whoops

well damn, i haven't posted here in over two months. >_O it's not like very many people read it, since everybody who does is also on FB, but still.

updates since early July. the main thing, obviously, is that i've started at UNCA. it's the fourth week in. so far i've settled into a routine: my alarm goes off an hour and a half before class is due to start (8:30 on MWF and 8:00 of TR) so i have time to take my shower and get ready. then i go to the caf. for breakfast. their eggs are fairly decent, i must say, and the sausage when they serve it. on alternating days they serve bacon that drips with grease. with a glass of apple juice, because breakfast is the meal of the day when i eat more healthily, i'm set. that usually gives me roundabouts half an hour once i finish eating to sit up a tree in the Quad and people-watch before i go to class.

i like the tree-sitting. on pretty days i get my music and a book and climb up in that same tree and can spend all afternoon between classes just chilling out. it gets me out of the room, at least. i'm trying not to be too much of a hermit.

anyway, class. my schedule goes thus:
Monday: Chem 132, 10:00; Sociology, 11:25; Math 179, 2:45
Tuesday: Bio 115 lecture, 9:25; Bio 115 lab, 1:45
Wednesday: Chem 132, 10:00; Sociology, 11:25; Math 179, 2:45
Thursday: Bio 115 lecture, 9:25; Chem 111, 1:45
Friday: Chem 132, 10:00; Math 179, 2:45

so far, my favorite class has to be the math. hands down. simply because a) the prof is amazing, b) it's a FLLIP which means we're doing interesting/different extracurricular things, and c) i may not be much of a math person, but the nerd in me goes into geekgasms about some of the topics we cover. it's all about Phi (aka the Divine Proportion, or whatever you want to call it) and thus far in the book, just learning about the backstory behind Phi and the people who discovered/had a lot to do with it, it's damn cool. i am easily amused.

but back to the amazing professor part. i've mentioned this before through various means on FB, but prof. Ed could identify every student in the class (granted there are only ten or fifteen people in it) by name and face, by move-in weekend. i kid you not. he called us all out by name and pointed to us when there was a FLLIP meeting the Friday we arrived.

by the way, FLLIP is a new program just enacted this semester that works with the freshman LSIC courses and integrates some things into the curriculum that gets us out and involved. that's the gist, so people don't get confused when i keep mentioning it. back to the story though.

just last night was another time when my personal estimation of prof. Ed jumped up from its already very impressive standpoint. he had all of us over at his house for dinner. a couple of people helped cart all fifteen of us to his place, and we spent the next two and a half hours hanging out in his house. (by the way, i want his house. it's old and tiny and cozy and i wanted to steal it from him.) the first batch of six who arrived -- myself included -- helped pick basil and oregano from the stalks he'd taken fresh out of his garden to make some pesto. by the time everybody else got there and we'd all settled in and gotten relaxed, the pesto was made, and the meal began.

it was, in professor's words, a Some Assembly Required meal. three types of pasta-noodle-things, and a small army of things to go on it like mushrooms, onions, grilled chicken, and other such goodness. and the pesto, or typical spagetti cause if you preferred. or both. these were all separate so you could pick and choose, like a pasta bar. and it was all delicious. i mentioned to Lauren and the rest of the table that i wished there were doggie-bags on hand so i could bring a plate back to dorm. afters were sugar cookies that we could cut out ourselves with his collection of different-shaped cookie-cutters and decorate with M&Ms, sprinkles, and such.

probably around 9:45 or 10 or so, Ryan, the boss-overseer-person(i dunno his official title) of Founders Residence Hall, showed up. at the time, i was in a conversation with Keith and Steven over where the drinking age should be. Ryan got in on the conversation, which then turned into a half-speech thing that the whole room quieted down to listen to, the gist of which was that he'd rather we learn about booze while we're still under our parents' roof than his, and that we're adults now so we can do what we want and have fun as long as we don't make idiots of ourselves. then prof. Ed quipped, "Great! Now I need a drink." and everyone burst into laughter.

Steven nearly left his backpack. lucky for him someone noticed it. anyway, once we got on the way back, with most of us crammed into a bus driven by Ryan (hence why he'd showed up in the first place), the topic continued between Keith and Steven in the seats behind me. somehow it drifted toward the health care system, with Steven rather adamantly of the opinion that people should pay for their own damn health care. Ryan apparently heard the debate and put his own two cents in, and the rest of the ride was taken up by that other topic of discussion. i just listened to this part of it, since my say had been said for the night. i was a bit preoccupied reveling in the intelligent, logical debate rather than the sometimes heated arguments that had cropped up frequently in Huss whenever opposing viewpoints were aired. again, i am easy to please.

anyway. back to describing my classes, which was the original topic of this blog until i went off on a tangent. >_> my second favorite class is chem; at this juncture, i'm favoring the lecture more than the lab, simply because Schmeltzer is fun and awesome and the 111 lab requires a lot of standing around with annoying goggles over my face for three solid hours.

i say Schmeltzer is awesome for a few reasons. one: his teaching style. i wish my high school teachers had been this awesome -- Noblitt was but that's about all i can say -- it would've made Huss more bearable. prof. Schmeltzer cusses a lot. it's highly amusing. his style is just really casual and colloquial, which is a nice change. he's also cool in that he's quite accomodating, which is a relief for me. the day of the Journey concert, September 18th, is the day we take our first exam in chem 132. i'll have to be off-campus close to noon or one, and the exam is from 4:10 to 6:10. so when i approached Schmeltzer about this, he offered to let me take the exam a day early -- a few girls in the class are on the soccer team and will be gone that Friday as well, so ta-da! i can just take it with them! i was flabbergasted at the convenient coincidence.

anyway. in the scale of classes, the two labs come next. they're fun and interesting, though i get irked by the goggles we have to wear in chem 111. (the general chem lab has a different number than the lecture -- 111 to 132 -- but for bio, the co-requisite lab has the same number as the lecture. i dunno why.) we haven't done much in the bio lab -- we've only had two so far. chemistry was the only department with a lab the first week of classes, and for some reason Dr. Hale decided to give us an extra break and have no lab the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend.

soc is my least favorite class, for several reasons. main one: i took soc last year, and it has become clear that the general-level courses freshmen take are basically just high school courses all over again. so i already know most everything the prof is teaching us, and anyone who knows me knows that being re-taught something that i don't find very interesting is a form of torture to me. chem 132 is high school chem all over again, but i don't get bored because it's interesting. soc not so much. the other reason is that Dr. Lee is Korean, and as such has a very thick accent. he speaks English fluently, but i still have a hard time understanding more than one out of every three words he says. this is a bad combination. not to mention that the book is as thick and dense as the US History book Noblitt had us read. how in God's name someone managed to make a sociology book as tedious and irksome to read as that sin against literature i have no clue.

well. classes aside, life is decent on the whole. i still adore this place as much as i did when i first set foot on campus -- in fact, i love it even more. this place suits my temperament and preferences perfectly. there are inevitable drawbacks to college life, but outside of those i'm way to happy here to let little trivialities dampen my enjoyment of life. =D

but i do need to gripe a bit. my roomie Sarah and i get along well -- so far no problems or complaints, we're both easygoing and with similar enough ways that it's all cool there. the suitemates are a slightly different story. it's nothing major, but they have little tendencies that are a little annoying. they have a habit of leaving the light in the bathroom on when they're not there; not only is it a waste of electricity, but it makes us think someone's in there when it's empty. and their music can sometimes get kinda loud. mostly Sarah and i are listening to our own music so it's not too big of a bother, but it's still a little irksome.

that seems to be the end of my ramble. i still need to do one more prof. Ed assignment before class starts in a couple of hours. so i shall bugger off and do my homework.