Shadowfiend23 @ Wrocław

Well, I am now in the fourth week of all of my classes, and the pace is steadily quickening. French is still very stressful because I have so much that I constantly need to study, but I am becoming more comfortable with the class. I still am not comfortable speaking in from of my teacher. No, I point and/or mime my answer to her whenever I can. That isn’t a good sign in a language class. I am enjoying myself in Java – it all is making sense to me. I like to experiment and make my own Java programs, but I don’t usually have time to burn on that. However, when I do have some free time, I like to spend it programming. Physics just became much more confusing because we are starting relativity, but I am going to try to follow along the best I can. That’s really all I am hoping for in the relativity section anyway. Too bad for me that we spend a month on only relativity. C’est la vie. Anyway, Calculus is still easy, but the test on Friday has me worried. I am sure I will do well on it, but any points lost on a test are upsetting to me, and I find it incredibly easy to screw up a math test (with incorrect mental math, a misplaced negative sign, etc.), so we will see how it goes. Perfection in math is rare for me, even though my understanding is deep. So our electricity meter broke and somehow it was displaying zero when it was read – does this mean we just had a month with free electricity? I hope so. We’ll see, I suppose. Downtime hasn’t had bands playing there lately. I wonder what the explanation is for that. At any rate, I likes my quiet. Dishes are always piling up around here. How does that happen? It’s almost like the dirty-dishes fairy comes in at night and performs some “miracles.” Shoo fairy, shoo. Ha but anyway, I am still pretty upset that we don’t have a door on our bedroom. Four weeks after the quota-ed time? That’s pretty unacceptable in my opinion. I don’t care whether the doors have to be special-ordered, they should have arrived by now. Missing being home a bit now. Strange, huh? Well, I’ll leave on that note. Goodnight!

I am up very late right now, but I just can’t seem to sleep. This is my first post from my Droid, so we will see how this goes. I have a physics test this Friday, and I am pretty worried about it. I did not do well on my last graded homework (I missed a negative sign), so my grade looks quite weak right now. I have high hopes for it though. I had a very fun time on the hay ride last Sunday! It was also fun making cider, giving presents, and seeing the family again. It really is nice to be home. French is proving to be more difficult than I originally thought, but I think I can handle it. It just isn’t something in which you can fake proficiency. It takes a lot of work. Java is fun but my programming partner is bugging me. He always disagrees with me and erases any code I write without checking whether that is necessary. Ugh, I really dislike that. We made chocolate chip cookies today, and they were very delicious. I probably ate too many though. Oh well. I would like to write more, but I need to drift off to sleep with thoughts of great circles and tangent vectors…(no joke probably)

Well, the first week is now under my belt, and I remember how stressful it can be. I am currently juggling with the decision of dropping or keeping Astrophysics…so far, I don’t really enjoy the homework (as I do with math), and the professor is not as adept at explaining as I would like him to be. He obviously has great knowledge in the subject, but he’s not imparting it in the way I need. I can drop it without penalty until the 20th, so I have some time to mull it over. I am mostly enjoying all of my other classes (especially Math), but physics has been pretty boring since it has been all review. My Math teacher is actually pretty bad this year – he doesn’t explain anything very well and he is completely unapproachable. My Physics teacher seems very stereotypical of a university professor – he is old, gray-haired, long-bearded, and wears glasses – he is exactly what I expect from a physics professor. He teaches pretty well, and he is very deliberate, something I especially appreciate. My Java professor is very good – he seems to be “talking down to us”, or explaining all the topics as though he were speaking to those who have never really programed. Since I haven’t, it is very helpful. Also, he has a British accent, and I think it sounds very cool. My French teacher is abrasive and loud, and I am very tense when I am in her class. She yells certain words when she thinks they sound strange, and although it might help someone remember how to pronounce said word, it always scares me when she does that and is a large disincentive to speak for me. I wish I had a different French teacher… We still haven’t been given any closet hooks or a door (as we were promised), so I getting pretty upset about that. It is really difficult to study in the room when the tv is on downstairs, and the bar outside the apartment still keeps me up until two every night. On the whole, my first week in school has been very good. Sean stayed over on the weekend, and we had all kinds of adventures trying to find an AMC in which we could watch Resident Evil: Afterlife. Part of our excursion involved a homeless man falling over onto me, and a prolonged argument between two screaming women. I wish that we could have had another week or so to enjoy our apartment without school “getting in the way”, but it’s useless to hope for that I suppose…anyway, I am struggling still to find the right balance between sleep, recreation, and studying (and I am very thankful for the absence of “a job” in the previous list), but that always requires some fine-tuning. I accomplished it somehow last year, so we will see this year…I suppose that’s enough for now. More later, I hope!

So, as you can see, here I am on my first day of my sophomore year. It was a little hectic because I am not used to leaving from the Dinkydome, but thankfully it is very close to my classes. I woke up an hour before my first class (11:15 a.m.), showered, ate, finalized my schedule, took the above picture, and headed off to Honors Physics 3 at about 11:06. I timed the walk there using my phone’s stopwatch, so I now know that it takes about seven minutes to walk there. I hope to have my bike here soon, and I also hope that will speed my “commute” considerably. Physics was pretty dry, but the professor seems more serious than my professor last year. Is this a plus? Maybe…anyway, after physics, I scooted on over to Honors Calc. 3 discussion, where we basically reviewed all hour. I then returned to the Dinkydome, played a little plants vs. zombies, ate a wonderful sandwich (made by me), a bag of chips, a fruit-roll-up look alike, and drank a bottle of coca-cola. After that, I left for Astrophysics at 2:20 with part of the sandwich and the bottle of coke in hand. After sitting through a two hour lecture about the universe, I met Deanna and her brother on University Ave. We took Deanna’s bike to the Dinkydome, where her brother parted ways with us. After that, Deanna and I took her bike down to the garage for storage. After that, we went to Coffman to buy some school supplies. After purchasing some lovely binders and several hundred sheets of paper, we checked out the poster sale and decided the line was far too long. After all of that, Deanna laid down for a good nap and I went to work setting up bookmarks and things for my classes. Well, that was my first day of my sophomore year at the U of M. See you later!

So I have a lot going on this week, and I am looking forward to the weekend. I have two assignments to do tonight, not including the lab analysis I am required to have completed by Wednesday. Also, I have two tests on Friday and one on Thursday, so…we will see how that goes. Time sure flies by when you are busy. I had Sean stay over last weekend, and that was sure fun. (though I wish God of War had not been so disappointing or frustrating.) I curse the makers of rechargeable batteries! They keep fizzing out, and I have already bought two pairs of duds. Yuck. Well, time to study some statistics and physics. Seacrest out!

I have way too much to do for tomorrow and I don’t have nearly enough time to do all of it. I suppose I will need to find time…I know that I will. I have classes from 10 til 6 tomorrow, a dozen pages of Physics lab to do, and even more Physics homework due on Thursday! I am caught up in Calculus, but that doesn’t stop it from being a constant source of stress. We had a quiz today, but it turned out to be pretty easy. We move pretty quickly. But enough complaining for now. I really enjoy the snow that we have gotten lately. It is very pretty. Not only that, but I have been able to navigate through it on my bike without dying! I find that an accomplishment. I try to be safe, but there is only so much precaution I can take. Here’s hoping I make it to the next entry.

So the second semester has already started! I don’t feel like I have gotten into the full swing of things yet. I have still been riding my bike around, even though it is a horrible idea, not to mention a dangerous one. I almost ran into a man today because he cut in front of me. Maybe that is a cue for me to ride more carefully…well, I plan to add more to my blog later, but for now, I am tired from a long day of physics, calculus, french, and statistics.

What a Joker!

For Halloween, Deanna dressed up as a mummy, and I dressed myself up as the Joker from Batman: The Dark Knight. I photographed myself with the REAL joker in the background to illustrate the contrasts between the two of us. Personally, I believe Deanna did a wonderful job applying the makeup to my face – I think I actually looked pretty scary. Anyway, after we had our costumes on, Deanna, Jake, and I went to the movie theater to see The Shining. Despite technical problems with the projector, it turned out to be very enjoyable. After that, we went back to the dorm room and watched Saw I. Deanna didn’t appreciate it, but I thought it was “attention-grabbing” at the very least. That was the basic outline of our Halloween adventure.

So, as one can tell from the very name of my blog, I really like the number twenty-three. Although it may seem like I should have a complex reason for admiring it, the reason is really quite simple. In fourth grade, every student was given a number to help identify him/her when grading. Since I have a last name beginning with S, I was one of the last numbers in the class. Which number was I? Well, twenty-three of course! For some reason, I loved twenty-three from that point on. Whenever anyone would inquire about my favorite number, I would quickly tell them it was twenty-three, despite the fact that I had little reason to prefer it. Then, when the movie The Number 23 came out, I became excited. How cool is it for a movie to come out with the title and subject of your favorite number? Seeing the movie only propagated my love for the number twenty-three. Though I never have been and never plan to become as obsessed with twenty-three as Jim Carrey’s character is in The Number 23, I do plan on enjoying its presence whenever I can. Let’s just hope I don’t go crazy and start professing my adoration in the form of incoherent babbling.

Bright Eyed

Here I am on the first day of classes. I wasn’t too happy because I needed to wake up at 7:00 a.m., but I realized that I would have to get used to it throughout the school year. This picture was taken at Deanna’s apartment because I wanted to go pick her up so we could go to classes together. After this picture was taken, we scurried off to our respective classes. It was a pretty good start to my college career.