Shadowfiend23 @ Wrocław

There’s something fun about the excitement of the first day of classes. New books, new teachers, new students!

So, my first day was on Tuesday, September 6, and I must say that it was a mild first day. I woke up at about 11:00 or so because I had a team meeting for PAL in Walter library at 12:20. The meeting went fine (luckily I had to give my mock introduction to the other facilitators before the PAL coordinator arrive). After that, I literally had no other classes and hence no work to do until my next class, Reading Libertinism, which starts at 6:00pm on Tuesdays. It is like a French literature class where we focus on the libertine, which should prove to be pretty uncomfortable, really. After that, I pretty much just went back to the apartment to sleep.

The next day was more of a first day because I had more classes, but it was technically the second (obviously). I had to scoot on over to St. Paul campus for my 1031 lecture (which begins at 8:30), something that is tiring to say the least. I walked up to the professor before class and shook his hand, something that I felt proud of afterwards because I think it takes a lot of courage to do so. After class, I trekked on back to my Honors Algebra class (10:10) on East Bank, which was almost already completely full.That class went fine, but I can definitely already tell that it will be a challenge and a lot of work. One thing that is nice about it is that almost everything is take home. So that is a little less worrisome. After that class, I went back to the apartment for some lunch and some rest. After the rest, I went off to my Quebecois literature class (a french class that I actually have already dropped because I was at 19 credits). That class went fine, but I had a very runny nose all hour (I forgot to mention that I have been slightly sick the past few days). After that class, I went to my Applied Linear Algebra class, which was also fine. However, I didn’t really like the professor at all. He has a very thick accent and he didn’t explain much, and he didn’t explain anything well. If only I could teach a class like that…

Anyway, after that class I had some down time. Deanna and I ended up getting some food at Potbelly’s while we prepared for our night Italian class. We went to the class and did usual first day stuff, but we actually ended up learning some Italian! I am very excited about that class. You can never know enough languages, in my opinion.

Just one more day to explain for now I think…

So today was Thursday, and the only things I really have going on Thursdays are PAL-related. In the morning I had/will have two sessions for Math 1031 (College Algebra and Probability). The sad part about the sessions today is that they did not go well at all. Well…that isn’t quite true, but they certainly didn’t go how I wanted them to. I got to the classroom about a half hour early, but strangely the door was locked. I asked random people in the building whether they could unlock it (nobody could) and then what I should do to unlock it. Someone in the tech department finally suggested calling the classroom support hotline. I did so, and the representative on the other end said that they were sending someone over right away. Unfortunately, the situation was not resolved until about 15 minutes before class ended, so we ended up having class in the hall. Oh well. Anyway, after class, I cleaned stuff up in the room and closed up the room for the next class. While I was leaving the room, I looked down the hallway to where my backpack had been sitting and realized that it was gone. Someone seemed to have stolen my backpack. Great, I thought. What a great thing to deal with while trying to lead another session. But I had to. There were only five minutes before the next session, so I just had to pull through and give the kids the kind of experience I think they deserve. That session actually went pretty well (we were in a classroom the whole time!). After class I just went up to the lost and found and retrieved my backpack. Apparently, one of the tech guys saw my backpack sitting alone in the hallway and was afraid that it would be stolen. He had good intentions. Anyway, I didn’t really have much planned for the rest of the day. At around noon or so, I received an email from the PAL coordinator informing all the facilitators that there was an opening for another session of Math 1051 (precalculus) for an afternoon session on Thursday. Because I had dropped that French class, I was actually now about to go to that session. I was pretty excited about that. That additional session will actually increase my hours quite a bit (for better or for worse). I introduced myself at the session, but I had found out too late about the opening to actually plan anything for that session. Oh well. There is always next week. After that, Deanna and I went to the Target in Nicollet to get some things, so that was fun. We had a nice little outing. The rest of the night was pretty relaxing; I just took a nap, did some reading, and watched one of Deanna’s favorite shows with her.

All in all, these first few days have been ok, but here’s hoping that next week will be more consistently pleasant.

Schneberger out!

This is too cool not to share—NASA has a Solar System Simulator that shows you what the solar system looked like from earth when you were born. It only goes back to 1990, and you have to convert your birth time to UTC, but it is still really amazing! Click on the image to see the details.

Distant planets.












Inner planets.

From Dale – visualization of what 11 dimensions might look like.

Last night Tanya took Aaron, Deanna, and me to the Saint Paul Art Crawl. It was a lot of fun! My favorite part was the refurbished cigarette vending machine that was selling $5 works of cigarette-package-sized art, including a little box with a bunny on the front called “Bon Art Petit.” One of the artists had some paintings that reminded me of Aaron’s favorite book when he was younger. When he was about two years old, he used to walk around carrying volume 1 of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick. The subtitle and cover illustration are from “The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford.”

This was way before he could read, so I assumed that he just liked the picture. Since it came up in the conversation last night, I decided to read the short story again. It is about a man who discovers the Principle of Sufficient Irritation and invents a machine called the Animator that throws out a heat beam as an irritant. The idea is that annoying irritation is the origin of life. Inanimate objects became alive to escape the source of the irritation. Doc Labyrinth brings the Animator over to show a friend and sells it to the guy for $5 because he thinks it doesn’t work. The new owner puts his wet shoes in the machine to dry them out, and one of them comes alive. The story was originally titled “Left Shoe, My Foot.” The original title would not be nearly as much fun to illustrate.

So whenever you hear someone talking about being annoyed, they’re really telling you how alive they feel. Philip K. Dick would have been proud.

Aaron moved into Frontier Hall today. The move went very smoothly. We’re not sure if he brought enough video games, but he’s off to a great start!

Aaron’s roommate Jake had moved in yesterday. He seems very nice. He is from MapleWood, and has friends who were in Knowledge Bowl.

It’s hard to tell who is happier – Mom or Aaron!