My Penn State Experience - September 9, 2009

After what seemed to me to be the most immensely long weekend ever, school was back in session.  Actually it started yesterday.  But since I don't have Tuesday classes my weekend was five days long and way too boring.  We didn't go anywhere or really do anything.

There was a test in my Algebra class on Friday and I was very much looking forward to seeing my score.  I new that I passed but I also knew that I didn't get 100% either.  I got 80% which equates to a B-.  I must say if I had been more attentive to what I was doing I would have aced it.   Mostly they were silly mistakes like forgetting to put the negative sign on one problem, and just forgetting to write the number on another.  In one problem I didn't erase a number well enough so the answer was too big.  And apparently (even though it was very legible, I erased an answer too well, for got to write it back in and it was marked wrong, and yet a third problem in which I partially erased the answer but didn't go back and re-write it was counted correctly.  These things I definitely will be more careful with in the futures.  The worst mistake was one I will kick myself from now until the end of semester.... for some unknown reason even though there was a + sign and no negatives at all... I subtracted... OMG!! talk about feeling like an idiot!  Lesson learned, pay attention and go over stuff before handing it in.

English was a blast as usual.  We talked about the difference between literature and "other" stuff.  Basically things like detective novel, westerns, romances and even science fiction - books that can generally be categorized - fall into the realm of   --- lit.  That is they are are basically written to sell, they are written to a particular audience and they are written with a type of template (stereotypical settings).  I think some times genre books can fall into the category of literature, but not all the time.  (David says that English professors are snobbish about certain genres and what is considered literatue...I don't agree but well he's a computer scientist not an English major.)  Our assignment, which is due on Friday, is to write an "excerpt" from a romance novel.  No, we are not to copy, we have to write our own story but only an excerpt not a full length novel.

History was more about the colonies and how the Carolinas got divided and the how the New Netherlands became New York, and the creation of New Jersey.  It really is interesting stuff, but I'll not lecture this time.