Category: School

Midterms

“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
– Leonardo da Vinci

Macroeconomics test tomorrow. That test is 20-25% of my final grade 😛

On top of tests, work is busy this week. Things there are going well, but I have a lot on my plate overall. I’m also starting a huge group project for Business Communication. Grr.

Looking at next semester’s classes… That will be a bit rough, too, it seems.

Immortal Technique is awesome.

“Major” indecision

(…sorry for the pun.)

Right now I’m not sure what I want to do with my major(s) at CSU. I came here knowing my three big interests: Music, Computers, and Spanish. I’m pursuing all three in some way or another, and possibly will be getting degrees in two of them (I don’t want to be a music major).

Right now I’m a Business Administration major with a concentration in Computer Information Systems. I will graduate with a diploma that has no mention of computers. The program consists of 34 credits of general business courses, including many that I don’t care one bit about: Business Law, Managerial Accounting, and Supply Chain Management, to name a few. The business college is a completely different world when compared to the rest of campus: everyone acts as if they’re in a simulation, preparing for the “real world”. It’s not uncommon to see people wearing suits or at least dressing in business casual to go to class. I kind of like it- I’ve been making up my own home businesses since about second grade or so- but at the same time, it just seems so fake. I don’t want to be some guy in a suit who masks communication with his customers in formal reports and letters.
The CIS concentration is 27 credits. That means 34 credits of classes that I essentially don’t care about, and 27 of classes that I’m strongly interested in. I don’t like having more classes that I don’t like.

I wrestled with myself a while back over whether or not I should just be a straight-up Computer Science major. It’s 60 credits of programming. It’s also lots of theory and math and things that I’m generally not good at. But it’s also probably better preparation for what I’m interested in; most of the interesting jobs and internships I’ve looked at want CS majors. Unfortunately, CS prepares you for a job that can easily be done in India, and it’s really showing these days. Essentially, CS teaches you how to sit in a box all day and program. That’s the appeal of the business major- I learn the programming, and I learn skills that make me hard to replace- skills that can’t be outsourced.

Enter the Applied Computing Technology major.  It’s about 35 credits of Computer Science, plus 12 credits of business and 12 credits of classes in any computing department on campus (CS, CIS, Electrical Computer Engineering, more…) It looks appealing. But one of my bosses at work is a CS major, and he says that employers don’t like the ACT major. Meh. I like it.

If I do switch my major to ACT, it won’t be until next year. Part of that is because the business college is really hard to get into, so I should stay until I’m sure that I want to bail. Another part is that I haven’t gotten into any of the programming in the CIS major yet (BD210 is still quizzing me on easy hardware stuff… I have one tomorrow on CDs and DVDs. Ugh.) so I don’t know if 27 is not enough, or if it’s too oriented on business applications.
But probably the biggest reason is that business majors get free copies of Windows and Office, and I don’t want to give that up until after Windows Vista comes out 😀

Why I suck at Spanish. (kinda)

So I’ve pretty much decided that my current Spanish class (LCC300S, Reading & Writing for Communication) is basically an easier version of last year’s Spanish 9-10 class with Loca Zinke. That’s good – I always forget the tiny little rules with grammar, so I need them to be constantly smashed into my lazy, stubborn brain. I still love taking Spanish, but one of my weaknesses is that I really couldn’t give a crap about all of the exceptions to the rules when it comes to grammar. I also can’t manage the subjunctive or reflexive forms.

This became really clear to me today… I got 2 tests back. One was an essay, the other was a grammar test. The essay was 95%, and had “Truly well done- you write well” in the comments.
The other was a grammar test. 76%. Not horrible, but I expect more out of myself. Blah.

Why can’t I get the darned grammatical rules down? I think that I really, really need to study abroad and immerse myself in the language for a few months. I’m working on it; I’ll probably go to Spain and/or Latin America next year sometime. CSU has one of the best study abroad programs around (CSU’s motto is “Knowledge to Go Places”) and they have partnerships with a lot of schools in Spain- including several Business schools. Since a lot of my business core curriculum is really boring in the first place, I might be able to kill two birds with one stone and just take ’em in Spain.
And maybe if I go somewhere for a while, I’ll just have to learn the proper grammatical skills.

A month…

Wow. It’s been that long already. It totally doesn’t feel like it; part of me still thinks that I’m at camp, and will be going home any day now. But I’m not, and I’m gonna be here for about 8 more months, and that doesn’t bother me at all. I haven’t blogged much in the last month, so I guess I’ll summarize a bit here.

I am definitely happy with my choice to leave Arizona, study CIS, and do so at Colorado State. I think that even though Santa Cruz was (and maybe still is) my top choice, it would have been a much harder transition to make; I wouldn’t just be around totally new people, but I’d be completely new to my surroundings as well. I know CSU like the back of my hand already, from spending about 6 months here over 3 summers, and that has helped. It’s kind of like the best of both worlds: I’m in a completely new set of people, so I can start fresh without everyone nagging me about the stuff I did freshman year, but I still feel like I stayed at home because I know the town, I know the campus, and it doesn’t feel foreign to me.

Colorado is so beautiful. CSU is a land grant campus, so there are tons of big, grassy fields that you have to cross in order to get to class. They also provide a majestic view of the Rocky Mountains, which are only a couple of miles away. They knew this when they were building everything here, too; many buildings have huge walls of glass on the west side facing the mountains. One of my favorite spots to study in the early afternoon is on the third floor of the library, where you can sit down on the balcony and watch everyone walk across the fields and just take in the landscape.

The people here are really great, too. I don’t feel like I have to be in a gifted program or an advanced group like band to find good people. Everyone here is really down-to-earth and genuine, and they don’t have to be in honors classes or anything to be that way. Part of this surely is because it’s college, so everyone who is here wants to be here, so there is none of that high school crowd that’s like, “I’m legally required to be here, but I don’t want to be here, so I’m just going to be a jackass and make everyone else’s time here suck.”

Living on my own is nice, too.  It doesn’t feel like something drastically changed and now I’m suddenly making tons of decisions for myself- I was so all over the place my senior year that sometimes home felt like it was just the place I came home to sleep in every night. But being completely in charge of my time and activities is nice. My floor turned out to be a really good one, and everyone is very outgoing. We just leave our doors open all the time and one can easily spend an entire day without leaving Corbett hall, and not get bored.

Classes here are interesting… It is just class, so it feels a lot like high school in some respects, but it’s a lot more relaxed. I’m in class for 15 hours a week instead of 30, and the profs are way less restrictive; they don’t treat you like a criminal or someone who needs to be tied down to their chair and pay attention. Instead, they actually figure that you’ll either take responsibility for your education, or you’ll fail. They don’t care either way.

I feel like I have a good balance of my logical and creative sides, doing a Business Administration major (that’s the one with the CIS concentration) and a Spanish major. I miss a lot of the fun liberal arts-type classes that I’ve taken before… I still miss Pullen’s history classes. A lot of the fun Honors classes would be great to take, but my AP credits already covered their degree requirements, so it would be a waste for me to take them.
I’m not really enjoying the business core classes, though. I decided to do Computer Information Systems, which is 27 credits of programming, instead of Computer Science, which is 60, because the CIS program provides a good business background (read: My job will not go to India and I won’t have to sit in a box all day writing code.) But I am honestly dreading all of the accounting, marketing, and business law classes… There are 34 credits in the core, meaning that it’s more than the actual programming classes themselves 😛
But I’m going to stick with it. At least for now. If I want to take more programming, I’ll get a Masters degree in Computer Science.

I miss drumline and band. Not terribly, but just playing electric drums in my dorm isn’t the same. I think it’s just a need for more musical involvement, not necessarily at school. I need to find people to jam with. Especially a bassist. Someone who can competently improvise melody would be AMAZING, too.

I’ve been listening to a lot of different music now. Here are my current favorites:

  • Regina Spektor
  • Louis Armstrong
  • Bill Bruford’s Earthworks
  • Acoustic Alchemy
  • Wendy Woo
  • The Mars Volta (like I’ve said before, Amputechture is amazing)

An interesting observation before I go: Colorado is much less diverse than Arizona. I think McClintock was something like 50% white, 30% hispanic, 12% black and maybe 8% asian. CSU is a LOT more white overall. But in the minorities that are present, however, I think that there is a lot less interracial tension here. People just happen to be different, but there aren’t huge cliques centered around race, which are definitely present in Arizona.

Study habits

The second week has gone pretty well, so far. I am thoroughly enjoying having 4 days of the week with no class. That said, it’s not all easy, and I still have responsibilities to juggle, but it could be a lot worse.

My 8 A.M. class, Business Communication, is still kind of lame, but having it first in the morning is probably a good thing. The room is freezing cold, too, so I stay awake… but when 10:30 comes around, and I’m in my third class, it becomes hard to stay awake. Yesterday I fell asleep in lecture and the girl sitting next to me woke me up and pointed out something that the prof said was really important.
I was also towards the back of the room…. BI102 is my largest class, and I’m not a “sit-in-back” type. It was very annoying, because people will just have conversations right over the lecture, or blast their iPod headphones, and everything happens at exactly the same volume level as the distant professor’s lecture. Very hard to concentrate and absorb information. I don’t see why these people come to class at all.

Other than that, most of my classes are still reviewing material that I already know, and all of them will be done reviewing that material fairly soon. That will be the real test, when I’m handling tons of new information simultaneously. Right now I’m just getting used to the routines, without the new content.

I’m still worried about setting up the right study habits. I think that I had the high school system totally figured out so that I could get by with minimal stress: I figured out that studying material is very important, and that sometimes time in class is really a waste. So sometimes I would ditch class in an effort to be more productive with that time. I also learned which homework was and wasn’t necessary to learn the material, and so I shunned “busywork” consistently, sometimes at the expense of my grade. And in doing so I have become a lazy procrastinator.
But I learned that test grades are not everything, and that there is a very large amount of participation and homework grades that can pad a less-than-stellar test grade, so I could still get by.

College is going to be very different, I think. It’s even more responsibility placed on myself and my self-discipline. There is very little – if any – credit given for participation or homework, and it factors very heavily on test grades. My macroeconomics grade is completely based on 4 tests. Professors still give homework, but so far very little of it is ever handed in or given a grade. It’s just there for my benefit. I do like the flexibility that system gives me, but since I know I have a lazy procrastinator problem, it also gives me a good deal of stress.

I’m going to have to train myself to do the homework, regardless of its point value, so that I’ll perform well on the tests. I have always been fairly laid back when it comes to getting grades on tests- if I get a C, and I worked really hard on it, I’m not kicking myself for not doing better on it. (I also probably don’t guilt myself enough when I score a low grade due to my own laziness.) Now, though, since tests are worth so much more, I’ll have to be a lot more anal about studying for them.

I actually like studying, and don’t mind homework when I’m actually doing it, but for some reason I have a ton of trouble getting around to doing it! I get distracted by five million other things that I would rather do. My solution last year was kicking myself out of the house and going to Gold Bar. I plan on doing something similar here, but I wish that I could just be responsible and get stuff done at home.
My other problem is having a computer right there whenever I’m trying to do homework – it can be so distracting! Grr.

In other news, I am really liking my job. A lot. And it looks like it’s about to get a lot more interesting… but that’s all I can say for now.

Zeke’s got class.

I had my first round of class yesterday… I liked most of it!

I start out the day with BD210, which is kind of an intro to information systems…  We’ll spend most of our time working with Visual Basic .NET, which means that I’ll get past wussy half-languages (finally). The professor for this class is the CIS chair, so he really knows his stuff.

After that I have BI102- Insects, Science and Society. My biggest class- maybe 400 people? But the prof here is awesome, too- really funny. And we have a project grade that can be completed by visiting the Butterfly Pavilion or a ton of different things (including the stereotypical first grade “collect-ten-bugs-and-bring-them-to-teacher” assignment). The class is definitely geared towards non-science people, which means that it’s geared towards me.

After BI102 I have 2 hours for lunch, followed by L300S- Spanish Reading & Writing for Communication. This class seems to be at- or maybe slightly under- the level of the class I took with Zinke last year. But the general idea is the same- become a grammar nazi. Which is exactly what I need, since it’s the thing I suck the most at. (See last sentence? It ended in a preposition. Baaaaad zeke.)

Next is EC204 (Macroeconomics) in the same building. What can I say? It’s econ. We’ll see if I suck at macro nearly as much as I suck at micro. (I’m guessing that I don’t.) Also a big class.

I also took BG100, which is intro to business, but I dropped it already- soooooo easy. It’s a required class, but luckily I have 34 credits already, which is enough to waive that requirement.

It also turns out that I have my 8pm-Midnight shift at work on MONDAY, not Sunday. So I did that last night too- that place gets pretty desolate. But I’m not complaining- it’s way better than Taco Del Mar.

Today I faced the reality that I once again have homework- Summer is officially over. Blar. I’m already realizing that I get distracted studying in my room- just like at home- so I’ll probably being frequenting The Bean Cycle pretty soon. I have a lot of Spanish and Econ reading to do.

And Facebook has blogs now! w00t! My blog automatically reposts there, so Facebook me and read it there!

Final schedule

AP Credits transferred over to CSU…. I got a 4 on the Microeconomics (thought I would fail) and a 4 on Spanish (as expected; had hoped for a 5).

These credits officially make me a sophomore. Sweet.

So I registered for my last classes, and now I have my finalized schedule.

Everything but one recitation on MWF….. eww… But having 4 days off a week will obviously have its’ advantages.

Still trying to decide whether or not I want to bother with marching band. Right now I want to. GRRR! I do this every year. I don’t think I’ll end up doing it, though.

Graduation

It’s all done now, at last.

Graduation itself was what I expected from going to the last two with band… And that means long. But that’s OK. I didn’t take photos, obviously, but luckily for all of you, my friend Alan did. You can see his photos here.

And for a strangely disturbing comparison, look at this one. One is my economics teacher. The other is my mom. Very strange.

I didn’t go to grad night because they make you stay until 4 AM so that you don’t do stupid things that teens do, and I had work the next morning at 9 AM. I went and hung out with the folks from AG instead… And ended up staying out until 6. The only reason that I survived yesterday doing an 8 hour shift at work was the fact that I chugged a Rockstar energy drink.

Now I’m officially on the working-full-time-this-summer schedule. This is my first day off in a week. I’m adjusting OK- it’s just a little bit shorter than school was usually, but the time passes a lot faster. Only a little while until I can buy a MacBook.

And I suddenly don’t feel like blogging more.