My cold passed fairly quickly. I spent most of friday napping and relaxing and by saturday it had turned into a stuffy nose and most of my energy was back. Today the nose was not as bad and i had more energy. I'm going to bed early tonight and hoping i'm totally done with this when i wake up tomorrow. As for the reason i need luck, this coming week is exam week. Monday i have an exam in society/culture, Tuesday in E&M, Wed i have a 20 minute presentation in society/culture about violence against women, and Thursday i have an exam in Thermo. This is going to be the first big checkpoint to see how i'm doing in all the classes!
Today after church the Australian Missionary i met invited me to eat lunch with his family. I ended up staying at their house till 5:30 visiting with them. It was really nice to meet the family and see the house. I'm really glad i've gotten to know them. It cut into my studying time a little but it was totally worth it :)
Also, random story. My thermodynamics teacher is the most traditional/old fashioned teacher i have ever had. He is a big orator and is very excited about everything he teaches. He writes everything on the chalkboard, what he teaches does not follow the same pattern as the book, and he only permits questions in specified points in the lectures. His class is kind of quirky but i think the quirks make it interesting. Last thursday 15 minutes before the class was going to end one student grabbed his stuff and stood up to go. I didn't think that was a big deal at all, in a lot of classrooms students are encouraged to (if necessary) leave with as little fuss as possible. The teacher stopped him and spent the entire remaining 15 minutes of class explaining why such behavior is totally unacceptable. His main arguments were that:
1.If one person leaves today, tomorrow 3 will leave, and soon everyone will leave.
2.Common laws of courtesy are all that separate us (in this academic utopia) from those killing each other in the streets (his words, and they are an exaggeration don't worry :)
3.His classes are the only wealth he has left to him and if we do not respect them there will be nothing left to him in life.
Some of his arguments seem kind of silly but he was deadly serious. Incidentally he never explained the protocol for leaving the class early on the first day. We now know that if we let him know beforehand and sit near the door it is ok. I could not believe how much he exaggerated in all of his explanation or how big of a deal he made it. I am soooooo glad that i was not the one who tried to leave :) I still like this guy as a teacher i just have to be very very careful not to cross any of his lines.
Thats it, i will post how the exams went at the end of the week, thanks for reading!
Ben Hamming
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