Potential Spring2011 Schedule

This schedule is like empty. Of course, I haven't added independent research course times yet, or volunteering times, or tutoring times yet, but this is just classes without research. All the linguistics classes I'm taking are just for fun. This will be an awesome semester.\

Fall 2010 Schedule - Updated

So I realized I forgot to post up the actual updated version of my Fall 2010 schedule. Green is class, red is volunteering, yellow is badminton, and light blue is tutoring. Tutoring times aren't really set, so I just found three random hour slots and added those.

Linguistics- field work

So I'm in linguistics class right now making this post on my iPod touch. Paauw was talking about how field linguists, when aliens come to the world, will be extremely important for determining if aliens speak, what they use to speak and their language. That got me thinking about communication between animals (since I'm studying for the animal behavior test next Friday). Then I thought "Aren't behavioral ecologists in a sense, field linguists?"

He's talking about a really good scientific short story written by Ted Chiang (omg azn!) and he said the author is the only science fiction author he's seen that knows linguistics. I'm looking forward to reading the short story, since I'm a fan of both made-up languages and science fiction. I kind of want to write my own short story... maybe for NaNoWriMo lol though I don't know if I'll have the patience to do that or to make up my own language.

Interview-ish

I went to talk to Doctor today [not going to mention any names, just in case so the doctor's name will be Doctor] at 8:00am. I was afraid I was going to be late, so I left my room at 7:20, knowing it'd only take me around 10-15mins to walk there. I didn't know where her office was, so I had to ask the service desk in the main lobby of the hospital. Her office was on the top floor and it was kinda creepy because the when the elevator opened, it was all dark. She was talking to someone when I first got there at around 7:40 and I didn't want to disturb her, so I waited outside. After they left, I walked into her office and she called her student over, the student whose job I'll be taking over if I decide to take the offer. She told me a bit about the job, but it was mostly the student talking. He graduated last year and is applying to medical school this year. He basically said he was Doctor's assistant and does both administrative and research work. Apparently, you need to pass a test to conduct research on humans. They're into web design, and Doctor is in charge of their residency program, so I may get to interview residents, which would be lots of fun. They also said they just came up with a new idea called the Confession Box, which started with the residents writing confessions and them reading and analyzing them. Then it turned into a hospital thing, so now there are confession boxes around the hospital. This jobs seems like lots of fun because it's a bunch of little projects, so I won't get bored, and research with human interaction.

I'm actually really interested in this job right now, but I've also emailed that surgeon that my dad's friend's friends with and am still waiting to hear back from him. I'm leaning more towards this job though because it's a job I've found on my own, or at least did the networking myself to get it. A lot of people tell me how lucky I am because my parents are in the field and that I can only get a job because of connections. It's pretty embarrassing to only be able to get a summer intern position because my mom is there or because my dad knows someone, because then it's not because they think I'm qualified, it's because they can't say no. This job, I can proudly say, I got myself, and no one can say anything about connections. Doctor said to keep in touch and of course I'm going to email her tonight and say how thankful I am for her giving me this opportunity. I probably didn't seem impressive in today's interview because I was kind of nervous and sick. I'm starting to think my coughs are stress-induced because I couldn't stop coughing during the interview and she kept asking me if I needed something to drink. Doctor seems like a really nice and cool person and the student said the environment is pretty relaxed, but lots of work.

Another reason I'm leaning towards this job is because I want to stay in Rochester and near University of Rochester. The people here are all really nice and I like this environment, despite the cold, which reminds me... I wore like 3layers of jackets and 2layers of pants today because it was freezing cold when I was walking there. It was still dark when I was walking. I also want to stay because I don't want to leave all my friends here yet. I also want to play in the Rochester Open again next year and I don't want to leave Badminton Club yet either. I'll see what the other doctor says and decide from there, but I really am leaning towards this job right now after hearing her and the student talk about it so enthusiastically.

Reclassification

I got the letter I've been waiting for Friday Nov. 29, 2010.

Dear Ms. Wang:

I am pleased to inform you that the Administrative Committee has approved your request to be reclassified from the Class of 2010 to the Class of 2011. All appropriate offices will be notified of this decision.

Yep, I am now a senior :D. Maybe I should make a new word for people graduating early, but like... you can't really mix junior and senior... it'd be like... jenior or sunior... jusenior...? Yeah that fails... so I'll just be "graduating early". It actually took me a while to come to this decision. Sure maybe if I can stay I can get a leadership position in Badminton, and maybe I'll get research, but like what classes would I take? My counselor recommended me to get a bunch of minors, but that's just a waste of time and I really don't see the point in getting minors, or even another major. So basically, I tried to think of reasons for me to stay and found that the benefits of graduating early succeeded the benefits of staying, and thus I decided to appeal to graduate a year early. What am I going to do that year? I'm looking for clinical research right now and if I can't find any, I'll hopefully get to volunteer for a nonprofit organization of some sort.

I have an "interview" tomorrow, which I was very lucky to get. I went to the alum networking night and waited like an hour or two for a one doctor in anesthesiology who said was going to show up. After a really long time, he finally showed up and by that time, most of the premeds probably left already because it was all engineering, business, and public health. Anyways, so I basically got to talk to him by myself for a long period of time. As I was telling him/asking him to reaffirm my graduating early plans, I was hinting that I wanted clinical research. I asked him whether he did research himself and he said he didn't. By the end of the conversation, he basically said "email me and I'll recommend you to some people I know who does research". At that time, I didn't let myself get too excited because I wasn't expecting anything. I wasn't expecting him to actually try to find me a position, but I emailed him anyways because I had nothing to lose. About three days later, another doctor of anesthesiology emailed me and said she might have a position open and wanted to talk to me. It was scheduled for last Thursday, but she said she needed to be in the OR all morning, and was rescheduled for tomorrow. My dad's coworker apparently is a good friend of a surgeon here in Rochester and I need to email him (the surgeon) really soon to ask for a position too.

I actually have a music quiz in 15mins, so I'm going to start walking towards Todd Union now. Bye~

Classes Fall 2010 [Junior Year]

I'll start out with my major courses, then premed req courses, then random courses.

1. Evolution [BIO205]: Hutch 473

It's a pretty interesting course so far. It's a lot more math than I had expected. The math is a bit confusing, but things work out after you put some logic into it. I haven't really done much for this course except the weekly p-sets [there's been 3 so far]. The first two psets were pretty easy and the third one was a pain... I spent like an hour working on it and I ended up getting like two or three questions wrong.

The teacher (Dr. Fry):
First thing I noticed was that he has a lisp. He's a bit boring when he's just talking in lectures, but he does random activities for the class to get the class a bit more engaged. I think there's been 2/8 classes so far where he's let us out on time. The other 6/8 times, he's let us out of class after 12:20, so I always need to fast walk to physics.

2. Animal Behavior [BIO260]:Dewey 2162

This course is probably the course I look forward to going to the most because I really like the subject. I would enjoy it a lot more if the class wasn't so much work. We need to find and read an article about a topic he gives us and then summarize/criticize the article like at least twice a month. There are also lots of readings. I just got my first exam back for this class like an hour ago and T_________T when I first saw the grade. It made me feel a lot better after I heard the average was probably in the 60s [Apparently there was 1 90, 5/6 80s, rest were below. The range was 30s-90 for this exam].

The teacher (Dr. Werren):
I like the teacher as a person and as a teacher, but as a testmaker and grader... he is MEAN. He makes the lectures very interesting so I really like going to his class, and he has a sense of humor [and we watch cool animal behavior videos], but his tests are sooooooooo ambiguous. They're fill in the blanks and "short answers" with word limits of like 30words, definitions and examples, and "long answers". He also tests on things that he didn't talk about in lecture, but that are in the reading. Maybe half the test is in the reading and the other half are in his lectures so it's a lot of material he tests us on. He also wants short and detailed answers on his tests, so he takes points off if it's not exactly the way he wants the answers to be [missing key words, small details, etc]. Oh he also obsessively sends and checks his emails, so now I have a tag just for him in my email.

3. Animal Behavior Research [BIO261W]: In the Lab and HH486A

The class is basically a directed independent research course; there are a total of 7 of us because a few people dropped the course. We choose our own projects to do on the behavior of Nasonia [parasitic wasps]. My project is determining the QTL for the strong female mate discrimination in Nasonia oneida against Nasonia vitripennis. This course is really time consuming because I need to be in the lab around 10hours a week and I need to read many papers about Nasonia. I need to come in during the weekends because I don't have enough time during the weekdays, but because of that, I have a key to Hutch now :D [and one to the lab].

The teacher (Dr. Werren):
Yes same teacher. Like I said, he emails obsessively and wants us to email him obsessively. He emails us assignments like a day or two before it's due and expects us to get it done. We have to email him when we arrive in the lab on weekends and when we leave. He's very strict about us spending enough time in the lab and will email us if he doesn't think we've spent enough time.

4. Physics [PHY113]: Hoyt Auditorium
This class is basically what it is. I can't say I really like the class, but I don't hate it either. The pace of the class is very fast, which is a good thing since I took AP Physics in high school, but on topics we didn't really cover in AP Physics, it's like what?

The teacher (Dr. Bodek):
If he didn't have some accent [people think it's German, but I can't tell] and if he didn't mumble, write badly, and go through the material so fast, he'd be a great teacher. I think he's a really nice guy, just can't speak English, or speak at all. I don't really pay attention in class anymore since he does post up lecture notes and the test is in two weeks. I need to start studying... but evolution exam is next week so that's my priority right now.

5. Music [MUR101]: TODD 202F

The class is a bit interesting, I guess. I think it's boring, but it goes by really fast, so I'm not sure if I think it's boring or not. I don't know all the material lol. Yay I learned rhythm, meter, and basic conducting. We're doing pitch right now and I know all the notes, but I don't know any music terms.

The teacher (Prof. Hanson):
He's a really nice and cool guy. He's extremely enthusiastic about the subject too so he's what makes the class interesting. He seems very young, like maybe our generation-ish and he's really modernized.

6. Linguistics - Morphology: MEL 208

This is probably my easiest and yet most interesting classes. It's 70% homework, 10% participation [which includes going to class] and 20% final project. Yes, no tests or quizzes or a final, just a final project. The subject is really interesting and we get into class discussions about random topics that has anything to do with linguistics.

The teacher (Prof. Paauw):
I took this class because of Paauw. I took LIN102 [Linguistics and Social Identity] with him. I thought LIN102 was going to be a boring class, but I was def wrong. Paauw makes the subject very interesting with his enthusiasm about the subject. Even though he's old in age, he's very modernized and a cool guy. I didn't think morphology would be an interesting class either, but the things he tells us is intruiging, especially about the weird languages [in New Guinea and the Caucasus].

OTHER STUFF

So aside from my 6 classes [24credits again], I have lots of "other stuff" I need to do.

Volunteering

I have to volunteer at the hospital, which reminds me, I need to call Occupational Health to make an appointment before I can start volunteering [I should have called Monday and it is already Friday omg I thought I'd told myself to stop procrastinating D:]. The program I'll be volunteering at is the Enhanced Elder Care Program in Strong Memorial Hospital. It's basically like working at a senior center, but in the hospital so these are the elderly with more severe medical issues. I'm actually looking forward to this program, even if it means waking up early on the weekends.

Tutoring

So after I came back from my first interview for volunteering, I got an email from LAS [Learning Assistant Services] saying I need to tutor four kids. I was like O______O no, so I emailed them back and was like "give me two". They gave me two kids, one CHM203 [Orgo] and one BIO110. Last night, I just got another email saying my BIO110 tutee switched subject and doesn't need a tutor anymore. So now, I only have one tutee and they're looking for another one for me. My orgo tutee hasn't contacted me yet, probably because they just had an exam yesterday morning. I just signed my tutoring contract like 2.5hrs ago, so now I can get paid [$7.50/hr]! Yay! That's like less than half of what I got paid over this summer x_X.

Badminton

I've been trying to take badminton a bit more seriously this year. I've stopped playing in jeans and I have my own racket [which is in a bag with my tennis racket and all three have my name and phone number written on them in case I lose it again]. There are sooooo many freshman this year... but thankfully a lot of them have stopped coming now. There weren't courts to play at for like the past few weeks and no birdies to hit either [they just ordered some so now it's fine]. I forgot to bring my Badminton shirts :( When I go back during winter break, I'll make sure to bring them here.

In Conclusion

So yes, this will be the activities for Fall 2010, the first semester of my junior year. I've been pretty good so far at waking up early. The latest I've woken up is 10am, but for the past two weeks, I've been getting up around 7:15am and getting to Carlson Library at 8am when it opens and doing work then. I have just realized this year that I can't do work at night and that I'm so much more productive in the morning, and that I function pretty well with 6-7hrs of sleep. So I've been sleeping around 12-1 and waking up at 7:15. I slept a bit late yesterday, so I wanted to wake up a bit later today [7:45] but I naturally woke up at 7:00 and couldn't go back to sleep after trying for 20minutes, so I just gave up, got up, and made it to Carlson at 8. Yes Carlson is officially my second home, if not my first. I probably spend around the same time in Carlson as my dorm lol. Okay, hopefully I will update when something new comes up or when it's a week I have three exams and I need to complain about something. Otherwise... it may be a while till my next update since I'm pretty busy this semester, but we will see.

Flora and Irene owe me money

This is a note to myself that Flora owes me $4 and Irene owes me $3 >:[