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School ftw? o_O;
Jan. 27th, 2009 04:12 pmIt is positively mind-blowing that something so generic as English 102 should be cosmically superior to Global Climate Change [101], but it so is. This morning in English we picked apart the letter that Martin Luther King Jr. wrote while imprisoned in a jail in Birmingham, and it was actually really amazing, how engaging the analysis was. I'm not sure if it's the professor, or the material...but I think it's a mix of both. I actually felt like I was being inspired to think critically and, well, get something out of it? Holy crap! Such a novel concept.
In Climate Change, however, the professor gave absolutely no *mention* of the relevant story that is rampant in the news (as can be seen here, and here and here, among other places.) Nope, that did not merit mention. Instead he spent the whole time talking about temperature scales and the freezing and boiling point of various gasses, and brought in a canister of liquid nitrogen to play with and had fun pouring it all over his desk. Which admittedly was cool, but it really begs the question of how is that relevant to...well, anything? I'm sure it is integrated in the curriculum somewhere, but even in the event of direct relevance, he didn't actually explain WHY we were focusing on it. I think he just wanted to get us all engaged and wake us up, since that class is so impossibly tiresome that I have a hard time staying conscious through it all. To reference something I've learnt in English 102, the professor does not exhibit much ethos. I am having a hard time taking him seriously.
I feel really motivated to do *something*, but I'm not sure what. I had really wanted to go climbing today, but Chris had class, and Christian and Matt didn't answer my texts. I suppose I could/probably should just go by myself, but I'm not sure if I have the motivation to drag my lazy butt down to the gym when I'd only really be able to traverse/boulder or use the auto-belay when I got there. But, I wish I could find motivation, since even traversing seems like it'd be nice exercise right now.
On the topic of growing things, I was shopping for cheese and bananas earlier today when I spied a rack of seed packets for every type of veggie imaginable! I was so close to buying the packet for mixed greens, but I decided to read up on terrariums first and see how to make a good soil mix. But, I am intrigued! I should call my mom, haha...she'd know what to do.
On a final, bewildered note: earlier today I was doing my homework for my Mexico border seminar class. The assigned chapter was commenting on the growth of the petroleum industry in the northern Mexican states around the turn of the century, and it said that Mexico was producing 157 million barrels of oil per year around 1920. I found myself thinking of my energy class, wherein we are learning about current US consumption. The annual per capita energy usage in barrels of oil equivalent is about 58 in the US. And there are about 300 million US residents, meaning that Mexico was producing enough oil to provide the current population of the US with about half a barrel of oil each...not even a full 1% of current energy usage. It's not to say that they weren't producing a lot, since that was a lot at the time, but dude we use so much energy. But the main thrill was connecting two completely unrelated academic topics that I happen to be studying at the same time. It made neurons race and light up in ecstatic color! I've had similar epiphanies before, but always when the topics were somewhat more closely linked. It was AWESOME.
Okay, dinnertime now.
In Climate Change, however, the professor gave absolutely no *mention* of the relevant story that is rampant in the news (as can be seen here, and here and here, among other places.) Nope, that did not merit mention. Instead he spent the whole time talking about temperature scales and the freezing and boiling point of various gasses, and brought in a canister of liquid nitrogen to play with and had fun pouring it all over his desk. Which admittedly was cool, but it really begs the question of how is that relevant to...well, anything? I'm sure it is integrated in the curriculum somewhere, but even in the event of direct relevance, he didn't actually explain WHY we were focusing on it. I think he just wanted to get us all engaged and wake us up, since that class is so impossibly tiresome that I have a hard time staying conscious through it all. To reference something I've learnt in English 102, the professor does not exhibit much ethos. I am having a hard time taking him seriously.
I feel really motivated to do *something*, but I'm not sure what. I had really wanted to go climbing today, but Chris had class, and Christian and Matt didn't answer my texts. I suppose I could/probably should just go by myself, but I'm not sure if I have the motivation to drag my lazy butt down to the gym when I'd only really be able to traverse/boulder or use the auto-belay when I got there. But, I wish I could find motivation, since even traversing seems like it'd be nice exercise right now.
On the topic of growing things, I was shopping for cheese and bananas earlier today when I spied a rack of seed packets for every type of veggie imaginable! I was so close to buying the packet for mixed greens, but I decided to read up on terrariums first and see how to make a good soil mix. But, I am intrigued! I should call my mom, haha...she'd know what to do.
On a final, bewildered note: earlier today I was doing my homework for my Mexico border seminar class. The assigned chapter was commenting on the growth of the petroleum industry in the northern Mexican states around the turn of the century, and it said that Mexico was producing 157 million barrels of oil per year around 1920. I found myself thinking of my energy class, wherein we are learning about current US consumption. The annual per capita energy usage in barrels of oil equivalent is about 58 in the US. And there are about 300 million US residents, meaning that Mexico was producing enough oil to provide the current population of the US with about half a barrel of oil each...not even a full 1% of current energy usage. It's not to say that they weren't producing a lot, since that was a lot at the time, but dude we use so much energy. But the main thrill was connecting two completely unrelated academic topics that I happen to be studying at the same time. It made neurons race and light up in ecstatic color! I've had similar epiphanies before, but always when the topics were somewhat more closely linked. It was AWESOME.
Okay, dinnertime now.
