Having survived day 1 of my UT education, I soldiered my way at 8am yesterday morning to my final two classes. I mentioned in my other blog that I expected the day to present a lot more work and challenging classes... well, I got two extremely friendly professors who seemed genuinely interested in the students doing well and learning the important stuff from them.
Chemistry in the morning was a bit dull, but only because it was 8am and I was tired from only getting 6(ish) hours of sleep the night before. It did get better after we went over the syllabus, though! She brought out three balloons and asked us if we could identify what was in the balloons. Two were floating and one was not, so obviously the one not floating was filled with oxygen. We touched a candle to it and it up (BOOM!) but there were no flames - so we were right. The second balloon - floating - also did not burst into flames when we touched a candle to it, so it was the one filled with helium. The third one was the best one, though! When we touched the flame to it, it exploded into a fiery ball of awesome! (Nothing caught fire, don't worry.) This definitely caught the interest of most of the students in the hall. She lectured for about half an hour and then sent us on our way. I genuinely like Chemistry, and hope that I remember enough from my high school chem class... four years ago. (Fingers crossed!)
I have a massive gap in my classes after my Chemistry class (from 9:30 until 12:30) so I hiked back to my apartment (which I learned is about a .7 mile walk from the center of campus to my apartment) and walked on the treadmill in our little fitness center for about half an hour. After that, I walked to my Psychology class, hoping that I wouldn't be in for anything terrible.
As it turns out, my Psych professor talks like a guy who runs games on any boardwalk. He has a very "I'll do this favor for you, if you promise to work hard" kind of demeanor and has been teaching psychology for nearly forty years. He spent the entire class answering student questions. Someone asked about a final, and he asked, "Okay, who wants a final?" Of course, of the 300-odd students in the class, nobody rose their hand. "So we won't have a final. Next question." (That was applause break number 1...) Later on, someone asked if we should read the book before coming to class, as is the way it is with what seems like every other class offered here at UT. He said, "Well, you could. But I'd rather you not... you see, it's the difference between 'Ta-da!!' 'WOW. I've never heard of that before! That's AMAZING!' and 'Ta-da!!' 'Oh yeah, I read that last night.'"
Funny guy. I'm glad I'm taking the class!
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Last night, I cooked some pasta for myself (which, under normal circumstances would be reason to sigh in food-boredom) but I tried something different. I found a recipe that has you saute the raw pasta for a few minutes and then add all of the ingredients over it and you cook the pasta with all of the tomatoes, their juices, and the pasta. I added a little chicken for the protein (hungry college student!) and let it do its thing. I think that I'll try it again and try sauteing the pasta at a lower temperature - some of them got burned... but overall, I liked the way it turned out! And.... tons of leftovers! Yay!
I think I'm going to go find something to eat now. I decided to stay on campus during my break today and do some work. I still have 10 more pages of my government book that needs to be read and I'd rather do it today than over the weekend. Have I mentioned how dull this book is? It has NO PICTURES... ugh. (If you saw that on twitter, you'll know that I never expected myself to say that. Ever.)
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