Episode XIV: Attending Class

Today is an appropriate day to post about my graduate school classes, as I am just about to start my third and final lab rotation. My current lab, in which I deal with microscopic worms, has made such an impression on me that the worms have made appearances in my dreams, wriggling around on their Petri dishes.

However, this post is not about my lab, but about my classes.

Overall, my classes have been very good. The subjects are interesting, the material is demanding, and the teachers (with one or two exceptions) are solid. The first semester I took three classes plus a seminar, and this semester I have two classes plus seminar. Our seminar is basically a weekly meeting where all the students and faculty consume free cookies and coffee while listening to a guest lecture.

The above picture is Haworth Hall, where all of my classes are held. The building is fairly unspectacular architecturally speaking, but one nice feature that you can see on the left is a glass walkway that connects our building with the pharmacy/physics/chemistry building, which in turn is right next to the nearest food court. This means that on a cold, snowy day, one can walk all the way to lunch without hardly stepping outside.

Below is a picture of the classroom where my best classes occur. Not only is the class size small, just 10-15 students each, but also it is taught cooperatively, with each professor only teaching subjects in which he or she is an expert.

Another larger class that I am taking this semester is taught by the assistant dean, who is smart, and a fairly good teacher, but very dry. Listen to the clip below and see if you can guess what ‘celebrity’ he reminds me of.

Finally, I have returned to my pattern of taking at least one purely fun class per semester. This semester it is a martial art called Ki Aikido, which is apparently similar to Judo. The instructor claims that George Lucas modeled Yoda’s character from Star Wars after an elderly Aikido master. I have yet to learn anything spectacular or Yoda-like yet, but I am having fun anyway.

Two final notes

First, congratulations to the KU basketball team, who won their final game of the season, guaranteeing them the Big 12 championship. This also marks the end of my season ticket schedule, but I have priority to enter a lottery to be allowed to purchase playoff tickets for at least $150 a pop!

Second, I would like to tell you about my most recent culinary challenge. After hearing that the ‘average college student’ orders one pizza per week, I realized that I was way below average. I therefore decided to eat pizza at least once, every day for a week. This was not as easy as it first seemed. However, I did set a personal record on one of those days by eating 19 slices in one meal (they were fairly small).