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This week I've been attending the Navigator Summer Institute put on by my research advisors, Dr. Karen Irving and Dr. Doug Owens. It's a training workshop for the teachers in Cohort 4 who will be implementing TI-Navigator technology in their classrooms starting this year. Navigator is basically TI-84 calculators souped up like woah. Using the calculators, a wireless access point, and various hubs set up throughout the classroom, the teacher can create a class network through which she can send and collect assessments or polls, and conduct learning activities.
It's actually a little strange for a semi-Luddite like me to take an interest in teaching technologies, but since I think that each successive generation of students will be increasingly "wired," I had better get a head start on the techniques that have any chance of reaching them with information and reasoning strategies.
I presented a sample lesson on photosynthesis and got kudos for my simulated photospectroscopy lab. Maybe there is something to going into teaching "cold," or at least with a fresher perspective closer to that of a student, without all the bells and whistles they teach you in grad school. I tried to set up the lesson the way I would have wanted it presented to me, looking at evidence and asking questions to draw a logical conclusion, rather than the force-feed regurgitation model that has become a necessary evil in the face of stricter content requirements and time constraints due to standardized testing. I tested my lesson on my 13-year-old brother and he seemed to get it...or maybe he just said so to earn the cookies I promised him in return for his help!
The TI-Navigator Summer Institute is in town and as I'm the only OSU undergraduate in the Classroom Connectivity Project, my advisor Dr. Irving tapped me to lead a campus tour for our out-of-town guests. So I'll summon my best walking backwards skills, and maybe wear a nice red T-shirt for good measure, and present something like this: (Feel free to print it out and follow it yourself...start from Holiday Inn on the Lane.)
(Cross Lane Avenue at Tuttle Park Place.)
On your left you will see the Blackwell Inn, home to our football team the nights before home games. In the Blackwell is Bistro 2110, named for the street number on which the hotel is located, and though I cannot personally afford to eat there, I'm told it's quite good. The surrounding buildings comprise Fisher College of Business, the spiffiest classrooms on campus paid for by very wealthy business alumni.
Moving on across Woodruff Avenue, we are passing by Knowlton School of Architecture on the left. Ahead to your right is the mighty Horseshoe, which can seat over 101,000 of the best fans in the land. It is also the temporary home of the Ohio Union--or Shuenion, as it's now called--while the old site on High Street is renovated.
We are passing by the RPAC, or Recreational and Physical Activity Center, completed in 2005 just in time for my freshman year. It is an excellent place to work out for $78 a quarter for students, with over 25,000 square feet of fitness space, gyms, squash, racquetball and tennis courts, state-of-the-art equipment, food service and very nice showers. When the hot water quit in my dorm this past winter, the RPAC was there for me. Phase II of the RPAC, completed this year, is home to the School of Physical Activity and Educational Services. I have not yet been in the red walkway, but I plan to walk it before graduation because it just looks cool. There is also the Bill and Mae McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion, which has lap and leisure pools as well as a competition pool for our varsity athletic teams.
On your left you will see Mirror Lake. Don't let the name fool you; it really is only about three or four feet deep. Mirror Lake is the site of OSU's biggest naked tradition, the Beat Michigan week jump. Nudity is not a requirement, of course, and each year thousands of die-hard Buckeye fans take the plunge. I might suck it up and jump my senior year, but we'll see how the weather is in the third week of November that year.
Now we're coming up on the medical campus, comprised of the OSU Medical Center, the Schools of Nursing, Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Optometry, Allied Med, Biological Sciences, and Biomedical Sciences, and generally lots of people in scrubs and lab coats.
As we make our way across the South Oval toward central campus, you can see the remains of the old student union that will be replaced by a new facility in 2010, one year after I graduate. At the foot of the Oval is the Wexner Center, a world-renowned center for the arts. There are often free movie screenings and exhibitions available to students, and the center also houses OSU's Fine Arts Library.
OSU's many smaller libraries have had to fill the void left by the closure of the William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library at the other end of the Oval. Much of the collection has been moved to a temporary storage facility off campus, which is reachable by shuttle bus. The Main Library is also scheduled to reopen in 2010.
There's Bricker Hall, where the new President Gordon Gee will have his office. This area is home to many of the science and engineering departments, which may have given rise to the rumor that north campus is quieter than south. As a two-year resident of the north campus dorms, I might have to beg to differ. Chemists and mathematicians can party too. To your left is the Central Classroom location of Barnes and Noble. You can also purchase inexpensive food at the Tuttle Park Place shops. To our very far left is West Campus, where the Vet and Ag schools are located, as well as the Adventure Recreation Center and Outdoor Adventure Center, two other recreational facilities available for student use.
I hope you enjoyed this tour of THE Ohio State University. I hope you enjoy your stay in our fair city and come back to visit again soon!
Someone has misinformed Bed Bath & Beyond that I am in need of a complete room makeover, so I keep getting "Back to College" circulars. First of all, I'm not going back for a full two months and I refuse to think about school right now. Second, their main goal is to sell stuff, not help me live as comfortably, efficiently, and inexpensively as possible, so I have to take their ads with a grain of salt. As a two-year veteran of dorm life in two vastly different style OSU dorms, let me present What (Not) To Bring.
1. Backrest (aka boyfriend pillow)
 
I recommend the type on the left because in the confined space of dorm room living, your desk will multi-task as your dresser and dinner table, forcing your bed to sometimes serve as a substitute study space. I'd think twice about bringing the type on the right because it will probably significantly cramp your social prospects (and completely freak out your roommates).
2. Sweeper
 
I think it's worthwhile investing in a small mechanical sweeper or a lightweight vacuum. Yes, there are vacuums available to borrow at the front desk, but these are old, heavy, make a noise like the London Blitz and leave behind an alarming odor of burning fibers. Plus, when I lived in Neilwood Gables, one had to march over to Drackett Tower and lug the monster back to Neilwood, where there are no elevators but many many small flights of stairs, in order to clean the room. Consequently, I think my roommate and I vacuumed maybe once the entire year, which I do not recommend.
3. Pets
Yes:
 
Maybe:
 
NO NO NO NO:
The puppy is actually a Zzz Animal that "breathes" as it sleeps. My English advisor Dr. Spinrad keeps a cat version in her office and I have to confess I fell for it the first two times I went to see her, to the point that my eyes started watering because I'm allergic to cats. (And I'm extremely gullible.) If you have a sufficiently green thumb, a plant isn't a bad idea to add some life and color to the room, especially in the barren Ohio winter. Unfortunately my attempts at keeping plants have not been terribly successful...my chocolate mint plant from the Newman Center died after about two weeks and the mums my boyfriend gave me are looking pretty weak after less than a month. I'm contemplating getting some fish for the apartment this fall, but haven't decided yet.
Tune in later for more What (Not) to Bring!
I'm stuck in some sort of meta-blogging loop so that I am at work proofreading other Buckeye Bloggers and now I'm taking a break to write my own blog entry.
I work part-time in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions First Year Experience and in the past few weeks I've been processing orientation evaluations. They're very amusing to read, particularly the parent evaluations. Some of them gush optimism that their precious Janey will do wonderfully at Ohio State, little knowing little Janey will take up drinking every night that ends in "y." Then there are the helicopter parents who snarl from the page that little Jimmy didn't get to schedule the right classes to get into Johns Hopkins in the future and that this is not what they're paying $5000 tuition for, etc. etc. I long to tell them what I said to my eighth grade lab partner who insisted on making the first incision of the frog dissection because she wanted to go to medical school in the future...It. Doesn't. Matter.
First quarter freshman year is really a blip academically, even if it is fully one-twentieth to one-twelfth of your undergraduate career. That's why there is freshman forgiveness. Now, I am not advocating deliberate slacking off or partying too hearty because that builds bad habits and is against my personal work ethic. I'm just saying to anxious Type A students and their parents: relax. If you are not immediately accepted into your major of choice due to test scores or GPA requirements, relax. If the registrar chokes on a pretzel while entering your schedule and adds you to Underwater Basket Weaving 101 instead of your freshman chemistry course, relax. If you don't get the Nobel-winning professor for your section, relax. (Most laureates probably wouldn't teach freshman classes anyway.) If you haven't found your niche and networks after the first week, relax. I can't think of much that can happen to you academically in your first quarter that can truly and permanently derail your future.
What can do that is getting behind the wheel while drunk. Or walking across campus late at night alone and inebriated. Or hanging out with the wrong crowd of people. I'm not here to moralize against drugs, alcohol, and pre-marital sex but to warn against poor judgment. It's naive to come to college expecting to never face those things, so it helps to think about what you could, should, and would do in those situations. Build personal expectations for yourself based on who you are, not what the university brochure or Aunt Millie tells you. You are far more likely to fulfill expectations you set for yourself.
I'd been meaning to try out Whole World Natural Restaurant and Bakery for awhile, but felt bad about dragging my steak-and-onions boyfriend to eat rabbit food with me, so I went with a girlfriend on Thursday instead. (I also had a convenient BOGO entree coupon.)
According to all the reviews I read, Whole World is famous for its broccoli burger ($5.95), which my friend ordered along with a cup of mushroom and rice soup ($2.95). Eager to see what all the fuss was about, I tried a bite of the burger and I have to confess I was less than thrilled. It was a little on the dry side and tasted like neither burger nor broccoli. (I'm of the culinary philosophy that food should, for the most part, taste and look like what it actually is, hence my aversion to vegetarian "meat" products in general. If you're going to go veg, go all the way, I say, and if you want to eat meat, which I have no problem with, go ahead and eat the real thing.)
I ordered a hearty garden salad for $7.95, which would be fairly steep if it hadn't bought me a veritable mountain of vegetables (and I can go to town on vegetables like most people can with ice cream.) My only quibble is the sunflower seeds, but I didn't realize those were in the salad or I would have asked the kitchen to skip them. I'd never eaten sunflower seeds before, but at least now I know I'm not a big fan. Other than that, the salad had romaine, sprouts, cucumber, grape tomatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and garbanzo beans, and was very filling. We skipped dessert that particular evening, but I hear their brownies are very good.
Most of the menu items had a vegan option (usually referring to cheese used in the dish) for the hard-core...again, this really wasn't a problem for me because I don't see the point of fake cheese and just asked them to hold off. The restaurant itself is a tiny little place on High Street just south of North Broadway. There was no air conditioning running when I went and the ambiance is less than great, but the food and service were both very good. We were the only dine-in customers at the time (around 5:30 pm Thursday) but I counted one take-out and one phone-in while we were there. Overall, not a bad place considering the limited vegetarian/vegan options near campus. (If I ever meet a rich vegetarian, I'll persuade them to take me to Dragonfly Neo-V downtown and let you know how it goes.)
So did you know there are sand beaches in Ohio? No, I don't mean the rocky shores of Alum Creek Reservoir or the skanky banks of the Olentangy...I'm talking about that monstrous body of water up north that separates us from Canada, eh? That's right, Lake Erie! My boyfriend and I trucked (Hyundai Sonata-ed?) up to Lakewood, OH to see his family, and he took me to Huntington Beach.
Honest-to-goodness sand and surf in good old landlocked Ohio! I was extremely excited, especially because the water was about seventy-five degrees and the sun was shining, unlike the wind-blown beach in Malibu we visited a few weeks ago. I didn't bring my swimsuit, but I kicked off my sandals and dipped my feet in the water, which was very nice after the blazing hot dry sand. For not leaving the time zone, Lake Erie is a pretty swell ocean substitute. (Readers from California and Florida can stop laughing at me now.)
Next week or perhaps the weekend after my girlfriends and I are planning to trip down toward Cincinnati and meet the other major body of water in the state, the Ohio River. We'll go to the zoo, and hit the Jeffersonville Outlets on the way home. Cute critters, cute clothes, that's what summer weekends are made for.
It is also festival and fair season! I'd love to go to:
Dublin Irish Festival (August 3-5)
Ohio State Fair (August 1-12)
Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival (September 5-12)
Geauga County Apple Butter Festival (October 13-14)
There is definitely a lot to do in Ohio as long as you know where to look (and bring an umbrella, just in case the weather changes).
I've started working in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and First Year Experience, and yesterday I spent about two hours typing in comments from orientation evaluations, which got me thinking about my own orientation, now two years removed. Bless their little freshman hearts, so worried about keeping up with classes, making new friends, finding their way around campus, all of which are very real concerns. And I have nothing against the chipper orientation folk...I am just as proud to be a Buckeye myself. But there are a few things they neglect to tell you at orientation...
1. If you test out of the math requirement with an L on the placement exam, do not, for any reason, take any more math unless your major requires it. The math advisers at orientation will claim that it is "good for you" to take more math...don't listen. They want butts in seats in their classes; they do not know what is best for your academic plan. I ended up taking Math H161, which did nothing but cause me to question the existence of numbers and spend upwards of fifteen hours a week on homework. I suppose I did bond with the members of my study group, Costin's Crazy Calculus Crammers, but I'd rather have bonds of friendship not forged in the fires of mental torment. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
2. Boys smell. Those with sensitive noses should avoid their dorm rooms at all costs.
3. Follow-up to #2: Knocking on a guys' dorm room at 7:30 in the morning may yield an answer from someone in various states of undress. Approach with caution.
4. The green beans at the dining commons contain bacon bits. Fake bacon bits, yes, but it is still irksome to a vegetarian like me.
5. Cookies, brownies, and other baked goods are the fastest and easiest way to make friends. Whip some up in your dorm kitchen and watch the whole floor come crawling to your outstretched, flour-y hand.
6. Don't bother buying any pens or pencils. Wait until the Involvement Fair and stock up there on all sorts of goodies. This year I got a nice metal bowl from the fire department for answering a question about fire safety, and a chocolate mint plant from the Newman Center. (I think it knew that I wasn't Catholic, however, and promptly died within two weeks.)
7. You are going to fail a class. Whether this means an F or an A- depends on the person, but it will inevitably happen. Get over it. Life will move on.
8. Call your family. They will probably only miss you for the first year, anyway, so take full advantage of your last chance to wheedle parental attention.
9. Facebook stalking is a perfectly legitimate and often the only way of keeping up with anyone from high school. Remember all those promises to keep in touch? You'll be lucky to follow through with ten people. Choose wisely.
10. If possible, move out in increments because you will accumulate all sorts of odds and ends throughout the year that could potentially double the amount of stuff in your room.
11. Sit in the front of the class. You are at the bottom of the totem pole again, so you might as well make a good impression on your professors if not on your peers. I always try to make sure my professors know me (favorably) by name within the first two weeks of class.
12. A corollary to the last point: No one cares in college like they might have cared in high school. Everyone is way too busy keeping track of their own crazy life to worry about anyone else. So wear pajamas or a prom dress to class, take notes on a tablet or your arm, sleep or sit up in lecture, whatever. Just be yourself, whoever that may be or become.
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