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You take a deep breath and you walk through the doors
It's the morning of your very first day
And you say hi to your friends you ain't seen in a while
Try and stay out of everybody's way
("FIfteen" by Taylor Swift)
No matter how old I get, I just love first days of class. (I suppose that's one of the reasons I like the quarter system...three first days a year instead of two!) You never know who you're going to meet, both students and professors, and the hopeful prospect of a new quarter, like so many sheets of blank notebook paper, is always exhilarating.
So this quarter I will be spending my time watching Broadway musicals, throwing clay, and reading the Bible. I could not ask for a better end to my undergraduate career!
For some reason, February seemed to drag on and on and on, but March has completely passed me by. Between traveling to Philadelphia, finals, and a spring break jaunt to Atlanta, I suddenly find myself on April's doorstep. I suppose next year's freshman class is quivering with anticipation of their acceptance letters, but I have already decided to accept a Graduate Enrichment Fellowship to get my M.Ed at Ohio State next year. Here's to another year of Buckeye greatness!
In other news...
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I am going to be on the Jeopardy College Tournament. More details forthcoming, but I will be flying to L.A. for the taping in about two weeks, and the tournament will air the first week of May. It is still sinking in even though I found out over a week ago. Now I need to go buy another OSU sweatshirt...
I got a lot of funny looks last weekend in Philadelphia when I told people I had finals the following week. When I explained OSU's quarter system, many people looked aghast at the idea of finishing a class in ten weeks. I've never known any different so it seems normal to me, but I guess if you think about it, it is a little intense and certainly can be very grueling. I think the worst part about being on quarters is the fact that you can have midterms as early as three weeks into a course. (And, if your professors don't time things correctly, you can have midterms for five consecutive weeks like I did this quarter!)
President Gee is pushing hard to have OSU switch to semesters. Here's the resolution to convert from quarters to semesters, which would take effect no earlier than 2012. That's [hopefully] long after I'll be gone, but my brother would be a college sophomore at that point. (Which is not to say he will be going to OSU for sure, of course.) Some people love the idea, some hate it, and there are certainly advantages and disadvantages to the switch.
I don't know all the logistics and expenses that would be involved, but from my limited perspective I think it would probably be a good idea to get on the same calendar page as most of the other schools in Ohio if not the country. This will help students looking for employment, seasonal or longer-term, and perhaps facilitate academic cooperation with other universities. It may result in less pressure to cram a lot of material into ten weeks, or reduce the amount of material that winds up getting cut as a result of a shorter teaching schedule. On the other hand, I'm glad I've had to the opportunity to take so many different classes in my time at Ohio State, and I might not be able to do that in a semester calendar. I guess the jury's still out on this one.
In other news, OSU has made me an offer for graduate school that I would be extremely foolish to refuse. So unless Emory drops $75,000 out of the sky within the next few weeks, I'm looking forward to another year as a Buckeye at The Ohio State University! (Plus another year of free RPAC membership...yesssss!)
I'm rather liking this retrospective exercise...gives me a good excuse to dig through all the old photos I have on my computer (and really should back up to an external hard drive!)
Fall 2005: It's funny how this time feels like both yesterday and a lifetime ago. It's impossible to write about everything that happened this quarter, so I will condense it to a list of "Would Do Again" and "Would Not Do Again."
Would Do Again:
- Live in Taylor Tower 403 with the roommates I did. My best friend from high school and I agreed to live on the same floor but not together, so that we would go out and make new friends. I think this worked out better for her than for me, as she moved into an apartment with her freshman roommates the next year, while I have never been extremely close to any of my roommates except one whom I've known since childhood anyway. We've gotten along just fine, we're just not best friends.
- Go on the London Honors Study Abroad trip. Sure, it cost $1800 extra, but it was an opportunity I will almost certainly never have again, to travel to London with a group of 25 excited freshmen. (I do hope to see Stonehenge and Bath again, though.) There's something about traveling together that really helps people bond...although one of my professors from this trip now thinks my name is Jessica.
- Started eating a vegetarian diet.
Would Not Do Again:
- Take Math H161. While I had fun in our 8th-floor study group, I would rather not have my friendships forged in the crucible of severe mental anguish induced by 15 hours a week of some odd brand of calculus in which we prove the existence of numbers. I literally remember nothing we learned in this class beyond the phrase "epsilon delta." I was suckered into signing up for this class at orientation, where I was advised to take a math class EVEN THOUGH I had already tested out of everything through 153. Worst way to begin freshman year, ever. Not that I'm disgruntled or anything.
- Failed to declare a major before beginning classes. I don't know why I kept the "Exploration" major...I already knew I wanted to double major in English and molecular genetics. I guess I was curious whether I would learn anything in Exploration Survey that might change my mind. Um, I didn't. It was a huge waste of time, though I'm sure the major-specific surveys probably aren't that much more informative anyway.
- Left Ballroom Dancing Association after just one try. I was too shy to dance with strangers, but now I wish I had stuck with it.
This weekend I went to Philadelphia to interview for a teaching fellowship sponsored by the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation. It provides financial and professional development support for high school science teachers in their first five years of teaching, as well as tuition assistance while enrolled in a credentialing program. It was a great experience overall: I feel confident about my interview, I met a lot of really interesting people, and I feel generally confirmed in my calling to be a teacher. Surprisingly, I was one of the youngest candidates there; many had finished undergrad a few years ago and were now turning to teaching. But despite that, I left feeling more like a "grown-up" (whatever that means) than I had before. Maybe it was just the realization that in little more than a year I will actually be read to start my career! And also, June 14 is now less than three months away.
But first, to pass this quarter's finals...
P.S. As I was flying in this afternoon, I looked out the window just as we were over Downtown. I recognized the Nationwide building, Leveque Tower, and COSI, and quickly realized that we would be going over campus. I saw the Shoe, the Towers, the Oval, the Med Center...even my apartment! (We were pretty low at the point...Port Columbus is only about ten minutes east of campus.) As much as I do want to get out of town sometimes, there really is no place like home.
So I was advising one of the girls from my old church who is going to be a freshman at Ohio State this fall, and it was hard to believe that was me in her shoes just four years ago. And today I attended my last molecular genetics lecture of all time (I will be out of town Friday). In the spirit of Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture, I will be presenting a series of retrospective entries about my time at Ohio State. Nothing fancy, they'll probably be mostly in list format. I figure I've been here 12 quarters and four summers, so at the rate of two entries a week, that will get me right up to mid-May. Of course, I'll probably intersperse some entries about what's happening now, but that's plenty to blog about until that magical day of June 14. Let me know what you think or if you have any questions about any part of the OSU experience...I will do my best to answer them!
Summer 2005
Immediately after graduating high school, my family and I whisked off to Taiwan for a month, which I regret a little because I missed almost all the graduation parties. But if there's anything I've learned about old friends/classmates, it's that the ones worth keeping up with you'll keep with automatically. Orientation is a bit of a blur, but I remember the weather being rather hot and me being rather uptight. There were lots of corny icebreakers, O-H-I-O's, and exhortations to "get involved" (but not with sex, drugs, or alcohol, of course!) I discovered the wonders of Facebook and made a lot of promises about keeping in touch that I fully intended, but did not manage, to keep. Everything looked new and promising but a little scary at the same time.
I'm not going to pretend this has been the easiest quarter of my life academically (six midterms in five weeks brought me rather dangerously close to literal insanity), but it has certainly been one of the richest. I'll go out on a limb and say that, in general, my professors this quarter were the best I've ever had. My classes also seemed to coalesce in a perfect storm in which concepts in one class reiterated or elaborated on concepts presented in another.
My historical geology class discussed dinosaur phylogeny, which dovetailed nicely with my evolution class. In the evolution class, we talked about development today, which is what I've spent the entire quarter studying in molecular genetics. Besides my ag econ class, there's been a significant amount of integration between my courses this quarter, which I like because I'm a holistic thinker. I kind of wish more of my classes in previous quarters had meshed this well...
I haven't heard back from the Jeopardy College Tournament yet, but in the meantime another OSU student has made an appearance on the show. Jerome Socolof's appeared on the show that aired February 23. He didn't win, but took home $1000 for appearing on the show. The rules for College Tournament are a little different...I think you get $5000 just for making it to the show, which would certainly make life a lot easier if I got it! Stay tuned...
OSU 'Jeopardy' contestant loses
One percenter: OSU student makes it on 'Jeopardy'
Every year Columbus Alive, an alternative weekly newspaper, does its Best of Columbus readers' poll. Since I'm a little bit of a hermit for economic reasons, I can't knowledgeably vote on all the categories, but here are some highlights worth commenting on.
| Category | CA's pick | My Pick | Comments |
| Best Movie Theater | Arena Grand | Landmark Gateway | Maybe I'm partial because I go to church here, but I also like Gateway's selection of more eclectic films. |
| Best Museum | Columbus Museum of Art | COSI | This one's a tough call, but I'm going to go with COSI because I volunteer there and I think it has wider audience appeal. |
| Best Place for People Watching | Easton Town Center | OSU's Oval | I concur that Easton is great for people-watching, but if you want true variety, hit the Oval on a sunny spring day. |
| Best Festival | ComFest | Columbus Arts Festival | I admit I've never been to ComFest so I can't say for sure, but the Arts Festival is always really neat. |
| Best Sports Mascot | Brutus Buckeye | Brutus Buckeye | Duh. |
| Best Art Gallery | Hayley Art Gallery | Studios on High | Right next to Cookware Sorceror, and featuring Judy Hoberg's cute clay animals...what more could I ask for? |
| Best Public Art | Short North "Mona Lisa" | I think my favorite would have to be the decorated Brutus Buckeye statues near the Schottenstein Center. | Duh. |
| Best Place to Take Out-of-Towners | Short North | Short North, OSU | Toss-up. But they're so close to each other you might as well visit both! |
| Best Neighborhood | Short North | Upper Arlington | I know UA is a city in its own right, but it retains a lot of its regal dowager character, if a city could be thought of to have such a quality. |
| Best Park | Goodale Park | Schiller Park | I love going here to see Shakespeare in the summer. |
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