After more than a month of break, classes *finally* started up again on Tuesday,
and they. were. awesome.
MTH 164
For Precalc II I got the sweetest teacher ever (probably explained by the fact that she's Mr. Willis's daughter and has red hair)! We started by reviewing the properties of logarithms (easyyy), but hey--at least we're not into trigonometry yet. *Yet*...
CSC 110
We spent almost the whole class on Tuesday staring at our computer screens, making no eye-to-eye contact, but interacting with each other over the internet through a discussion board.
Well, I suppose it *is* a computer class.
This is how my online "introduction" went:
Me: Dear everyone, I'm Gab: This is my second semester here (quite excited that classes are finally starting again), and I'm thinking about going into Engineering (it's either that or English--can't decide). This will be my first course in computer science.
Other than that, I like to swim and sing; I'm hoping to get into UVA; and I *can't wait* for Easter!!
Guy 1: Hi, what happens at Easter?
Me: Everything! Christ died for us on the cross and rose from the dead on the third day--liberating us from sin, conquering death, restoring our hope, opening for us the way to a new life. O truly blessed night!
Guy 2: I almost wanna say amen, but that sounds kinda weird, so..... um..... cool post.
Guy 3 : Amen would be OK in this context, I think; it's something good to keep in mind, in any case.
Well....I guess they know who I am now ("so, um, cool post"). :P
Anyway, I had to finish the CSC reading yesterday before my 2nd class this morning, and it was kinda tricky! Binary digits, circuits, transistors, Boolean operations, hexadecimal notation (<--ok, well *that* was easy)... but then we got to create circuits online with, you know, the AND/OR/XOR/NOT/NAND/NOR gates, and that was funnn. (hey, you can try it for yourself here, but I'm not sure it works for Safari or Firefox [I did it in the computer lab at the college, but then couldn't get it to open on my macbook at home], and to get it to open you have to right-click and then open in a new window)
EGR 120
How to start....(*thinking*)
Yesterday morning I went straight from swim practice to the community college, so I got there a half hour early. Turns out, so did my friend, and so did another guy from our EGR class. This "other guy" held some very interesting views on people and life. He spent that whole half hour before class lecturing us on how "if x is high enough, you'll eventually do y" (for example, 'if you pay me this amount of money, I will give you this information'. Or something like... a person who commits crimes because someone has threatened him. Or something like... a person who renounces his faith so that he won't be killed). Apparently, we all like to think we're "nice people", but again "if x is high enough, you'll eventually do y".
Um, No, Mr. Creepy. You're wrong.
What about all those who've died for their faith? (*he starts going on about all the violence in history*...blahblahblah)
No, seriously.
What about the martyrs?
They gave up their lives for their faith. Their example is proof that what you say is wrong. Perhaps you don't understand: I'll fit it into your own terms...here's what they said. "I don't care what x is. I
will not do y." And I hope and pray that if ever someone threatens to kill me if I do not renounce my faith, that God will give me the courage to stand firm and be killed.
Anyway, now that I've got *that* out of the way...the rest of the class was pretty good (although I practically had nightmares--er, no--*day-mares* about being paired up with Mr. Creepy for a lab partner until my teacher said we could choose our own. *thank goodness*).
I told my friend afterwards, though, that I think engineering is so *flat*. But more on that later. I've already talked enough.
So how did *your* first days of classes go? Any unusual conversations with strangers or teacher-stalking-sessions-that-we-shall-not-explain-in-detail?
