Back In the Groove...

Well, Winter semester has started and is fully underway! My classes have kicked off and I am right back into things with lots of reading and assignments! My classes are almost entirely different this semester, so it’s taking some adjusting to get used to the new professors and course materials. My other activities have all really kicked up in intensity as well, so I’m trying to balance a lot of things at once!

I had a really great winter break and hung out with a lot of friends from high school. It was really neat to see how much everyone had changed in their first semester of college, and I noticed that I got along better with some friends than others. Towards the end of break, I found myself really missing my new college friends, and I was thrilled when I came back and got to see them again. I feel much closer to my new college friends than my friends at home, and its really great to feel such strong connections with people here. I think it’s because I’m with these people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I’ve gone through a lot more new experiences with them. When you’re a freshman in college, everyone is in the same boat, so connections you make are stronger because everyone is dealing with the same issues and is trying to navigate a brand new setting. Anyway, I love my new friends and I love my old ones, and it’s wonderful to have two full sets of people to hang out with when I’m at school and when I’m home.

The first two weeks back in Ann Arbor were really fun…classes hadn’t started up too much, and I got to be social almost every day of the week! Friday night I went to Necto, a nightclub in Ann Arbor, to support a fundraiser my friend helped organize. It was really fun, and I hope to go back again soon! I’ve started working out and playing racquetball every Monday night with my friend Christine, so that’s also a really fun way to get some exercise and see a friend at the same time. The intramural sports building has racquetball courts, weight rooms, a pool, a basketball court, and lots of other facilities for fitness, and all of these are free for UM students!

In terms of courses, I’m enrolled in…

Great Books 192 – the second semester of my first Great Books course, which I did in the Fall semester. I really like reading the old Greek and Latin texts which have survived for thousands and thousands of years and are still entirely relevant in our world today!

An “Honors Seminar” called The Evolution of Cognition – a “seminar” just means it’s a small class where the professor has discussions with students instead of lecturing to a large group. This course is really neat, and our first reading was about how eyeballs have evolved…it’s more complex than you might think!

Statistics 350 – this is the basic intro to statistics course, but fortunately I have a really good professor, Dr. Brenda Gunderson, who truly loves to teach the course and is so incredibly organized that she makes it easy for students to succeed! Remember the name “Gunderson”…she’s the best prof for this class! I think everyone should have this class just so they understand statistics they read in papers and see on TV. It’s interesting and not as challenging as my Calculus 3 class first semester, which is a bit of a relief!

English 140 – Shakespeare in Performance – this is a course about how Shakespeare’s plays are performed. We look at the different ways actors’ and directors’ interpretations of Shakespeare’s words influence the way the plays are presented onstage. This has turned out to be a very difficult course, and I’m struggling a bit with reading Shakespeare’s text closely. I’m going to office hours on Thursday with my professor, and I’m hoping he’ll be able to give me some tips on how to approach the plays.

Finally, I’m in a “Dialogue” course through the Program on Intergroup Relations about socioeconomic status. This course brings together people of high and low socioeconomic standing to discuss issues of class differences and privilege in society. The goal is for all the participants to gain understanding of the other group members’ experiences and feelings. I haven’t started this course yet, but the first reading was very interesting, and I’m excited for this course from a more personal standpoint and a less academic one, as I will probably learn more about myself and the people around me than about a specific “academic” subject. Some of the best learning you do in college, however, has nothing to do with your major or any of the traditional academic subjects one thinks of (math, English, science, etc.) Instead, every experience is one for growth, and college is equally about maturing as it is majoring in something to get a job.

I’ll let you know how these courses turn out to be as the semester goes on…right now I don’t know too much about them, and while I have plenty of work, I’m still unclear on the main focus in some of them. A friend from high school is coming to visit this weekend, so it will be nice to see her and take her on a tour of campus.

Until next time,
GO BLUE!