Whew! this has been a heck of a week, which included my 27th birthday yesterday (Sept 30). Unfortunately, I had so much work due for class today that i couldn't even go out and celebrate because I was at my desk plugging away at work until after 2am. It's not all bad though because some of my classmates had a dinner for me earlier tonight and did it up real big (extra shout out to my girl Chantal for letting us have it at her house and my girls Lynn and DeShay for throwing down in the kitchen and hooking up a great meal). Also, I just came from the big 'Welcome Back' party thrown by some second year stdents at their off campus house, affectionately known as "The Compound". My man Dave is one of the guys who lives there and these cats put it down for real, for real tonight. They bought a bunch of 'refreshments', put together some decent music, and opened their home to our entire school. I thought the party was going to be bootleg, but it actually ended up being pretty fun. I am still trying to get used to the social scene at Stanford because it isn't exactly what i'm used to, but that should come with time. Enough about all that non-constructive stuff, lemme get to some more academic things...
Today was the end of our first week of classes and I'm mentally exhausted. I have classes from 8am until noon on Monday and Thursday and then 10am until 5pm on Tuesday and Friday (Stanford doesn't have Wedsnesday classes). I didn't take any exemption exams, so I'm taking all of the Core classes that we are required to knock out before moving on to our second year. The cliche "its like drinking out of a fire hose " has been used too many times, but that's exactly what the past week has been like. I have learned more in the past week in all of these classes than I did in the past year or two back at work. The material tends to be dense at times and the workload is crazy, but I'm actually seeing brand new stuff for the first time in a long time, so I'm enjoying all of the time that I'm having to put in.
I must admit that it is still a little intimidating to speak up in class though. In my undergraduate academic career, I've usually taken classes where I would just sit and have professors speak while I took notes. Then, in my first time in grad school, I had my first exposure to classes where we were expected to talk, but I was reluctant to do so because I was the youngest cat in my program. Now, I'm in an environment where it's required for us to speak in class with the penalty for not doing so being a major hit in the final class grade. I tend to be pretty shy when it comes to that sort of thing, but I'm making myself break out of it...I think I've stumbled coming out of the gate so far, so I'm hoping that I can come through with some major insights by the end of the quarter.
That's about all for now. Time for me to crash for the night.
Posted by marquis930 at October 2, 2004 09:55 AM