Thursday, January 8, 2009

The First Week of Winter Quarter (so far)

Whats up everybody

I'm sure if I didn't have a cold this whole time, I'd be using a lot more of my free time for updating my blog :P I caught some allergies about two weeks ago when I was still in the Philippines, and it was already dying down when I got back home, but before I knew it, I was segueing into a cold :( I've pretty much been sick since this past Sunday, and I gotta tell you, this is the first time I really remember hating being sick. I think its mostly because it's the first week of school and I can't afford to only be half-conscious during the first week of classes for obvious reasons. Being sick really isn't so much of a hinderance to my going to class (I have yet to miss class due to me being too lazy due to being sick); it's much more of an inconvenience. I go to class, and I spend too much time thinking about how I can't freakin breathe out of my nose, which is obviously something I'd rather not have to worry about it. That aside, let's talk about my classes

Spanish 1 with Prof. Roberto Lopez
Yes, I took Spanish in high school. I made it up to the maximum, Spanish 4 honors in my junior year. That being said, I'm sure I have a pretty valid reason for taking Spanish 1, even though people keep telling me I should have taken Spanish 2 at the least. I chose to start form the beginning again with the basics because I haven't taken a Spanish class in over 2 years, and I feel I pretty much might have forgotten most of everything I learned. Additionally, I would rather take Spanish 1 and feel comfortable out of knowing that I have a pretty good grasp of the Spanish language, rather than take Spanish 2 and regret not taking Spanish 1 instead after feeling totally unprepared. Even though I made it all the way up to Spanish 4 Honors in high school, its definitely not the same as Spanish in College; the biggest difference I noticed is the level of immersion: Professor Lopez speaks lecture in Spanish about 90% of the time, much higher than is usually is in high school. This class is also very small and intimate, which I really like. There are about 23 people in our class.

Political Science 1 with Dr. Stephen R. Routh
Political science was definitely one of the classes I was looking forward to taking at some point, especially because I feel I'm becoming more socially and politically aware. PoliSci was definitely something I wanted to explore. Though the class is in SciLec123, the huge lecture hall, the class only fills up maybe 20-30% of the hall, if not less. That aside, the professor seems pretty good so far, and I'm definitely looking forward to picking up a lot in this class in terms of better understanding the ins and out of government and politics.

Asian American Studies 3 with Dr. Nolan Zane
I didn't realize that ASA3 was Asian American Psychology until I signed up for it. After taking ASA2 with Professor Hamamoto in Fall Quater 2007, I figured the most logical step would be to take ASA3 if I wanted to continue on with what we learned in that class. Little did I know that it would really tie into my major quite a bit. ASA3 focuses much more on Asian Americans than ASA2 did, where we concentrated a lot on American imperialism and colonialism. On top of that, Dr. Zane is a clinical psychologist himself, so I'm sure I'll find this class very interesting, given the subject's people of interest, and the tie in of psychology, of course :)

Psychology 100 with Dr. Katie Gibbs
Especially after today's lecture, I can already tell you that this will be my favorite psych class so far. Psych1 was pretty standard, Psych41 I wasn't as much of a fan of, but oh man, Psych100, which is cognitive psychology... I find it utterly fascinating. It was interesting hearing Dr. Gibbs talk about how Psychology, which is such an open-ended, ambiguous study, tries to make a name for itself among the sciences, when the idea of science almost always refers to structure and consistency. It just goes to show how young the field of psychology is. Other subjects like math, physics, and chemistry, those are all things that have been developed over the years, and they were relatively easy to develop since we were able to find the structure that holds up their concepts. But what about psychology? Today we talked about how we have tried to find consistent relationships between human behavior, experience, and brain activity, all of which are very open-ended, dynamic, ambiguous entities. I think the thing about psychology that interests me the most is the fact that there is still so much about everything related to the field as a whole that we still dont understand, leaving a seemingly infinite amount of space for innovation, ideation, and theorization, all of which are things that I love to do.

My take on the week at this point? So far so good :) I like the way my schedule plays out during the day and in the week as a whole, and I find a strong interest in each of my classes. I hope I dont jinx it or anything by saying this, but I have a feeling that I'm gonna do pretty damn well this quarter :D
'TIZ'

1 comment:

  1. there will be alot of things lined up this quarter ;) keep up the good work.

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