Since my life lately has been all SCHOOL SCHOOL law school apps SCHOOL boyfriend SCHOOL SCHOOL food sleep SCHOOL*, let’s run through my new classes, shall we?

Intermediate Electricity and Magnetism II. Continuation of a course from last semester. Same book, same professor, different room. E&M and I have never gotten along, which is a shame.

The professor, who apparently used to be an amazing teacher, cannot get through two lines on the board without getting confused and spending the next fifteen minutes trying to find his mistake. The first semester I took one of his courses (this is the third) I tried to follow along and learn something, but I’ve given up and now bring other things to work on during class. His tests are ball-crushers (I got something like a 40/200 on last semester’s final), but he grades completely on a curve, so you only have to be slightly less lost than most of the class to pull an A.

Vector Analysis. Math course required for physics majors. Essentially a review of multivariable calculus, but physics-style, in the language of vectors. I haven’t had multivariable since freshman year, but hopefully I’ve used it enough in the intervening physics classes to have built up some sort of intuition.

I love the grading system: no homework, just suggested home-study problems, pop quizzes about once a week, and a couple of exams. I expect to spend very little time on this course outside of class, and that makes me happy.

The prof is a nice guy, but I can’t shake the impression that he should be playing the archvillain in a spy movie. I don’t know whether this is because of his Greek accent or because he looks an awful lot like Ed Harris.

Computer Organization and Programming. Yuck-o-rama. This is a course in assembly language, which is about as low-level as computer languages get without you having to actually poke the electrons along where you want them to go. It’s incredibly impractical for anything I would ever do with a computer, so I guess the purpose of the course is to develop my logic skills, blah blah whatever.

The lecture and lab combined run from 4:00 to 7:00 two days a week. I might not have to go to the lab if I do the assignments on my own time, which means I could leave at 5:30. If I skip the *lecture*, I can leave at 2:30, which is very very tempting. I’ve had this same professor in a previous class, and each lecture consisted entirely of him reading his powerpoint slides. Once last week he even said, “Now, I’m not going to read all this to you,” then proceeded to read the entire slide verbatim. He posts all his slides online, and the lab TA is apparently the one who announces and collects assignments, so why go to lecture?

If it weren’t so heavy, I’d bring my laptop to class (the classroom has great wireless and an outlet for every student) and read blogs work on the lab assignments, so I wouldn’t have to spend time on them at home. Perhaps I will sacrifice my back and do this anyway.

There’s another CS class (high-level language, no lab) I could have taken to fulfill this requirement, but it conflicts with Vector Analysis. Boo.

Also boo-worthy: the rule that says you can’t get a B.S. in one field and a B.A. in another. The Physics B.S. is significantly more difficult than the B.A., but the only difference between the two Math degrees is that the B.A. replaces the B.S.’s two semesters of computer science with two semesters of a foreign language. I’d love to get a Physics B.S./Math B.A., but the silly rule says no no no, so I’m stuck in this class.

Thermal Physics. I lucked out on this one. The terrible professor who’s been teaching thermal for the last umpteen semesters isn’t any more. The new guy spends most of his time lecturing to the board or the side wall, but his explanations are thorough and his boardwork is beautiful. The only remaining unknown is the textbook, which no one I know has heard of, which the university bookstore does not carry, and which Amazon does not have in stock.

Advanced Latin. We’re reading Vergil’s Aeneid this semester, which is good news because (1) I like the Aeneid and (2) I get to reuse my books from tenth grade. There are two upper-division Latin professors, and they’ve swapped courses this semester. They’re both good profs who like to hear themselves talk, but I prefer the one we’re getting now; he has a cunning wit and quite a way with words. I like words, and I like people who know how to wield them. He’s a bit pretentious, maybe, but then again, who has more right to pretension** than a professor of Classics?

Advanced Laboratory II. The second half of a year-long lab. I don’t like lab courses much, but this one’s okay. The professors are fun, and I get to be partners with my friend Kelly. We got last semester’s lab notebooks back, and the prof wrote that mine was “very good and funny.” “Funny” is a compliment, yes?

English Composition II. Dropped! Phew. Close call here. Though my petition to the English department hasn’t gone through yet (they lost it and I had to submit another one), I found out that they would probably only approve one of the two semesters of freshman comp I took at Harvey Mudd as transfer credit. On reviewing my AP score report, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had taken the AP English test, but alas, it was the wrong kind of English (Literature instead of Language). I knew I’d taken the SAT II: Writing, which also exempts one from freshman comp, but I’d heard somewhere the testing center didn’t accept scores more than five years old. I asked anyway, and they said yes, my SAT II from 2001 would count. If they’re wrong I’ll have to delay my graduation until the end of summer***, and I’ll be pissed.

Latin will be my favorite class this semester, the combined result of a mild enjoyment of Latin and a mild to bitter distaste for all my other courses. Sigh, the things we do to graduate. Things like whine about school oh poor me boo hoo.

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* “School” doesn’t look like a word any more. It looks like gibberish, in the family of shloomph and plukoosh.

** I secretly wish pretension were more socially acceptable. Perhaps I push the envelope on this one myself (e.g., gratuitous use of “perhaps,” the subjunctive mood, and Latin abbreviations).

*** Why not take it anyway, you ask? Because I’m maxed out on credit hours this semester. If I take English, I’ll have to drop Latin, which means I drop my Latin minor. I have an overload petition (20 hours) in the works, but it has to go through the Physics department, which is sloooooow like a slow thing in winter.

If the petition goes through in time, I could stay in English until my SAT credit goes through, then drop, but that means I couldn’t return the fifty-dollar book. Oh, and I’d have to go to class, which would suck suck suck.

Tags: school

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