This Quarter

In case you hadn't noticed, there are a few major elements in my life right now. I eat, sleep, and breathe these, its rather frightening. However. School is the big one. So, you get to hear about school...lots.


Biology:
I love biology. It is soo cool, I could read the text for fun, if I weren't lazy, and I love the lectures. Despite the fact that the teacher is kind of intimidating and could care less about the students in his class of 700.

However, this class employs a torture device called a clicker. Simply said, they give you multiple choice exam questions during class and you use a small, phone sized device to submit your answers. These question make up a good 20 percent of your grade. Sadly, this destroys my whole strategy of coming to class in a zombie like state and taking super detailed notes. These are hard questions, which, combined with the phenomenon I have observed where, in every testing situation you will miss at leas a couple questions, is putting quite the dent in my grade. My good exam scores are not making this loss of points look any better.

We happen to discuss these clicker questions with the people sitting around us, I believe I already mentioned those I sit with. For once, I am sitting with a bunch of cocky, rude males. They are doing more poorly than I am, which is not helpful. Well, maybe not quite. I can explain stuff to them...quite a task. I can also thank them for my vague understanding of Hardy-Weinburg. They are all physics people... (What is it with me and math/physics people? I swear...)

Luckily, we have a weekly, 2 hour lab, which is awesome. Our TA is hilarious, and we get to do the most random things. We spent last week looking at the bacteria grown from samples from out face. My bacteria are slightly resistant to Penicillin, but sensitive to the other three. In case you were wondering. But, anyway. The TA was talking about the mechanisms of genetic variation, using the facial bacteria as examples He kept this up when he came to gene flow, or migration. Which, would require the two colonies mixing... Then he can up with this example of how it might happen, which consisted entirely of "So, its late night at Earl's place...and things are happening." It was amusing, to say the least.

Math:
Math 124, oh how we love thee, (maybe?)weed out class. Honestly, this stuff sucks. The Teacher is amazing, she explains things really well and is very cool. She uses 'blah' as a descriptive term, makes arm motions whenever she uses brackets for something, and plays really random music in the 10 minutes before class.

Sadly, we spend half the week with out very unclear, confusing TA. Sure, she's nice, but she's rather useless as far as help goes. The work is also school-wide, so all calc classes cover the same stuff at the same pace. They love these complex, terminology problems, and rely on the very ineffective worksheets(in section, led by our own TA) to teach us core concepts.

On the bright side, I am learning some pretty awesome stuff. I love limits, just the whole idea is so cool... That a line is approaching a certain y value as it approaches x, yet it does not actually matter what that y value is... Yeah, just cool. And, then there are derivatives. Which, are just fun, as long as they're the nice ones. I feel a bit odd though... Here I am, struggling this stuff that it seems like a vast majority of my friends already know... Its more than a little embarrassing.

Verdict, I wish I had taken this class at CBC. Badly. That I have my own, personal math tutor is probably the only reason I have not died yet. I am so lucky he is patient with my denseness... Or feels obligated to help his poor struggling girlfriend. Either way, I may pass this class. so...not complaining. Although, he gets props for teaching me this stuff over MSN.

I took a test this morning, actually... It wasn't too scary, but I'm sure I missed something, so... Well, next Tuesday! I get to know how poorly I did...

Anthropology:
Anthropology of Rock and Roll, my fun class for the quarter. So far, it is absolutely awesome. The teacher is awesome, lectures are interesting. We have a really boring textbook to read, that he disagrees with on a great many concepts. He also plays music in the 10 minutes before class. Only, he plays rather epic music videos and concerts on a massive projector.

Our final project for this happens to be a video ethnography. We are supposed to create what is essentially a short essay, in video form. Only cooler. Its actually going to be really awesome. I'm thinking about doing mine on casual music players in public environments, and whether that is participatory or presentational music--both concepts discussed in class--or both/neither, my personal view. However, the project is not looking like its gonna be easy... I really need to go videotape some people. So far I have one random piano player, who wants to not be recognizable, and okay from the music players on my dorm, and a great deal of footage of my experimental victim (aka. Sam).

I love all the exposure to new music I am getting in this class... Its actually rather amazing. I mean, my tastes were broad before, but I am hearing all these new people/bands, and being forced to ones I had always avoided. Its got to be really good for me, and I quite enjoy it.


Work:
Still working in the bird lab. I've gotten to go out to the field more this quarter, which is nice. We get to tromp around the woods, hunting down small, brown ground-foraging birds, trying to see their leg bands, and recording their songs. When I've gone out, they've had playbacks, and if we're lucky, one of the birds gets pissed and attacks the speaker... Its amusing. I'm a little worried about how I'm going to get all my hours in though, because I really only just got an actual task this week... I get to clip repertoires out of field recordings. Which, is pretty cool, actually... One of the lab people followed the bird around with a mic and just recorded him singing. I get to learn how to do that soon, I hope... As cool as it it though, I've been working on hbms for 3 days now, and hes getting rather repetitive.

I have also been assigned to help with one of the main projects. This is what you get when you ask for more stuff to do when they are running out of tasks... They stick you on their baby and say "Good luck! You'll do fine." Really.

A little background. I work in the song-sparrow lab. For the past quarter, I have looked at a lot of graphs of the songs of song sparrows, organized them, cleaned them, and printed them. Each bird has about 8 songs, and they have several hundred birds recorded. Needless to say, I was pretty busy. Each bird learns their songs from another bird, or tutor, when they are young. Then, as they mature, their repertoires crystallize and become set with certain songs that they will sing for the rest of their life. They use songs to communicate with their neighbors, songs that they have in common, specifically.

The lab's main goals are to examine the song learning process and neighborhood dynamics via shared songs.

The big job they set me on it seeing what songs match in a neighborhood between birds. There are a total of 4 people on this task. Me, the main grad student, the lab coordinator, and someone who has been involved since the lab's beginning, over 10 years ago. Needless to say, I am rather concerned.


Wow...this turned into a novel. Don't worry! I did not write it all at once. And, well, I have a captive audience, its rather unusual. ^ ^"