starting

Quick though I may be

To pass this judgement, I fear

This semester's load.

I haven't had a hard semester yet in college.  I feel like it's an integral part of the experience, but I haven't done it yet.  I scheduled this one to totally kick my butt, but if my first class (S311) is any indication, it'll be just like all the other semesters.  The real sad part is that I have so many evening classes.  I'd like to enjoy my ridiculous freedom.

But yeah, this S311 course.  It's Honors Calculus III, which I think I recall expressing concern over in a previous posting.  I haven't done calculus in a long time.  But I feel like the professor is pretty much going to do a lot of hand-holding for this course.  And we're only going through, like, 3.5 chapters in the book.  Behhh.  Not to mention that she's... well... plain.  She seems nice enough, but I'm having a hard time imagining myself getting fired up about things in her class.

I think this will be a good semester for math-y things, though.  I'm super excited about the Putnam, especially after solving two problems off an old test on my own.  Well, not entirely on my own, I guess.  Daniel was there, but I did... er... most of the solving.  Anyhow, I also finally finished reading that book that Evan gave me (A Mathematical Mosaic), and I feel like I took a fair amount away from it.  So that's good.  And I just felt like I was in the zone as I read out of the calc book for next week's assignment.

In other news, now that my MARATHON TRAINING has started, I'm getting pumped about running.  Georgia and I are going through a program she found together, which I'm thrilled about.  I ran 5 miles yesterday, and close to 4 the day before.... woot!

change

Change marks all of us,
Some far more notably so,
Others seem inert.

I went to a breakfast this morning with WIC (Women in Computing), and was then whisked away to a little seminary thingy held for the direct admit kids to CS and Informatics. It was pretty interesting. I guess I have a little bit of a different perspective on things after spending the summer in Cali, but once I got back into talking with Suzanne and Laura it felt like I hadn't left. I'm super excited about a few things now:

1) Being a UI for the Goofy Giggles class! I talked to Prof. Brown today about it briefly, and he seems excited to have me. Working for him last summer was great, so I'm assuming that this experience will be as good.

2) The Cluster Challenge in Austin! Laura informed me that it is, indeed, going to happen, and that I'm welcome to participate. Should be a lot of fun. Except it's getting restructured this year, I guess. I liked the format last year (learning all the random interesting things about supercomputing was great), but I guess this year we're in it to win it. Hmm.

3) Tae Kwon Do! I just changed my schedule so that I'm in Tae Kwon Do instead of Yoga. I feel like it will better suit my tastes, perhaps.

4) The Putnam! It's been a long time since I've done real, interesting math. I noticed this when I was going through the book Evan got me for my birthday (A Mathematical Mosaic, Ravi Vakil). I hope that I do better than average, but average on this exam is a 0, and I'm pretty sure I can get at least a point someplace. We shall see!

5) Parkour/getting back into shape! Jeff said that he'd be interested in trying out parkour-y things with me. Plus I need to lose all this fat that I got from the friggin amazing food at Google. Which shouldn't be hard since I'm living on a student budget now!

6) Cooking! I realize that this is in direct conflict with my last item, but I don't care! I just got a new set of pots and pans from Gram & Gramps, and I can't wait to use them for the first time. Hopefully this weekend!

Anyway, back to productivity (or some rendition thereof). I have to finish some stuff up before I go laking this afternoon. ;)