Blog - /Personal

I had to rest my fingers for a half hour since they were so sore from playing SuperTux. The fact that I was playing SuperTux should be an indicator that the day was not the greatest. The hour-long gap between my classes is kind of annoying, and there really wasn't much else for me to do.

Math class was all review. The homework should be pretty easy. The prof used inflection in his voice, which made him easy to listen to.

French class was not so great. I was hoping that it would be mostly reading literature like French 3 in high school, but it looks like it will be a lot of speaking. I strongly dislike having to be paired up in groups and speak. It is even worse when the prof decides that several groups should speak in front of the class. I suppose it could have been worse, since I did not have to go up there yet, and the people who went up there didn't know French especially well, so I might be a bit more knowledgeable than most of them. I am thinking about translating some of my web pages (or even this blog) to French just so that I will be engaging the language some more. I will definitely need to research some courtesy-related French terms since the entire class will be conducted in French, with penalties for using English. The prof seems nice enough, and is a grad student, the first one I've had as a teacher. She is from New Delhi, which is interesting.

This French class is causing me to worry some. The name of the textbook for the course, Paroles, is ironically funny. Forced social interaction for me is almost as bad as the solitude of jail. Yes, I know the word parole means "word or speech". At least, I know this after browsing through the book just now. :^) I really should have reviewed the book before class started. I may very well have to study a lot more for this class than I want to. I can just see my time slipping away. I think I can relate better to Jimmy now. Having to translate phrases on-the-fly to another language is extremely difficult. He will probably have to work hard to be able to get through all of those textbooks of his.

My Data Structures class seemed fairly easy so far. I had to delve into the realm of semi-complex data structures for the Projects: Adm Profs project, so it that should be a good segue. The prof for this class also looked to be from India, so I suppose what people have been telling me about there being a lot of Asian profs is true.

Internet access for me will be available tomorrow, or so they say. When I went with Jimmy to get his internet account paid for, I asked the lady at the desk why I could not access the internet yet. She had accidentally marked another Michael Olson on this campus instead of me. At least I have something to look forward to now.

Some of the people in my classes are loudmouthed jerks. There were not nearly as many of this kind at Bethel. One person I knew who transferred from Purdue was like this at first. Perhaps it is a stupid `American' response against foreign profs? The guy I knew was like this around an Indonesian prof I had.

My roommate started talking to me about fraternities. I have very little knowledge of such things, so he enlightened me. While there are some that focus mainly on drinking and cohabiting with females, apparently there are other more honorable fraternities out there. The one he wants to join is supposedly very good at helping you search for a job. I am not particularly interested in joining one at the moment. I'd much rather join a newsgroup! I heard a rumor that there is some sort of Purdue Computer Science newsgroup, so I want very much to research that.