Stoked, part one
We're going to start off this school year with a series on why I'm so excited for this year. Don't get me wrong: I almost had serious doubts about returning to school this semester. My sophomore slump was at full force for, well, basically the entire year, and I ended up questioning everything from my concentration to my friends (don't ask) a few times over. It was not pretty.
This year is already shaping up to be a blast, though. Here are the parts in the series:
one - classes (in honor of study card day!)
two - explorations (my new craigslist bike, food adventures, and more)
three - room (coral azalea and southern exposure)
four - all that other stuff that i do
Here we go.
---------------------------------------------------------
I don't think I've ever had so much difficulty as I did this semester in choosing my courses. This was the first semester where I actually didn't have any required classes to take, and I could load up my palette with any quasi-random whims of my liking. I must have shopped about 15 courses (which is a lot for a science person), and I'm actually going to take 2 that I didn't even shop. Here's the lineup:
1. Music 180r - Chamber Music Performance with Robert Levin. Lee, Audrey, and I are going to play a few of Bruch's Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano. I've never taken a music performance class before, and I'm really excited. Totally scared and self-conscious, but really excited.
2. Music 178r - Musicmanship (or, Gamelan Performance). This is one of the classes that I didn't shop, but I basically get to finish up my music secondary degree this semester by tinkering on Indonesian percussion instruments for two hours a week. It's gonna be so much fun.
3. Chinese 187 - Art and Violence in the Cultural Revolution. I went through a bit of a Cultural Revolution phase this summer. (Funny, I go through these phases with really dark periods of history. Like when I went through a Holocaust phase in around 5th grade - I scared a bunch of my teachers by writing a fairly graphic "historical fiction" 5-chapter Holocaust "novella" for our creative writing project.) I read a bunch of memoirs, discussed history with my parents, and I knew that I wanted to take a class on the Cultural Revolution at Harvard, but I never imagined that they'd offer a class about it taught by a Chinese professor...in Chinese. Yar. It's gonna be really difficult - I barely ever keep up with my reading when it's in English, and now I have to read 40 pages of Chinese a week. It'll be such an amazing class, and although I'm terrified, it's going to be so good. The reading is already really interesting, and I'm really excited.
4. CS50 - I've never had a formal Computer Science course before, although I've done my own bit of messing around with websites to be a poser computer nerd. This is one of those classes that's amazingly well-taught, where you learn a ton, and where the things that you learn will actually be applicable to real life and not just in a high-tech bio lab. And it counts for concentration credit! Woot.
5. MCB145 - Neurobiology of Perception and Decision-Making. I had the most difficult time trying to decide between taking this class, which is a small tutorial-style discussion-based science class, and Immunology, which is a Chem30-type fast-paced-and-really-really-difficult-but-really-well-taught lecture class. In the end, since this will be my only chance to take an small science class, I went for the one with the easier and more interesting material (a guest lecture by David Laibson!), which well hopefully help me regain my confidence and interest in this science thing that I've been studying for the past few years. Hopefully.
Of course, I'll also be auditing two classes: Music 93r, chamber music again, where I'll be playing viola in Schubert's Trout Quintet with Christina, Michelle, Adam, and Joe; and also Hist A-13 - China: Traditions and Transformations, which I came to Harvard this semester preparing to take. I actually convinced Jenny to shop it with me on a whim, and she ended up taking the class while I decided that it'd be cooler to sit in class and listen to Kirby and Bol give their hilarious lectures on ancient Chinese history without doing any of the readings or the work.
The best part: not counting sections or any classes that I'm auditing, my class schedule goes something like this -
Monday - 1-2:30, 7-10
Tuesday - 10-11:30, 1-3
Wednesday - 1-2:30
Thursday - 10-11:30, 3-5
Friday - NOTHING
Amazing, right? So yeah. I'm stoked.
This year is already shaping up to be a blast, though. Here are the parts in the series:
one - classes (in honor of study card day!)
two - explorations (my new craigslist bike, food adventures, and more)
three - room (coral azalea and southern exposure)
four - all that other stuff that i do
Here we go.
---------------------------------------------------------
I don't think I've ever had so much difficulty as I did this semester in choosing my courses. This was the first semester where I actually didn't have any required classes to take, and I could load up my palette with any quasi-random whims of my liking. I must have shopped about 15 courses (which is a lot for a science person), and I'm actually going to take 2 that I didn't even shop. Here's the lineup:
1. Music 180r - Chamber Music Performance with Robert Levin. Lee, Audrey, and I are going to play a few of Bruch's Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano. I've never taken a music performance class before, and I'm really excited. Totally scared and self-conscious, but really excited.
2. Music 178r - Musicmanship (or, Gamelan Performance). This is one of the classes that I didn't shop, but I basically get to finish up my music secondary degree this semester by tinkering on Indonesian percussion instruments for two hours a week. It's gonna be so much fun.
3. Chinese 187 - Art and Violence in the Cultural Revolution. I went through a bit of a Cultural Revolution phase this summer. (Funny, I go through these phases with really dark periods of history. Like when I went through a Holocaust phase in around 5th grade - I scared a bunch of my teachers by writing a fairly graphic "historical fiction" 5-chapter Holocaust "novella" for our creative writing project.) I read a bunch of memoirs, discussed history with my parents, and I knew that I wanted to take a class on the Cultural Revolution at Harvard, but I never imagined that they'd offer a class about it taught by a Chinese professor...in Chinese. Yar. It's gonna be really difficult - I barely ever keep up with my reading when it's in English, and now I have to read 40 pages of Chinese a week. It'll be such an amazing class, and although I'm terrified, it's going to be so good. The reading is already really interesting, and I'm really excited.
4. CS50 - I've never had a formal Computer Science course before, although I've done my own bit of messing around with websites to be a poser computer nerd. This is one of those classes that's amazingly well-taught, where you learn a ton, and where the things that you learn will actually be applicable to real life and not just in a high-tech bio lab. And it counts for concentration credit! Woot.
5. MCB145 - Neurobiology of Perception and Decision-Making. I had the most difficult time trying to decide between taking this class, which is a small tutorial-style discussion-based science class, and Immunology, which is a Chem30-type fast-paced-and-really-really-difficult-but-really-well-taught lecture class. In the end, since this will be my only chance to take an small science class, I went for the one with the easier and more interesting material (a guest lecture by David Laibson!), which well hopefully help me regain my confidence and interest in this science thing that I've been studying for the past few years. Hopefully.
Of course, I'll also be auditing two classes: Music 93r, chamber music again, where I'll be playing viola in Schubert's Trout Quintet with Christina, Michelle, Adam, and Joe; and also Hist A-13 - China: Traditions and Transformations, which I came to Harvard this semester preparing to take. I actually convinced Jenny to shop it with me on a whim, and she ended up taking the class while I decided that it'd be cooler to sit in class and listen to Kirby and Bol give their hilarious lectures on ancient Chinese history without doing any of the readings or the work.
The best part: not counting sections or any classes that I'm auditing, my class schedule goes something like this -
Monday - 1-2:30, 7-10
Tuesday - 10-11:30, 1-3
Wednesday - 1-2:30
Thursday - 10-11:30, 3-5
Friday - NOTHING
Amazing, right? So yeah. I'm stoked.
Labels: class
posted by Cindy at
1:04 AM
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