrong so I will never do it again as soon as possible. It is too bad that the teacher doesn't hand back the tests though. Oh well. It would probably be unhealthy to do nothing but stare at a Genetics test beating myself up for as long as I wanted to anyway.

Easy as Cheesecake

I might as well tell all of you this now, I got my driver's license this morning. Don't worry, most of the roads are still safe. My parents have told me that I will not drive to anywhere except for Wal-Mart and Golden Gallon for the first month of having a license. Of course, as previous experiences with Golden Gallon have shown, this doesn't necessarily mean I'll be any safer. Cheers.

The driving test was phenomenally easy, however. I can't believe Alexie failed it. Of course, when she turned left she turned into the wrong lane, so maybe it is slightly understandable. On her second try, she drove around the entire testing site with her trunk open. Sigh. Alas for Alexie. Of course, I'm brilliant, and since she didn't require me to park in front of any gas stations I passed with flying colors.

Bested

Well, this might come as a surprise to some of you, but my ranking system is better than Fiore Dei Liberi's. Ho ho! Well, I guess I've proved how completely awesome I am in a poll that was only taken by five people, one of whom was myself and the other four were friends of mine. It looks like I am totally terrific. I think I should think up more polls like this, just to boost the ole ego some. (Not that it really needs it, though.)

Zanier Mocsnet

I have been religiously checking my mocsnet account every day anticipating the addition for Fall 2010 class registration. Hasn't happened yet. However, if you go to UTC.edu, you will see that they changed the login button to something bright blue, theoretically a computer monitor of some sort. Why they made the login button a computer, I do not know. Anyway, my eye is immediately drawn to it since it is bright and blue and off the norm. As I stare at it, I realize it is too small to replace what was there formerly. At least it is zanier or something.

Retrospect

A couple of weeks ago I had two tests the same week: Physics and Genetics. Genetics test came back and I had a 92. The teacher was really happy and said that the average was a B and since she didn't believe in curves, nothing bad was going to happen to us. She reminded us that all the Mendelian Genetics stuff was review, so don't ease up on studying for the second test just because we did well on the first test, etc. The Physics test on the other hand was very scary. I received a C, but because the class average was an F, not only under 60% but under 50%, I got an A. Well yesterday, I had the second exam on both.

The Physics test was a cakewalk. Everything was so easy. I don't have my grade back but I think I did astronomically! (Get it!? Physics! Astronomy! Ha ha ha! Oh whatever.)

On the Genetics test, however, I suspect that I did worse than on the last test. Because it was multiple choice, I think I managed to use my test taking genius powers to keep myself from dropping too far, but we will have to see. For one thing, I didn't study numbers. For example, how many base pairs are found on DNA or how many nm long is each nucleotide. Those questions were kind of like history questions that said "In what year was Franklin Pierce inaugurated?" And you think to yourself, "Dude! I have that in my notes, but I didn't look at it once!"

But here's the trick. The question was worded like "If there are 1734 strands of DNA, how many nm is that?" And the answers were "1.734, 17,340, 173.4, and 7253." Now, since I knew that nothing in the world was convenient enough to be exactly 10 or 0.001 nm in length. I could tell what the correct answer was. I hope.

PS. DNA is negatively charged, True or False? I said False, because I am now covered just in case DNA isn't charged at all.

Anyway, here's what Dad suggested, when the class does well, the teacher makes the next test harder. When the class bombs, the teacher makes the test easier. This sounds pretty reasonable so I tend to believe it.

Brain Death

I just finished my second test of the day. When I was finished with it, my Physics test looked like a series of scribbles. (Which it was.) At least I feel confident that I didn't make too many careless errors. I'm going to have to get my test back before I know exactly how many algebraic errors were made, but here's an error that I caught: I did the right hand rule... with my left hand. Seriously. Wake up, Duncan! I'm so tired, it is not even funny. And I didn't even stay up past 10:00 last night.

And that Genetics test nearly killed me. There must have been a dozen questions that I took random stabs on. The best part about multiple choice tests is that no teacher can take away my points if I get them all right. The worst part is that they can't give me any credit if I get them all wrong. Sigh.

Confirmed Ball

I got an e-mail this morning asking me to confirm the Chattanooga rooms on March 22nd for the Vintage Dance Club. If anyone has any qualms with it being on the Monday before Heather's wedding... Too late! I confirmed. Now it is definitely happening. So now I'm just throwing around ways of getting the word out: E-mail, UTC-MEMO, Posters, etc.

Oh yeah, and before I forget I booked the room for 5:30 to 10:00 so I can hold an one hour long refresher course/workshop for newbies right before the actual ball begins. I am pumped. I hope I get a million people.

Pumping Physics

Studying for Physics tests is very painful. Last night I began studying at 8:00 with intention to study until 10:00. It happened that by 9:45 I was so sick of Physics and all its variables that I went to sleep with a Physics-induced headache. All night Physics formulas jumbled around in my head. I am now a Physics Robot, which might or might not help with my test.

Right now my head feels like my muscles do a day after lifting weights. Very sore and dully throbbing.

I got a job!!!

Hey, I've heard there is a really bad economic downturn right now. Well, apparently it hasn't hit Chattanooga. I have received a job offer from the Physics department and have already gotten a job as a TA in the Chemistry lab from June 13-July 11. Perhaps nobody applies for this job because it starts at 8:00 in the morning and they don't want to have to wake up their cranky sister on a warm summer day to get her to drive him. That is possible. In my case, however, the economic profit exceeds the economic cost. Then again, this might be a heavy incentive for my parents to get me my driver's license so they won't have to put up with Alexie and me.

Weekly Planner

Recently Mom put her foot down and said I absolutely must clean out my nook. I could see her point: It was beginning to obstruct my access to the bed. So I was sorting through stuff setting aside junk to be thrown away when I came across a Weekly Planner for 2008, never used. That went to the junk heap but I realized that all Mom's attempts to get me to organize myself have come to naught. This morning, I was given an assignment in which I spend two hours on a Saturday asking people why they are using the Riverpark and that I'm supposed to keep abreast of myself because all the students were assigned different dates and locations. Therefore the teacher won't be reminding us when we need to do it. I wrote it on my arm, but I get the feeling it won't last until March 20th. Therefore I will vicariously use my blog to remember a date.

Hear ye, future self, You signed up for the Riverpark Project on Saturday, March 20th, from 11:00 to 1:00 at Amnicola Marsh.

I think that when the teacher said Amnicola Marsh was "Shady" she meant "Having many trees and pavillions to keep off the sun."