professor's voice is boring. he is a sad large character with flat hair and limited energy. he jumped right in to teaching, which is a plus. he wants to teach you, so if you humor him and sit in front and feel bad for him and try to learn, it'll be okay. i think if you tune out the tone of his voice, then you'll find the math interesting.
physics 2b - electricity and magnetism
this old guy is stern, alert and tough. an 85% is an a+, a 70% is an a-. a 35% is a c-. every friday we'll have a quiz. the friday quizzes are worth 60% of our grade. the final is worth 40% of our grade. homework is assigned but not graded. this guy is serious about learning. sadly we didn't learn anything on the first day of class.
cse 30 - systems engineering
i have a feeling that rick ord is everything people say he is. he's well known for being the best computer science teacher. i'm really looking forward to everything i'll learn in this class. ord is alert, friendly and encouraging. he's probably in his 50s, but he has the charisma (is this an appropriate use of that term?) of a 25 year old. he kind of reminds me of mr. hepinger who taught me physics in 11th grade.
humanities 2
people said this old guy was boring. well let me tell you what i thought when i first saw him. he is a formidable figure of the perfect eight. he's tall and he has the biggest and brightest blue eyes that sparkled like the ice you get out of a vending machine - the kind with no bubbles. he wore the smile of a well-bred and educated american leader. he spoke with promising enthusiasm. i felt like he could read my mind when he looked at me in the eyes. his bright eyes were wide open. he didn't blink once. he leaned forward and looked over his entire audience with his beautiful smile. then with great enthusiasm and force, he told a simple fact. he spoke his sentences one at a time with a grand pause between each one to let you really think about what he just said. so he spoke, but his face lied that what he was saying was fascinating. for a few minutes his trick worked. but then i tried listening to what he said and i don't even remember what it was. it's like trying to remember what happened when you were counting to 10 while a nurse put you out for surgery. chodorow put me to sleep so fast.
the things he talked about...
"...but if it's a personal issue, you can email me. usually i'll respond in a couple of hours. if you email me at 2 in the morning, then i'll be asleep, so i won't email you back until i wake up. i don't wake up too early. but that doesn't mean i stay up late either. it's a function of age. sometimes i won't respond in a couple of days because i go on vacations and i don't always bring my computer with me..."
dude - who wants to know all of this? maybe 4% of the class will end up emailing you at one point or another so just move on to the good stuff. okay, anyway...
the lecture today was garbage. it was just a super shallow history of rome and europe from like 100-300.
i don't think the other lectures will be quite this bad.
he says he doesn't use powerpoints because he's not good at them. structure just isn't his thing. what he can do is put up a map and point to it occasionally.
i had professor edwards last quarter. i was upset about little things. he talked too fast, and his powerpoints were just skeletons of what he said. but now that listened to someone else, i can see that professor edwards was actually pretty good, and i wouldn't be surprised if he was one of the best. edwards talked with such elegance and coherence. if you didn't like what he was talking about, you could just listen to the beauty of how he said it. he talked quickly, but he kept your mind working so you couldn't get bored. he gave few-sentence summaries after every major section and at the end of the day. to top it off he threw in a couple good jokes. chodorow makes me miss edwards so much.
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i met identical twin alex varnau yesterday. in steven buell's suite there is another steven, so they call one steven_0 and the other steven_1. i stole their idea and made myself alex_0 and him alex_1. so we're both computer science majors in revelle. he is the i.t. guy for ucsd housing and dining. we're both vegetarians (though for different reasons), and we both run. he has glasses like me, though he can survive most of the time without actually wearing them.
i will see connor pozdolski on wednesday night. he is an electrical engineer from warren. i met him once already. he has a passion for and is skilled in robotics.
these guys is koo kids.
