February 06, 2003

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Of My Day)

I had a really interesting day today. As the title of this post would suggest, it consisted of good, bad, and ugly things—yeah, I feel the need to restate the obvious. Anyway. I'm in a good mood right now, so let me begin with the good stuff. I had my second class in 390 Hearst, because my English class was moved there (from 102 Wurster), and I must say, I really like that building. It's very pretty inside, naturally lit, and from my seat (I've already claimed one for myself in this lecture hall), I can see the Campanile, just like I could during Physics 7A Lab, in Fall 2001.

The big difference here though is that this class is pretty interesting whereas I can't say the same about Physics 7A. Another good thing today was that I went over to the Bioscience Library to study in VLSB, because on Wednesday, Phil had picked to go there—I got nothing done on Wednesday, because I was preoccupied with uploading CalSO pictures to my website, but today I got a lot done. That library is really an awesome place to study—quiet, newer, and more clean than any of my other spots: Doe/Moffitt/Main Stacks. The only problem is that it closes at 11 p.m. instead of 2 a.m., but the fact of the matter is that it's still early in the semester and I don't really need to stay in the library past 11 p.m. anyhow. One downside that I can think of right now is (the lack of) the Free Speech Movement Cafe. I've been getting plenty of rest these last few weeks, but again, it's still early in the semester, and if I wanted to get coffee, I wouldn't want to walk all the way over to FSM from VLSB (yeah, I'm a lazy ass, but oh well), so that could be a potential problem.

Now, on to the bad things. Well, I suppose this qualifies as a sort of bad thing, because it's kind of deceptive. OK, no more suspense. I'm referring to the weather. It's been pretty awesome recently. Sunny, cloudless days, just like SoCal. Only problem: it's like 20 degrees cooler here! And then, yesterday, the wind kicked up big time, which sucks! Not only is it really cold wind, directly off the Bay, but it's also sort of resurrecting my allergies. Not exactly—I haven't really been having problems with those since I left Irvine (and left the goddamn Santa Ana winds behind), but my nose is runny, which I HATE!!!!

I hate having to sniffle all the time—I piss myself off. Another bad thing about today was when Professor Pedersen (Chem 3B) went over NMR at his supplemental lecture tonight. NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) Spectroscopy is the dumbest part of Chem 3A, which is probably the only thing I disliked about the class. It is completely a laboratory application, and considering that I'm neither a chemist, nor aspire to be one, I really think I shouldn't be forced to learn it. For those of you who don't know how it works, you get a bunch of lines on an axis and then have to predict the structure of the molecule from that. By predict, I mean educated guessing, at best—and in my case, just guessing. However, from the looks of things, it might play a more important role in this class than it did in 3A, much to my dismay. This definitely qualifies as a bad thing for today. I think that's it for the bad section.

OK, here's what you've all been waiting for (on the edge of your seats, I'm sure). What was the UGLY part of my day? Well, the prize goes to Thermodynamics. Can you think of a more inane subject than thermo? I don't think I can. I spent about an hour working on a problem set that was all about it. It was not in any way difficult, but after each problem, I would sit around for 5 minutes, fuming about how stupid it is that we have to do these problems. I spent about 5 weeks in Physics 7B doing this exact same stuff, and now, it looks like five weeks will be spent in Chem 130A doing the exact same thing! And then to make matters worse, the professor introduced STATISTICS into the class. Apparently we are going to be using a statistical approach to entropy. I don't like statistics. I don't like thermodynamics. I can't wait to do them both together—lots, and lots of fun!