My break is over. This is snow way to live....or is it?
As I did last semester, I kept my Fridays open. So while my friends went to Hunter Friday, during the day I prepared for school and tidied up my room, buying books and an cabinet to put my mini fridge on. I think the best way to start what CUNY calls "Spring 2011" with without school. It makes the cold (including Thursday's snow) much more tolerable.
I returned to the dorm Tuesday night and when not interviewing applicants to the class of 2015, I've been seeing new-old friends and reacquainting myself with the city that I abandoned for all of break. I wish I had spent more free time in Manhattan. I like being here best without the constant pressure of schoolwork.
So classes for me started today. Mondays are going to be my busiest days. Peopling of New York City, Introduction to Media Production and Ancient Near Eastern Religion run back to back. The sitting in class won't be bore me in the least, but overlapping syllabi could spell disaster when assignments start.
A quick dinner was sandwiched by my last shift of interviews and attending the semester's first floor meeting. One of the things I love most about the Macaulay Honors College and Hunter is even reading the same sheet can produce something unique.
Monday, January 31, 2011
welcome to spring sem, 2011!
wow it's weird to dust off the blogspot and keep blogging. okay, so, welcome to the spring semester! this semester I'm taking english 120, peopling of nyc (mhc150), intro to art history, psychology of human sexuality and intro to nutrition. hello, beautiful semester.
also, did I mention that I usually have about 2 hours of class a day and, on mondays, wednesdays and thursday, I have only one class a day? oh and I have nutrition IN MY DORM on wednesdays so that's going to prove to be incredibly unproductive (hopefully not though).
the goals for this semester are:
1. be more patient.
2. be friendlier (apparently being friendly is not my forte, according to, ironically, my friends)
3. make the best of classes I'm unhappy in.
so I've been taking yoga recently (at yoga to the people, really everyone should try it at least once and you will probably fall in love with it) and one thing that yoga teaches is to accept the moment because it won't last forever but accept it, accept the tenderness that comes with it, and let it go. I hope this mentality is going to aid me in my semester because it's very true that all too often I end up checking the time on my phone to see how many minutes are left of class or checking to see where the next section of the textbook begins so I can take a break. no. from now on I am going to try to internalize the moment and accept it and breathe into it.
I'm also excited for my classes this semester, surprisingly more excited than I was last semester. I'm really excited for psychology of human sexuality (it just looks like such an interesting class), art history (which is probably going to turn out to be very difficult because it's a ton of memorization but I love art so it'll at least be interesting memorization) and nutrition (because, of course, I love food so much and learning about nutrition makes me really happy, it's pretty weird).
anyway, the other two classes are requirements and they are DEFINITELY the ones I'm going to have to have breathe into because I can already tell that english 120 is going to drive me up a freaking wall (because I know how to write an essay and argue a point, I did debate for 4 years of high school and summer programs at both stanford and princeton) but I'm not sure about peopling of new york city. I've studied hispanic immigration before (in high school spanish we spent a semester learning about it...in spanish though so I'm sure I'll be able to express myself more adequately in english) and my grandparents are jewish immigrants (survivors) from poland and I went to jewish day school for 19 years so I know about jewish immigration to america (AND to israel, but that doesn't really apply here). but, I'll make the best of it. or, I'll do my best at least.
also, did I mention that I usually have about 2 hours of class a day and, on mondays, wednesdays and thursday, I have only one class a day? oh and I have nutrition IN MY DORM on wednesdays so that's going to prove to be incredibly unproductive (hopefully not though).
the goals for this semester are:
1. be more patient.
2. be friendlier (apparently being friendly is not my forte, according to, ironically, my friends)
3. make the best of classes I'm unhappy in.
so I've been taking yoga recently (at yoga to the people, really everyone should try it at least once and you will probably fall in love with it) and one thing that yoga teaches is to accept the moment because it won't last forever but accept it, accept the tenderness that comes with it, and let it go. I hope this mentality is going to aid me in my semester because it's very true that all too often I end up checking the time on my phone to see how many minutes are left of class or checking to see where the next section of the textbook begins so I can take a break. no. from now on I am going to try to internalize the moment and accept it and breathe into it.
I'm also excited for my classes this semester, surprisingly more excited than I was last semester. I'm really excited for psychology of human sexuality (it just looks like such an interesting class), art history (which is probably going to turn out to be very difficult because it's a ton of memorization but I love art so it'll at least be interesting memorization) and nutrition (because, of course, I love food so much and learning about nutrition makes me really happy, it's pretty weird).
anyway, the other two classes are requirements and they are DEFINITELY the ones I'm going to have to have breathe into because I can already tell that english 120 is going to drive me up a freaking wall (because I know how to write an essay and argue a point, I did debate for 4 years of high school and summer programs at both stanford and princeton) but I'm not sure about peopling of new york city. I've studied hispanic immigration before (in high school spanish we spent a semester learning about it...in spanish though so I'm sure I'll be able to express myself more adequately in english) and my grandparents are jewish immigrants (survivors) from poland and I went to jewish day school for 19 years so I know about jewish immigration to america (AND to israel, but that doesn't really apply here). but, I'll make the best of it. or, I'll do my best at least.
Friday, January 28, 2011
First Day of Spring (Semester)
It's been a while since I last posted here on the MacBlog. Not much has happened since my last post after finals week (though I've had more than a few editions of The Macaulay Vlog - if you haven't subscribed to it yet...well, you're just not nice.). It's kind of weird that spring term starts on a Friday, for obvious reasons, but further, a day where snow was on the ground for the umpteenth straight day.
Aside from stepping in a slush puddle when getting a quasi-celebratory (for my blog hitting 10,000 views) lunch at Schnitzel and Things, I felt like I got the semester off to the right start. I was early for both of my classes (Intro to Literature and Readings in Popular Culture, both Honors-level), and picked up all the textbooks I know I'll need for the term. Five of those I found at the New York Public Library (leading to a whirlwind trip where I had to visit two libraries within my 3-hour break between classes), and another three I found at the Hunter library; the other two I had to purchase - a packet of readings for my Intro to Literature course, and the ActivStats packet for my Statistics course.
(A brief rant about the ActivStats packet - it costs $63 for a goddamn CD and a code to access it? Which I can't get anywhere else for cheaper, because I have to get it from Hunter? And which I have to buy so I can actually access the course materials? And which I probably won't be able to sell back to the bookstore, 'cause I assume the code's unique? That's some damn racket Hunter's running right there, some goddamn racket.)
The classes themselves went pretty well. My literature course has a theme of "hauntings," meaning we'll be reading a bunch of stories involving ghosts in some capacity (including Macbeth, probably my favorite of the Shakespearean dramas I've read so far), which seems somewhat compelling. Further, the diagnostic essay (a comparison of one of Petrarch's sonnets and one of Shakespeare's) was a relatively easy task, and one that caused me to somewhat fondly reminisce about my Humanities seminar in senior year of high school. Readings in Popular Culture involved comparing a cover of Vogue to King Kong and bringing it back to minstrelsy, the antecedents to Madonna and Lady Gaga (reminding me of this Nostalgia Chick video comparing blond pop stars of the '90s to blond pop stars of today), and sanitized idealism in High School Musical, meaning this is going to be one crazy course. (That's semiotics for ya.) I've heard really great things about Prof. Goldstein, and today, I saw much of it in action - this class seems to be incredibly thought-provoking; I'm excited.
Aside from stepping in a slush puddle when getting a quasi-celebratory (for my blog hitting 10,000 views) lunch at Schnitzel and Things, I felt like I got the semester off to the right start. I was early for both of my classes (Intro to Literature and Readings in Popular Culture, both Honors-level), and picked up all the textbooks I know I'll need for the term. Five of those I found at the New York Public Library (leading to a whirlwind trip where I had to visit two libraries within my 3-hour break between classes), and another three I found at the Hunter library; the other two I had to purchase - a packet of readings for my Intro to Literature course, and the ActivStats packet for my Statistics course.
(A brief rant about the ActivStats packet - it costs $63 for a goddamn CD and a code to access it? Which I can't get anywhere else for cheaper, because I have to get it from Hunter? And which I have to buy so I can actually access the course materials? And which I probably won't be able to sell back to the bookstore, 'cause I assume the code's unique? That's some damn racket Hunter's running right there, some goddamn racket.)
The classes themselves went pretty well. My literature course has a theme of "hauntings," meaning we'll be reading a bunch of stories involving ghosts in some capacity (including Macbeth, probably my favorite of the Shakespearean dramas I've read so far), which seems somewhat compelling. Further, the diagnostic essay (a comparison of one of Petrarch's sonnets and one of Shakespeare's) was a relatively easy task, and one that caused me to somewhat fondly reminisce about my Humanities seminar in senior year of high school. Readings in Popular Culture involved comparing a cover of Vogue to King Kong and bringing it back to minstrelsy, the antecedents to Madonna and Lady Gaga (reminding me of this Nostalgia Chick video comparing blond pop stars of the '90s to blond pop stars of today), and sanitized idealism in High School Musical, meaning this is going to be one crazy course. (That's semiotics for ya.) I've heard really great things about Prof. Goldstein, and today, I saw much of it in action - this class seems to be incredibly thought-provoking; I'm excited.
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