The student lifestyle/culture

[Ibrahim]

currently ~15 hrs

next semester will be 18. all geology.

I live alone, in a dorm room, though I plan on leaving, since there are cheaper ways to live. unlike most of my neighbors, there ain't much drinking*, girls, or partying in my life here. Just studying, work, studying, and well...more of the above. my entertainment, as such, is watching the SpoonyOne, playing strategy games, and walking or hiking. my social life is completely restricted to my floor, the gas station across the street, and the Warner College of Natural resources-particularly geology students. unsurprisingly, I'm not very popular, and most people think I'm either psychopathic (I like to talk about Mortal Kombat fatalities in excrutiating detail; I particularly like to talk about Quan Chi's neck stretcher), overly blunt (don't know what the heck they're talking about), or overly strict with how I behave.

I tend to multitask: as I write this, I am also writing a paper, listening to the SpoonyOne (swirly blue thing FTW!), and enjoying a quiet night.

classes are hard, and I lack basic equipment: magnets, streak plates, and hand lenses aren't always available to me, since money is scarce. Mineralogy and optical mineralogy takes up most of my time studywise, being a hard as heck class. the professor there has famously high standards, and has made it his mission to weed out all the fake students who don't have what it takes to be geologists. its a common enough joke of mine to refer to his questions as "Jerries", after the professor's first name. (no, he's not German). but the professor there has a good sense of humor, is knowledgeable, and is a great teacher.

Sedimentology is fun, low intensity, but well taught. the professor there is quite a pistol: he's German, but his first name is-get this-Sven. He speaks good english, but the simplest words sometimes escape him (he once forgot the anatomical term "Anus", and used the first thing that came to his mind: ***hole; it unsurprisingly drew laughter. I had to remind him that its called "Anus"). He is an early bird, but is always attending lectures tired and stressed (I attribute this to the recent delivery of his child). He's just now had his first child, and he's 42, so I plan on partying-for once-in honor of the event. He's widely traveled, good sense of humor, and as before, is a great teacher.

Statistics is not too hard, but its exceptionally annoying: it gets in the way of all my other classes, and the teacher, while good, seems to have a habit of telling lame jokes at the beginning of class; its demoralizing and most fly over my head. and the funny part is: she KNOWS the jokes are lame. she also has the unique skill of making all her exams/homework due in the most inconvenient times-by accident of course.

last class, Logarithmic and exponential functions, is boring, stupid, poorly taught, and it's math. being an online class, I've pretty much ignored it: I'm somehow averaging ~90%.


*actually, there is absolutely no drinking.