Week One, Take two

This is a long brain dump, which means it's going out now and unedited. Not even gonna try. Enjoy.


Sunday morning.

Spent a lot of the weekend panicking about classes and reading. Tried to get through a few assignments, while "actively taking" notes..... which takes a reeeeally long time. By midnight I put aside the notes and just scanned the rest of the reading.
Also worked on some puzzles from a modeling class... does anyone really know what modeling is? I have an idea but only 75% sure that it's accurate.

What else? There is a post office, at the P.O. there are two boxes of my stuff. And they are both far away. They couldn't send it to the nearby P.O., I guess that would have been too easy.


Okay, Let me try this week. Um, where did I leave you?

Right, Sunday night.

So, Monday, we had a bunch of orientation events. I walked up to campus with my roommate. Uphill, wow. Feeling pretty lazy about the gym but the climb to school is not a cakewalk. My roommate was able to stop off at the engineering quad, I was still a bajillion miles away beyond that in the central-northeast side of campus. (read: more up) sigh.

There was a resource fair where I loaded up on flyers which I still have to read. Oh, I took a Chinese placement exam. More on that frustrating turn of events later. Went back to the fair, and then went to my dept's welcome picnic. Which was rained out, so we had it inside the building. It was a pretty decent lunch, there was some veggies and fruit, which I will have to eat more of. After that was the actual department orientation. There looks like about 30-40 students from China in my cohort... I spent some time trying to remember and learn names. I wrote down most of them to help me along.

After orientation came the panel discussion with the second-years. (This is a two year program.) They talked about the various organizations within the department, and also about the classes and things to know. Following the super long day was the welcome at the Grad Student hangout, there was Ice Cream. :) Always good.

I think this was about the end of my day, I was pretty beat, and took the bus home. I was trying to keep my feet in nice shoes and they were pretty unhappy with me, so I didn't want to take the long walk home. I think that was the end of my day. And I probably collapsed fairly early.

Day Tuesday. Very early morning group meeting with my advisor. Honestly they had only given us the handout on class recommendations the night before, I barely had any chance to glance at it so I was kinda useless. I'm not certain that the rest of the students were able to get through it either. There was certainly a lot of concern the first few days about courses, being able to get in, not get in classes. After a preliminary meeting, I hiked over to the Library next door and reserved myself a locker for holding books and things so that I wouldn't have to carry everything up and down the hill every day. There were not a lot of lockers so this was really nice to get there early.

We also had a scavenger hunt for the campus. I bowed out for a portion of it to attend an International Fair / info event, a side benefit was that I had a bit less walking to do in my yucky shoes. I caught up with my group later on and we made it to fourth place downtown, where there was a to-scale path of the planets in the solar system. Well, really only the four inner planets were within the short range of the sun. The remaining planets went for a farther hike, all the way up to ex-planet Pluto. It was created in memory of a famous astronomer and author who taught at the Uni.

We finished up with a two-team drinks downtown, which was pretty nice, with the bonus that I could just walk home a few blocks from downtown. So ended Tuesday. I think I spent some time cleaning a bit more of my room that night. Tried to get some sleep for my early morning class tmrw.

Wednesday morning, woke up bloody early, and left an hour early to get to my class. This turned out to be good, because not only was I able to pause on my way up the hill and rest, but also I was able to get to the classroom around the same time as the twenty-thirty other crazy students who were insanely early.

Then a short break, where I tried to find more classes. Then my intermediate Chinese class. Which I found to be rather easy, so I went looking for the High Intermediate class straight after. Then, the teacher told me that the H.I. class was way too easy for me, if I thought that Int was too east. I was like ???. Turns out the Int class (with the code number in the 2000) was a class for native speakers. Which made it more difficult compared to the High Int. class despite their number in the 3000's. So I figured that the High Int and Int were both Ints, so I would go for the Advanced, right? So I went to talk with the advanced teacher on Thursday. And that teacher ALSO said that the ADVANCED class, in the 4000 code range (so a fourth year, senior level class) was ALSO too easy. Sigh. Exercise in frustration. And completely unclear. I had a very difficult time with this.

The problem is, it is pretty challenging to get a course in my level. For most people, my level is "Good Enough". If I am a non-native speaker, my level is quite sufficient to impress people. If I am a college student who grew up here but is Chinese, I now speak better than before, and I can get by better than before. Few people emphasize a professional level of Chinese as the final goal. I want my Chinese to be on par with my English ability, and at the moment I am far below that.

So I continue to work at it. As it turns out. The original class is not as easy as I thought. It was difficult to gauge this (for this and for other classes) because on the first day the teacher mostly introduces the class, and doesn't do a lot of teaching so it's hard to tell. But if I can manage to stay in the class that is already full, I'll keep this course.

I think that night we had ravioli for dinner with the roommates. I've got four. Roommates that is, not ravioli.

Thursday was a crazy day. Class at 8:40. And another at 11:30ish. Another at 2:30. Another at 4:30, which I had to skip because I had one more at 5pm. Yikes. The 5 pm class is going to get pushed back to 7pm. But it will be crazy.

And yeah... that is a few more classes than I think I want to take at a graduate level. Too many for me to take and do well. I really raised the bar last semester and I really really hope to keep the same level as before.

Friday?
Did the Chinese class, my only Friday class. Horrified to discover that the syllabus I had checked the evening prior did not spell out the homework of a short paragraph summarizing the chapter. Perhaps she had mentioned it in class and I didn't quite get it. And I think I may have been the only student without a summary. %$&^@. I was at a slight disadvantage where many of the kids in the class had been taking the series and knew what was what. So Strike One big one for me. Doesn't help my case for trying to get into the class.

We went to a picnic afterwards at a very nice park by the lake. Warm in the sun, chilly and breezy in the shade. I kind of hit a wall in my socializing though.... by the end of the week I had met so many people I just wanted some quiet. I got back on campus, and considered going to a party that was hosted by one of the first year fellows, I also considered going back to the Friday night grad hangout, and decided that my Thursday classes had terrified me enough to start studying. I went to a library to get a bunch of readings for my class, and also to figure out how I was going to read my pdfs. After reading some tips and reviews, I downloaded a software program that allows me to markup and write notes on my pdf readings. So that got me through my first Friday night. Got home too late for dinner. I think I may have just ended up crashing at around 10:30pm.

Saturday. Woke up early enough. I wanted to get my last boxes of books and stationery materials, but alas it was not to be. I signed myself up for the carshare program in town, but it takes a week for the whole thing to get started. So I couldn't get to the other side of campus for the boxes. Boo.

Took a catnap, then later in the afternoon made it to campus and worked on some problems with a study partner. Considered buying some books, but procrastinated. Considered getting a printer, but my roommate who is in my dept convinced me to purchase one in person, since the mail delivery requires me to be home at the time of delivery, otherwise it would take it back to that insanely inconvenient post office, whereas if I went in person, I'd have the printer whenever I felt like going to the mall.

Went home, visited my study partner's home since she is my neighbor, her house is very nice and clean. Wish I could say the same for me. :)

Stayed up late and did some reading, active note taking. A bit of frivolity.

That was Saturday. Woke up today. Breakfast. Journal. A few tasks needed doing. Ack. Hurry hurry hurry.

Okay. Time to get the day rolling.