Tuesday, January 7, 2014

A New Quarter

Monday, January 6, 2014
11:28 p.m.

Well, today was the first day of winter quarter. I'm already a little bit intimidated... OK... hella intimidated... by my AMATH 402 class. The professor lectures really quickly, so I was trying to listen and comprehend as much as I could while also writing down notes as fast as I could to study later, but very few others were taking notes. When he asked the class questions, everybody knew what he was talking about and and answered... except me. The class is "Dynamical Systems and Chaos." It'll be a challenge, that's for sure, and hopefully not too overwhelming. I'll read ahead and just study and recopy my notes before each lecture and hopefully that'll help. If I find the class too overwhelming and feel like I need more prerequisite training, I'll just drop it. If I do complete this class, however, I will have an applied math minor at the University of Washington, the first of three minors I am planning to ascertain. The others are jazz studies and oceanography.

Last quarter, which is approximately 2.5 months, I had 6 seizures. Over winter break, which is just under a month, I didn't have any. I definitely think stress has a lot to do with it. A similar thing happened last year... I had 5 seizures autumn quarter, and I don't know how many I had winter quarter, so it wasn't significant enough to keep track of. So hopefully I won't have any seizures this quarter. That's a lot to ask for, but if I take my medication on time, make sure I am properly hydrated, force myself not to get stressed, and don't do cocaine or methamphetamine, it is certainly possible. As always, I'm more concerned about the time/setting of the seizures than anything else.

I'm not doing the KOMO internship this quarter (I had to make way for the seniors), but I'm seeing if I can get an internship at any of the other TV stations. I'm not doing a UW-affiliated jazz combo, so I'll have more time to practice the stuff that I want to work on and more time to dedicate to the funk band I am in with Swedish 70's transplant Mikko Nynäs. I'm taking "Elementary Music Theory" this quarter because it is required for a music minor, but I already know the stuff, so I'm gonna see if I can test out of it. Right now, I am taking 16 credits, but this would be brought down to 14 credits if I took the test and passed. Last quarter, I took 18 credits.

All in all, this quarter looks to be a bit more relaxing than last quarter. There is that AMATH class, but I hope to find it challenging, not overwhelming.

A more relaxed quarter means more blogging! I didn't blog last quarter because I didn't have time/mental capacity to think about anything other than schoolwork and keeping my body in homeostasis. That's right, I had to think about keeping my body in homeostasis. That stuff is supposed to come naturally, but it doesn't when you have a huge workload on your back. But expect more blogs this quarter. It's hard to make promises when I don't know what the future is going to bring, but I can promise that I am going to place a high priority on having more-or-less daily blogs (except when midterms and finals rear their ugly heads or I'm passed out from a night of heavy drinking).

Cheers! All my UW friends, have a happy quarter! Everybody else who is starting soon or has already started, same to you! And to those in the workforce, uh, only four more days left!

Charlie :)

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