Why am I writing today? Because it’s the weekend.
Preparing for the Start of Everything
There was a tubing trip with the youth at church, but John and I decided not to go, already we'd been planning on it. We were both too tired. Neither of us expected the week to be so stressful. Needed time to rejuvenate.
Jedi costume post
I finished the blog post on the belt and pouch I had been working on – I had asked Tom if it was ok to post pictures, in case he was worried about others copying his work, but he said it was ok. Good work like his should be supported – not many people do custom leather work – and I think it’s fascinating. And his was AWESOME!!
Cleaning
Was able to clean my desk area at home downstairs, which was a complete pigsty. I’d been ignoring it. I’ve learned to have selective OCD. If I had OCD about everything being clean, I would have died of stress long ago. Because I didn’t need that space, so I ignored the mess for some time, but now I need it, so it had to be cleaned. There was fur everywhere (three dogs + three cats! They make a lot of fur). Now there is a lot less fur. That will last a week. :D
Picking out a laser printer
I decided, though I didn’t want to do it, I needed to get the laser printer I’d been planning to get today and get it over with. I wanted to have it prepared before classes started.
John and I had to buy a TV recently, because our old one broke – started having purple lines across the screen every 30 min – and John uses it a lot for gaming. Sooo, I didn’t like the idea of getting anything else, but, this is a long term investment. I like reading printed articles – hate online reading. It’s distracting to my head – I can’t think as well – because I can’t make notes in the margins (as effectively).
I plan on printing A LOT of articles. I didn’t want to be printing off the lab printers constantly – it’s just not polite or nice, especially with as much as I want to print. So, I’d been planning on buying my own printer for a while.
Dad looked up laserjets and found his favorite to recommend to me – he works with printers all the time in IT – so he knows what to recommend. It was an HP laserjet color 500 M451. I found a 400 model on sale at Office Depot – $100 off – and it wasn’t that much worse. John and I went down there and he helped me inspect things, calculate and compare various prices, and pick it up. After that I was in shock and felt like… JOHN LET’S NEVER BUY ANYTHING ELSE FOR A YEAR!! I’ll calm down eventually … mostly …
But I really like it. Dad helped me set it up. When I took it out of the box, I realized it was the same kind the lab uses! I wonder if it's the exact same model or not? Sah-weeet! I’m very pleased.
It’s a very wonderful printer – my baby. I officially love it. <3 I printed my inter-library loan article on it and watched it print double-sided without me even having to do anything to it. <3 It prints such beautiful pages in such nice ink. Yes, yes. This printer will serve me well. NOW I SHALL PRINT EVERYTHING!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA!!
Ok. *shrinks back to sane, innocent self*
Organizing
I attempted to learn Google Calendar. I’m getting better! I realized earlier that it’s just impossible for me to use a paper calendar like I did in college. There are too many THINGS everywhere, everywhere. Very annoying to keep track of. I've already proved to myself how badly I read schedules this past week.
I discovered that Google Calendar can send you texts! *squee* How novel! That’ll be great. I do that anyway already more tediously on my phone.
It was a bit of a pain – I couldn’t figure out how to import the Chemistry calendar. Dr. Salaita sent me a link to it, but it wouldn’t add. Then I found THIS TINY BUTTON OF DOOM! I clicked it and POOF it suddenly added itself. (!!) Oh mystery of mysteries with little tiny buttons – but I’m glad that’s fixed!
I now have chemistry, biochemistry and physics seminars all nicely added, along with the rest of the orientation schedule, TA meetings and classes. That should tide me over for a while. OH! I didn’t include lab meeting! *scurries to calendar* Not like I’ll forget that though.
Everything slow and what John worked on today
Everything I did felt really slow, like I was trudging through molasses. That is just irritating, let me tell you. Part of that was because I slept in and both John and I were so tired. John got home at 3:30 a.m. last night. His RP group had had to finish their campaign that night unexpectedly, because they triggered the final boss fight by accident. It was totally epic. He told me about it. He's planning his next set of characters now. Walter is going to lead the campaign this time. So, that's what he was working on most of the day to relax.
I hope tomorrow is more productive feeling. I decided not to be too upset. Everything I did was all stuff I *had* to do at some point anyway. (tilts head and listens) Mom and dad are listening to the "Jennifer is a party pooper" video again. *grins*
FIN, writing a letter for Dr. Wierget
Now I’m going to write a recommendation letter for Dr. Wiegert – I got this note from UGA saying they were “reviewing” him (?) and were asking former students for recommendations. I missed the date they wanted a an answer to the question, “will you do this yes or no?” but I asked if I could do it anyway. I didn’t get a response so I thought the answer was no. But THEN I got this other email recently reminding me to write it, after the deadline for the letter had already passed! (!!!) Frustrating UGA peoples.
Well, I’ll write one and send it anyway. Dr. Wiegert is the awesome. *cue awesome fanfare sounds* He was my favorite professor period at UGA, had loads of teaching awards, got another award while I was in his classes and even had a camera crew videoing him one day in class. He deserved ALL of it.
He explains things passionately and VERY clearly, so that it’s fascinating and makes sense. He has very obvious, clear and excellent syllabi with very good policies, and office hours in which he spends a long time answering student homework questions.
You know how I knew he was a good teacher? You can tell a good teacher within a day by two methods: 1) their syllabi 2) the first day of class. That’s all you need to see to know.
In Dr. Wiegert’s syllabus, besides having good policies, he required all his students, even his class of 80-100 non-calculus based non-physics major physics students to fill out an intro sheet about themselves so he could get to know them, and required EVERY student to sign up to talk to him about themselves for 5 min. As soon as I saw that I was like – AH HA! THIS IS A GOOD TEACHER! Every time I have seen a teacher do something like this in the past, they have always, always been the good kind, without fail. I wasn’t disappointed. He’s as good as the Oxford professors. And he’s at UGA!
He either had a non-calculus based non-majors class or a for majors calculus-based class. There was also a calculus-based class for non-majors taught by someone else who was completely inferior. The for majors class only had a class size of 15. I wanted to have calculus included. What do you think I picked? *boom, for majors* Not even a choice – best class set I had at UGA – some of the hardest – but the best.
All his students are so lucky. His class was so much fun. It made me wish I could major in physics. I even got to code in Pymol and that was LOADS more fun than I expected! He added that extra for us in the labs. I’d never written code before. I thought it would be horrible, but … it was SO FUN!
I will now do this and go sleep.
~ Jessica