Tennis and electro magnetic theory

Its been a while since my last entry and a lot has happened.  Last i wrote i was about to go to my first class on electro magnetism, how that class has evolved is a bit of a story.

E&M
One of the biggest deciding factors in coming to this school was that i needed to take electricity and magnetism 1 to be able to stay on track in my major.  I found a class that was exactly what i needed at this school.  When i got here however i discovered that the class i had seen online was not being offered, but a very similar one was.  I was registered for the similar class during registration and figured i would make it work somehow.  The first day of the class was pretty basic we learned about dot and cross products (if that means anything to anyone) so afterwords i thought i would double check with the professor if that was the class i should be in.  He told me about another class that i should look into.  I went through a few secretaries and finally met the director of the physics department.  He is a really really nice guy and was happy to talk to me.  After some discussion he recommended a different class called electro magnetic theory, which it turns out, is exactly the class i found before i came.  I was really glad that i had worked all that out and changed my schedule that day.

On thursday i had my first class of electromagnetic theory and it totally blew me away.  The professor talks pretty fast but i could usually keep up with understanding the words, the problem was that i understood none of the material.  Almost the entire first day went over my head which was pretty disconcerting.  After the class i went and talked to the professor and he asked me a few questions and then told me i should drop the class because i didn't know enough math to survive.  At the end of our very brief conversation he told me he couldn't force me to drop his class but he said i was really going to struggle to survive.  After examining the textbook and emailing some professors from whitworth i found out what the problem was.  There is a chapter at the beginning of our textbook that goes over vector calculus that is used in electro magnetic calculations.  At whitworth during the class we learn how to do that math in the first unit.  Here everyone takes a full class on using the math presented in the first section.  The gap in knowledge was really only one chapter, but everyone but me had a rock solid grasp on it all (and i didn't have a clue).  That weekend i spent all my time in the library reading that first chapter, and a textbook i found that explained the concepts.  Fortunately some students from the class were also in the library on sunday doing the homework so they helped explain some of the things i couldn't understand.  It also turns out that homework from this class takes an eternity to finish.  From talking to other students i think the median time of completion for the first two assignments was around 5 hours.  I'm about to do the third one when i finish this entry.  I have been told that it is not as hard as the last two and one of my friends did it in 4 hours apparently.  Right now i think i have a pretty good grasp on the math i learned.  I'm still a little slower than everyone and i have to double check myself pretty often but i'm getting the hang of it.  This class is definitely going to represent 3/4 of my work load this semester though.  I'm definitely learning a lot though.  I am still a little worried about it all and i think i will be until the first test (assuming it goes well) it was a strange experience to have a professor tell me he thinks i'm going to fail.

Also, a random funny fact about the class.  The professor's policy on cell phones is that if one goes off, the culprit must bring a cake to class.  After a cell phone rings the person is identified and then the class votes on the flavor of cake they want.  Apparently on the last day of class each person responsible is expected to bring their assigned cake.  Other students in the class have had him before and they say he is deadly serious about it.  I kind of like the system, and i'm excited for the last day of this class for more than one reason now :)

Tennis
Also, last week i found the coach of the tennis team here and got in contact with him.  He said that i could come out for practice and he would let me know if i could practice with them.  All last week i went to practice from 7am-9:30 or 10am.  It turns out that everyone on the tennis team is WAY better than i am.  The first day of practice the coach had me warm up with some players but when it became apparent that they were that much better than me he had me switch.  I played a match against another player, and for a minute i was excited because i won, but then i found out that he too was trying out for the team and was not in fact a member.  Most of the practices this week i was just told to play with that guy but as i got my game back it became pretty apparent that i was better than him.  The scores of all our sets during the week were 7-6,6-3,6-0,6-1,6-2,6-1.  On friday he was not at practice so he might have been cut i'm not sure.  I am going to go back on monday, and every day until he tells me i can't anymore.  The group of guys is really nice, each day when i wake up all i want is to be cut from the team but by the time i'm warmed up its always a lot of fun.  All the girls are incredibly good too.  There is one girl who practices with the girls team (but isn't good enough to be on it) that i lost to 6-4, but i really think i could beat her if we played again.  I got a blister halfway through our match and it made it a lot harder to play. I was supposed to find out on friday if i was going to be cut but i didn't get told anything.  I played a set against one guy who is actually on the team and i don't think i have ever lost so fast or so badly.  Afterwords though i was told to play tiebreaks with a different guy from the team and i won 1/3!  I don't think he was trying when he played me, but he didn't mean to let me win one.  At the end i hit two of the best aces in my life to get ahead and then won one more lucky point to win.  It felt pretty good to win something even though i knew he wasn't giving it his all :)

Anyway, i have to go get my homework done now.  If you have any questions feel free to ask, and i will try to update this at least once a week from now on :)

Thanks for reading!

Ben Hamming