First Full Week
By Tamika Whitenack
'Tis Thursday evening, and almost the end of my first full week of classes! The week has definitely felt long...I forgot how long each day here can feel! But, I am also feeling a lot more adjusted and back into the routine of Vassar life, so that is somewhat reassuring.
On the academics front, I am enjoying my new classes very much. There is a lot more reading for Sociology and Environmental Studies than there was for CogSci and Psychology last semester, but I find it really engaging and enjoyable to read. Shout out to the word "inchoate" for showing up in all the academic writing that I read! Haha. If anyone is bored, my readings for Sociology are Micheal Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and Agriculture and Food in Crisis by Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar, which is actually more of a collection of essays. Environmental studies has been more of a broad range of various essays and such, including the letter Columbus wrote upon reaching the Western hemisphere and an extensive essay on theory related to the history of climate change. Sorry if this all sounds terribly dull to you, personally I think it's interesting, and wish that it was more normalized to discuss learning in settings outside of the classroom. The beauty of school is that you get to become a knowledge base about some pretty cool stuff, so we might as well spread that knowledge with other people because it's interesting!! Hehe, I am such a nerd. Okay one last thing before I move on to other stuff...it is very interesting to be taking both the Sociology class about food and the Environmental Studies class about climate change because there is actually quite a bit of overlap, specifically in in relation to agriculture/monoculture, but also capitalism and natural systems. I like connections.
I also had my first lab on Tuesday! I think it went okay, we had one slightly stressful error but our professor was relatively chill about it. We were collecting DNA and amplifying it using Polymerase Chain Reaction, which is basically an artificial way of replicating a segment of DNA.
Spanish is Spanish. We have our first drill session tomorrow.
In other news, I have some goals of various magnitude for this semester that I am working on. I think the most appropriate manner to write about this is list form so...
Goals!!
-use less paper towels (if i shake my wet hands out i can usually get away with one)
-swim more (i've been twice this week)
-improve my arm strength (still working on this, i did 10 assisted chin ups tuesday....needs work)
-make friends in my classes! (this is going surprisingly ok! i'm hopeful)
-hike more/explore the nature more (i'm going hiking this weekend!)
-don't eat dinner alone (i have eaten alone a few times, but i'm making more of an effort to plan meals with people so thats good)
-stop eating considerably time before bed (i try to be done by 8pm, but this needs work)
So yeah, that is some life updates for me right now. Happy February!
p.s. shoutout to mom/dad for making my day with a package! i love getting stuff bc then i feel love from home. i always welcome letters!!
'Tis Thursday evening, and almost the end of my first full week of classes! The week has definitely felt long...I forgot how long each day here can feel! But, I am also feeling a lot more adjusted and back into the routine of Vassar life, so that is somewhat reassuring.
On the academics front, I am enjoying my new classes very much. There is a lot more reading for Sociology and Environmental Studies than there was for CogSci and Psychology last semester, but I find it really engaging and enjoyable to read. Shout out to the word "inchoate" for showing up in all the academic writing that I read! Haha. If anyone is bored, my readings for Sociology are Micheal Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and Agriculture and Food in Crisis by Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar, which is actually more of a collection of essays. Environmental studies has been more of a broad range of various essays and such, including the letter Columbus wrote upon reaching the Western hemisphere and an extensive essay on theory related to the history of climate change. Sorry if this all sounds terribly dull to you, personally I think it's interesting, and wish that it was more normalized to discuss learning in settings outside of the classroom. The beauty of school is that you get to become a knowledge base about some pretty cool stuff, so we might as well spread that knowledge with other people because it's interesting!! Hehe, I am such a nerd. Okay one last thing before I move on to other stuff...it is very interesting to be taking both the Sociology class about food and the Environmental Studies class about climate change because there is actually quite a bit of overlap, specifically in in relation to agriculture/monoculture, but also capitalism and natural systems. I like connections.
I also had my first lab on Tuesday! I think it went okay, we had one slightly stressful error but our professor was relatively chill about it. We were collecting DNA and amplifying it using Polymerase Chain Reaction, which is basically an artificial way of replicating a segment of DNA.
Spanish is Spanish. We have our first drill session tomorrow.
In other news, I have some goals of various magnitude for this semester that I am working on. I think the most appropriate manner to write about this is list form so...
Goals!!
-use less paper towels (if i shake my wet hands out i can usually get away with one)
-swim more (i've been twice this week)
-improve my arm strength (still working on this, i did 10 assisted chin ups tuesday....needs work)
-make friends in my classes! (this is going surprisingly ok! i'm hopeful)
-hike more/explore the nature more (i'm going hiking this weekend!)
-don't eat dinner alone (i have eaten alone a few times, but i'm making more of an effort to plan meals with people so thats good)
-stop eating considerably time before bed (i try to be done by 8pm, but this needs work)
So yeah, that is some life updates for me right now. Happy February!
p.s. shoutout to mom/dad for making my day with a package! i love getting stuff bc then i feel love from home. i always welcome letters!!
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| not very good pic of my eggplant tomato bean curry i made on sunday |
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| dead tree |
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| salmon poke bowl, newest addition to the meal plan |
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| less dead tree + regal library |
whoa your classes sound intense
ReplyDeletealso i will probably try read that first book at some point because it seems very interesting
Tufts just doesn't have paper towels in its dorms! Which sucks but I guess it's good for the environment
ReplyDelete