Worus

Today’s word is “difficult.” Nothing about today went simply. The day started with my dad taking me to school and my rushing to finish reading for my first class. I got to campus early, and had to write some reading journals on what I thought was just that reading there. When I looked at the paper of readings I realized that I had only written one all semester! I had to write about ten or twelve in forty-five minutes!

After frantically writing all of that, I rushed off to my exam. I was late by about five minutes so that I could finish I writing assignment that was four times the expected length. The exam in that class, which was incredibly simple in structure, was not as easy as the Spanish one. This probably has something to do with the fact that I didn’t study for this one at all. That was my fault, but I still think that I did alright on it. If not, I have two more exams and a major paper in addition to my homework to make up for it,

After the exam I was talking with the professor. He said that I do a good job of expressing my opinions on the readings that we do for class. He told me that yesterday I did a good job expressing ideas for reading that, unknown to him, I hadn’t even done! He also told me that my topic for his other class was a good one for a research paper. I’m excited, because I like Ana Castillo.

Then it was off to the library to finish a physics assignment. I had meant to do all of this last night, but I fell asleep, so the morning was a bit of a rush. I did finish, and J. Kim gave me a cherry cough drop as preventative medicine. I gagged it down for most of the walk to lunch until I couldn’t take it anymore. It was kind of gross, but that’s Hall’s fault, not Kim’s.

After physics and programming languages, I was ready to go home. I went to where my mom had suggested that we meet so that she could take me home and I could meet with Luke and Beth at 5:00 to do homework for programming languages. I looked out the window and she wasn’t there. After a phone call I found out that she didn’t think I wanted her to pick me up, so she had gone home and thought I was going to come home with dad. The frustrating bit is that I wasn’t ble to leave until 5:00, so I couldn’t possibly get back until 6:00.

As a result, I did, however, get to talk to Dr. Paula. I was surprised that she talked with me as long as she did. She asked if I was still studying Esperanto (which she previously had even heard of!) and asked if I lived by Sheldahl, since she noticed the name match on the interstate one time. We also talked about her teaching, and I have to say that she is just an amazing teacher. She really, truly cares that her students understand physics, and she’s the most enthusiastic person I have found about it to date.

After that drama, I saw Luke outside of Durham, so we went and got Chinese at Panda Express. On the way we encoutered Mahesh, and he joined us too. As usual, we had to wait for Luke’s food, because I always go first in line for some reason and they run out after serving me. After Chinese food, we found Omar on the way back to dad’s office. We chit-chatted for about three minutes and all parted ways.

After riding home and driving all the way back, I got to Ames a little after 6:00. We worked on programming languages until 11:00, and we didn’t get the last problem done. No one really understands how to go about doing it. Hopefully sleep will make the solution closer to apparent when we reconvene tomorrow.

Valentine’s Day is silly. However, I spent the whole weekend snowed in with Dean. That was awesome. However, the whole greeting card nature of the holiday distrubs me, so I don’t go out of my way for it.

Last night we did a physics project. We were determining the sping constant, k, of a Slinky. We did this by stepping over the railing in a campus building so that we could drop the Slinky into the giant atrium of the building. It was quite funny, because from the second floor, the Slinky almost hit the floor. At this point it was apparent that we needed to use the metal Slinky and not the giant, orange one. I wish I would have had a camera.

Afterwards I drug Diana over to Physics Hall so that I could check my test score. For the multiple choice, I was above the class average. I was also above my section average, so I’m excited about that. However, with the wacked-out grading scale, I only got a C-. This should change soon, though, when he realizes that he won’t pass enough people when a C- in this class is like a B- in physics I. Also, there are tear off questions to grade, and that should improve my overall score since they were easy.

Speaking of easy tests, the Spanish test that I had on Friday was incredibly easy. It was sixty-seven matching questions. They were divided into groups of eleven and twelve and by topic, as listed on the header of each page. Then he made us answer two of the six questions that he had given us in advance, asking us only to write about 120 words for each. It was just very easy, and I wish other things were that easy. The plus is that I should be abe to focus on my harder classes because of it.

My sister’s car wouldn’t start today. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it, but I feel sorry for her, because she doesn’t know it yet. My mom gave me a ride to school, though, so all is well in that area of my world.