The Eater of Small Things

I find myself ever aware when I am lured into the Starbucks drive-through that I'm setting myself up to wait 10 minutes for coffee. Good coffee, albeit pricey in both time to acquire and actual greenbacks. Today though, I scope out my real favorite coffee-shop haven: the one in Hagerty Hall. I love their flavored coffee, and a token in my wallet is redeemable for a free one today. Any size I want. Yeah.

Diversions into caffeine addiction aside, I took my first Spanish 104 exam a few minutes ago and need to debrief at someone before the synapses die down.

I had a hunch to avoid studying for this test over the weekend, and it turns out I was justified in goofing off. The material was pretty easy... possibly the easiest Spanish exam I've ever taken. Though there seems to be some dark shadow permeating this class-- possibly residual nightmares from the Summer of Diez Credito Hueres del Classes Espanol-- a dark time that will haunt this blog for decades. But this time is different. No more marathon weeks of four cram days followed by a exam on the 5th. This was Spanish in digestible morsels. I might actually learn to like speaking Spanish again.

And the bad: we ran out of time. All of us. I don't think there was a single person who actually finished the entire exam. It was page after page of essay-reading, where we had to fill-in-the-blanks in a popular test-taking strategy the military refers to as Seek & Destroy. Unfortunately, this is a slow-going process whenever translation is concerned. Our instructor actually apologized to us and said he's going over to his supervisor to address the issue. Hopefully they'll see mercy on us and toss some extra points back this way.

Have a good Monday.

I drove to school this morning before sunrise. I'm trying to wrap my head around how this will be a daily phenomenon in the weeks to come: my car flitting down an empty street to merge with the sea of wet metal that is the morning commute; casting desperate glances to the eastern horizon for any sign that the sun will rise.

Light did come, in a manner of speaking, painting everything in different shades of gray. It's 9:45 now, and it's feasible that the sun is out there somewhere because I don't need a lantern to see where I'm walking. But today is notably overcast.

Yes, a whole paragraph to tell you in the most colorful way that it's cloudy.

Class details: Math 150 is in a building called 209 W. 18th ave. I'm guessing they couldn't agree on a name for the building, because it's surrounded by a campus where everything is named after this dean or that provost. The auditorium was stifling hot, and surprisingly packed as early as 30 minutes before the class actually started. (first day jitters?) But they've really got us packed in there. There is no room for claustrophobia in this place, though deodorant is appreciated.

Learning stinks.

Just a brief commentary in the form of a comic today to announce that I am being killed off by the Weight x Distance formula.

Bragging rights to finish out the week: I scored a 90% on my math midterm. Huzzah!

I am way out of time today, but I figured that a small post is better than none. "Sound-bytes" as my wife describes these new, brief snippets, but oh well.

I've got my first big math exam this evening. Time to see if actually doing my homework for a change will pay off. I'm not worried though.

I'm going to try and see if I can declare a Biology major this week. As a marriage of convenience it will give me access to more/better funding opportunities as well as health insurance (oooh yeah!), and an overall feeling of legitimacy as I forge ahead in my prerequisites for med school.

As I wade through the paperwork involved in going back to college, my thoughts flicker toward the deaths all those trees that are making this possible. Though I don't spend much time musing on their sacrifice because I am already on to the next step in the process, and the next, and the next. It does not end.

The smell of burnt electrical components follows me around wherever I go this week. I'm pretty sure I fried something when I took a math placement test on Monday. Equations and slope-intercept formulas have haunted my sleep since high school algebra all those years ago. It's true, I have avoided math like the plague for the greatest part of a decade. I scoffed at it all through my undergraduate career, and chortled with a superior air once I had made it to graduate school without even touching the stuff.

And now here, I found myself taking a math placement test to determine my worth. Principles locked away for eons in the dungeons of my cerebrum were dredged up; postulates exiled in darkness were granted a reprieve. A parade of logical horrors marched out of my mind and onto the paper, their tattering banners announcing the honest-to-God truth: math stays with you forever.

I stumbled out of the testing center in a mental fog, the smell of burnt wiring pouring from my ears. In the End of Days, Math will ride out on a white calculator and claim us all...