The Inauguration of President Obama

I’m sitting in Sparty’s watching MSNBC’s coverage of the inauguration. This is amazing!

LB 119 and Life After People

Today, as a Tuesday, was Calculus recitation, the first for the year, in fact. New semester, different course (Briggs Calculus II), and a majority of new students. Yes, a handful were the same, and I knew some of them from before, but for the most part they were new. My section has a lot more students than last semester, so it will probably take longer to learn all of their names.

Recitation went well. They loosened up, I think they like me, and it was fun. We just went over growth arguments, which are pretty easy, but none of them asked any questions (aside from, “what’s your favorite color?”). I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, but it definitely keeps classes shorter.

There was one small hitch: the HPS film series is scheduled to be in my classroom. While this only matters once a month, until it is sorted out, it’s kind of annoying. One guy walked in to the room around 6:55, and I said something like, “woah, way to show up. Just take a seat.” He responded with, “oh, I’m here for the movie.” I didn’t know what the hell was going on. Then, the person running it came in as I was finishing up, and we talked about how stupid it was to schedule them at the same time.

She also said that I must be good at what I do, based on what she overheard the students saying. That makes me feel good.

East Lansing

After a break that was both too long and too short, I am back at Michigan State University for the semester. Move in was fine, aside from the idiot other people. We just finished taking all of my stuff up to my room (it took two trips with just my dad and I) and we’re leaving the front circle drive. Of course, we can’t drive anywhere because someone decided to park in the middle of the drive, right in front of the doors, and open all of their doors and truck and haul stuff up. Of course, no one was left in the car, so it just sat there with four plus cars stuck behind it. We did some tricky maneuvering to turn around, then got some Menna’s.

I then unpacked. It wasn’t much, mostly just plugging things in, filling our fridge with Canada Dry and Dr Pepper, and putting all of my clothes away. Once that was done, I spent $400 on my books for this semester, not including the two lab manuals I still need to buy and the two books that I got to keep for this semester (for Biology and Astrophysics). It wasn’t that bad, and thankfully all of my books were there.

Once I returned, I played some guitar before helping three of my friends move their things in. It was nice seeing them, and we’re getting together tonight for some dinner, just to catch up with everyone and have one last good meal before the cafeterias open tomorrow.

All in all, not a bad move-in day.