First week of classes

It’s been almost a week since my last blog update, and in that time I have completed my first week of classes. Since the semester is now going on will not have as much time to work on my blog, but I will definitely try and post at least once per week.

So classes. Papers. I understand now why the classes are called papers now. I went to a building called the Printery and wrote down my paper numbers, and they handed me a stack of documents 1-2 inches thick for each class I had. The documents are course materials. They are also in addition to textbooks, although only two of my papers actually require me to buy a textbook. I guess I saved $100 or more from that.

The papers themselves are structured a bit differently from normal classes I’ve taken back in the States. Papers might meet two or three hours a week for lectures, and then have an hour of discussion time later called tutorial. The times for these lectures and tutorials seem to be chosen at random and follow no specific rhyme or reason. I had to do a bunch of work at the beginning of the week to move my schedule around and change some courses just to get everything to fit without having class times clash with one another.

To illustrate this point, here is my schedule:

Monday: 9-11 Philosophy lecture

Tuesday: 9-10 Math lecture, 1-2 Philosophy tutorial

Wednesday: 2-4 Maori lecture, 4-5 Math lecture

Thursday: 10-11 Maori tutorial, 11-12 Math lecture, 2-5 Physics lab

Friday: 9-10 Math lecture, 3-4 Math tutorial

Confusing enough? And don’t even begin to think that classes would be in the same room twice in a row, because that would just be silly.

The papers themselves seem to be more independent. In the first week the professors pretty much told us when every assignment is due. My math and science classes have maybe six assignments in the semester, and my more fluffy philosophy and Maori studies classes only have two assignments each. To be fair, the philosophy and Maori studies papers are first year papers which I am taking so that I am not bogged down with too many third year courses to enjoy New Zealand as well. That said, the two essays for philosophy are only about 1000 words each, which seems ridiculously easy. It’s good that the class discussions sound quite interesting.

The one physics paper that I am taking is an advanced experimental course, and I will get to perform experiments that North Park could never afford. Just yesterday I spent the afternoon trapping charged drops of oil between two plates of a capacitor in the famous Millikan Oil Drop experiment where physicists were first able to determine the charge on an electron. I seemed like a bit of a newbie at doing experiments because I haven’t done them since my first year in college, and out of all my classes, this physics class seems the most daunting to me.

The math class I am taking is Applied Linear Algebra (basically working with matrices). It’s the next level up from Linear Algebra, which was probably my least favorite math class in college. So why am I taking the next level of it? Because the first level didn’t make too much sense to me. And already I can tell that this paper will be incredibly beneficial. We spent the first week solely going through rigorous mathematical definitions of vectors, vector spaces, matrices, and linear transformations. It was actually pretty cool.

In other news, I got a bike today. Green Bike Trust for the win! (Too bad I have to spell my internet slang out because my only registered followers are people who wouldn’t know what rofl means. *hint hint lurkers*) But my bike. It’s pretty sweet. I’ll get a pic of it up soon. Unfortunately they didn’t offer any road bike rentals, which would have suited my needs much better, but I’m happy with the mountain bike I have for the rest of the semester. I had to buy a helmet as well and make a trip into town to buy a bike lock for it. If the weather is nice tomorrow (which it was today) then I will probably take the bike for a ride up or down the river. I looked up distances and it looks like I’m about 25 miles from the ocean. After a bit of training I’m going to have to bike out to the beach sometime.