sheer potentiality

Well that was a refreshing summer break. Now I’m back at WSU. No actual classes until next week, though, so until then I’m working on getting a part-time job and settling in in Pullman again.

Summer classes are over. I’m going home Saturday. I really can’t think of much more to write because “it’s over” pretty much summarizes all of the main threads in my life right now. The big group project I blogged about a couple days ago—it’s over. The personal issues I mentioned in the same post—they’re over, however abruptly so. I’m going to be 20 in a few days, so in essence my teenage years are thankfully over as well. So for those of you out there who want my life in summary, there it is.

It is incredible what the human body is capable of. I’ve been stressed and worried about things—a recent class project, various personal stuff—and my insomnia reached a fever pitch last night when I failed to get a minute of sleep and spent valuable sleeping hours watching television. (Damn you, HBO Signature Channel, for broadcasting a documentary about Stanley Kubrick!)

Anyway, from about 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM today, I had a team meeting for aforementioned class project. I was upbeat and energetic throughout. It was really quite amazing, I felt like I had more than a full day in me. Get back home, however, and I’m completely drained of energy.

The stress and insomnia and team meetings will all be over Tuesday. They will be over forever. And there’s really very little real work that remains to be completed between now and then.

Early tomorrow morning, I’m getting up, working on the paper, and getting ready for the presentation. The rest of my life will have to wait.

So here I am, sitting in my professional/technical writing class. Usually I’m acutely aware of being a vast minority for two reasons: one, I am usually the only person with a laptop (at least out of a sample size this small), and two, I am almost always the only longhaired man in the class.

Not only are there two other laptops in here as I speak, there are also two other longhaired men. Although, to be perfectly fair, both of them have their hair back in ponytails instead of loose like mine, but I always wonder what the point of long hair is if you just tie it back.

But man. In this class, the longhairs and laptop jockeys outnumber the iPods. I’m in an alternate reality, I swear.

I rather dislike when people sit next to me in class. I’m not antisocial, and I don’t dislike people, but I usually require a large amount of personal space. And that doesn’t really happen when there are people sitting next to me, watching my computer screen, restricting my elbow room, etc. Of course, given that someone has to sit beside me, I would rather someone sit on my left side than on my right, as that way I have the most elbow room. What I truly despise is when people sit on both sides of me. It makes me feel rather claustrophobic, to be honest.

In theory, TA’s are better teachers than professors. This is because TA’s are grad students, and grad students are far closer to our level of experience, knowledge, and expertise than professors. TA’s have, most likely, covered the same topic we’re covering within the past decade of their lives, so they know what it’s like for us undergrads encountering this for the first time. Professors, on the other hand, are often bored out of their minds covering this material. This is especially true of the best professors, who are ideally such geniuses that the material bored them the first time they encountered it, and who can only be truly stimulated at the frontiers of human knowledge. Of course, few professors really achieve that ideal. There are also, I am sure, those professors who are better teachers than researchers, but I am hardly the first to comment on the inefficiency of this aspect of academia.

The point is, that theory about TA’s makes a lot of sense all other things being equal. There are certainly other relevant factors, and this particular class makes me painfully aware that fluency in the English language is most certainly a relevant factor. While this is true of both TA’s and professors, anyone who has been at an American university long enough to be a professor should have become fluent enough in the language to be able to lecture coherently. TA’s don’t necessarily have that level of experience. Thankfully, I seem to be a lot better than most people at deciphering foreign accents, and the TA in this class seems to be getting more comfortable teaching in English.

In my biology class (which is the obligatory basic biology class for Honors students not majoring in any of the life sciences), we were taking apart a rotting deer carcass to collect the insects that were cleaning it out. (Apparently this is some sort of forensic technique.) All we had left was basically the skeleton, but we had to break it apart to get all the bugs. I proposed that in homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, we pick up one of the leg bones and use it to break apart the rest of the skeleton. Then I ended up on skeleton-breaking duty.

We eventually resorted to using a weighted tape dispenser (made of metal) to bash apart the spine. Anyway, here’s a couple pictures of my homage to Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece:

I’ve moved into Honors Hall for my second year of college. Seems to be going all right, I guess. For those wanting to hear about the movies, last week I rented Unbreakable, Uprising, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill (Vol. 1 and 2), Traffic, and the first season of Penn and Teller’s show Bullshit!. Expect comprehensive reviews as soon as I have time to write them. Long story made short: Pulp Fiction has reached the ranks of my favorite movies ever. Unbreakable has as well.

I got my first class tomorrow morning at 9. We’ll see how that goes. I don’t feel quite ready for class and such yet, but I’ll probably feel settled into the routine as soon as classes start.

Well, my finals are over. I’m not optimistic about my stats final (I dozed off while studying–guess pulling an all-nighter isn’t the best way to study, imagine that), but I’m quite happy about accounting. Now that that’s all over I can go home, take three weeks off, enjoy my birthday (I’ll be turning 19, everybody) and generally enjoy myself until Fall Semester starts up August 23.

You know what’s truly ironic? When you take a class just because you have to for your major, don’t anticipate enjoying it, skip class more often than you attend, and pull an all-nighter before the final, cramming for it—only to find that the subject is actually rather interesting.

Decision Sciences 215 and Accounting 231 finals today. No sleep tonight. It’s time to kick some ass. Then, the journey home, back to lovely Port Angeles for three weeks until fall semester begins and Phil Welch returns to Pullman.

I feel driven!

Well, I got my textbooks from Amazon today. A week after summer session began, but I didn’t need them till now anyway. Why did I order them from Amazon? Well, in terms of price, the experience, the convenience, and the idea of supporting a business pioneer instead of the textbook cartel, it’s better than my college bookstore. In fact, to make direct comparisons:

Amazon.com vs. my college bookstore: Amazon wins.

Amazon.com with express shipping vs. my college bookstore: Amazon wins.

Amazon.com with express shipping vs. my college bookstore with attractive, topless, women cashiers: Amazon wins, barely.

That is why I buy my textbooks from Amazon.com.

So just how much does Amazon.com rock? To the tune of $15, new, shipped for my accounting textbook on Amazon Marketplace (as opposed to $140 new from my college bookstore), and less than $50, shipped, for my philosophy books from Amazon itself. My philosophy books wouldn’t have cost that much more at the Bookie (yes, that’s what they call it), but then again, I didn’t have to stand in line.

Frankly, I don’t know why the Bookie is still in business.