SixFeetOver

It was about 20 degrees out yesterday, and Alice and I went out for ice cream. It’s the only time I’ve ever bought ice cream while I was able to see my breath. We’re an odd couple.

Today we’re getting well over a foot of snow.

I just want to give a nod to the team behind the construction of Gordon’s latest structure. It’s probably about 24 feet by 15 feet, made from snow bricks which were made using the recycling bins every student here is provided with. Inside there are three levels, and the only way in is through a small hole that you have to crawl through on your belly. It’s amazing, and everyone involved deserves a GPA boost.

By 10:30 this morning more things had happened in one day than usually happen in a semester.

I got up at 7:15ish, my normal Monday wake up time.  After my shower, I glanced at the weather forcast, which said “light snow and some fog.”  So I peered out through my unopened blinds to find the “light snow” was in fact a pretty decent snow fall.  I slid through the heavy wet snow to my 8:00AM class, which proceeded rather normally.  At 9:00 I went to work.  Again, things moved along pretty normally until about 10:05, when Alice came in to tell Jared and I to not go to chapel since there was going to be a surprise fire drill and the whole campus was going to get chapel credit whether or not they attended.  Students weren’t supposed to know about it, but those of us who had access to faculty and staff email via work found out.  News spread rather rapidly, unsurprisingly, so according to one report there were “fewer people than usual” in chapel.  Anyway, Chris – my boss- asked Jared and I to work through the chapel shift, so we agreed.  This is where things got interesting.  Chapel starts at 10:25.  The fire drill was scheduled for 10:28.  It goes off as planned – Chris is notified because he is on the volunteer fire department.  A couple minutes later, around 10:30, the lights go out and all the computers turn off at work – power went out in the library.  We soon discovered it was pretty much campus wide, and a real fire had broken out as a result of a tree falling on a telephone poll.  So I spent the hour answering phone calls from parts of campus that still had power wondering what was going on, faculty asking me if I thought they should go home, etc.  It was very interesting.  At 11:30, classes were officially declared canceled, because the two primary classroom buildings were still powerless.  So, let’s recap:

• Snowstorm
• Getting paid to miss chapel, but still getting chapel credit
• power outage
• fire drill
• REAL fire at the same time as fire drill
• classes canceled

All before lunch time.  Quite a day!

Yesterday was my first full day of classes, even though the semester has been underway for a week. I have two math classes, differential equations and linear algebra. My professor, Dr. Senning, teaches both of those classes and was away at the MAA/AMS joint mathematical conference, so I didn’t have a full day of classes till yesterday when he and the other profs returned.

It was quite a busy day. I logged over five hours at work and went to four classes. Basically, my day went from 8AM to 9PM.

In any case, I think I’m going to rather enjoy my math classes, despite my rustiness. I sat down with my old homework buddy Cassie, and it took us a long time figure out how to do an incredibly simple differential equation. I’m sure it will come back quickly though. It better, anyway – I’m also going to be the TA for Calculus III next quad, so hopefully my integration and differentiation skills will come back to me.

Time to do some linear algebra homework. Stay tuned for a rant concerning Gordon’s computer science department.

Currently Reading:
Elementary Differential Equations