Previously, this was a blog mostly to harass my poor friends and family with the details of my life. Don't worry-- that will continue. However, I'm also going to use this as a terrible forum for dialogue about green tips and eco-revolutions. Hopefully it will be helpful and entertaining...

Saturday, September 06, 2008

First Two Weeks of School

HEY NEATO I FOUND AN OLD BLOG I STARTED WRITING BUT NEVER PUBLISHED. Check out what I was thinking more than half a year ago!!!

Well, I spent the first two weeks of school being pretty darn sick with a horrendous head cold. So sick that I got through two and a half seasons of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, which was the upside of being under the weather. Nonetheless, I made it to all of my classes.

I am taking three academic classes: Landscape Ecology, Wetlands Ecology, and Introduction to Geospatial Analysis. Landscape Ecology is all about looking at spatial heterogeneity and patterns at a landscape level. Wetlands Ecology is about... wetlands. And their ecology... Intro to Geospatial Analysis is about Geographic Information Systems, which consists of mapping and lots of data analysis.

I'm also taking two more casual classes. One is just a seminar that consists of a lecture every Friday. The other is a two-day-a-week meeting with first- and second- year ecology students and a few professors to discuss articles on different topics in ecology.

So that's the general idea of my semester. Now for a few specific stories. The other Saturday, I went to campus to print out a few things, and I was still feeling a bit sick. When I got there, I couldn't figure out how to get into the gated parking lots. I had been told that they were open on the weekends, but I had missed the part about needing to swipe your Duke ID card to get the gates to open. So, instead, I had to drive around campus and park far away from the building. Walking over, I dropped my ID card on the road, and didn't realize it until I was already at the building, which I couldn't get into without the card. I walked back to my car, assuming I had left it on the seat. As I walked to my car, another car went around me and I heard a loud clicking noise. I looked over and there was my card, having been hit by the car. Luckily, it was only severely bent and not actually broken. I managed to straighten it out enough to get into the building and print the articles. As I was packing up, I hit my usb drive with my knee and broke it in half... I was able to fix it with some army duct tape eventually. After all that, I drove home and crawled back into bed-- and probably watched some Buffy, although I don't really remember at this point.