The First Last
I experienced my first "last" of the semester today. It the last day of my class that meets on Friday mornings--next Friday will be finals week, and there is no final for this class, so today was our last session. This first last is the first in what, by this time next week, will seem like an onslaught of lasts...last classes, last paper written, last papers graded, last days of a semester that (as usual) somehow has not included all that I thought it would. What happened to all the things I thought I would accomplish this semester? And what about the promising classes I enrolled in, that on the first day seemed so (or atleast somewhat) interesting...have I really learned anything, aside from new ways to procrastinate, in the past four months?
So it goes with semesters. One by one the deadlines march by and before you know it you have a high school diploma, a college degree, etc. Amazing. But what do you take from it all? Do you actually remember any of that stuff? I wonder. In an attempt to gain an appreciation for what I have learned this semester, I've decided to make a list of things, one for each class this semester, that I know now, but did not before. Seems like a worthy challenge...here goes:
So it goes with semesters. One by one the deadlines march by and before you know it you have a high school diploma, a college degree, etc. Amazing. But what do you take from it all? Do you actually remember any of that stuff? I wonder. In an attempt to gain an appreciation for what I have learned this semester, I've decided to make a list of things, one for each class this semester, that I know now, but did not before. Seems like a worthy challenge...here goes:
- Friday morning seminar: I learned that if you email a PowerPoint presentation and then re-open it, even on the original computer, the included media files (e.g. audio files) are not really included at all--this can lead to an embarrassing snafu in class when you try desperately to get that great audio clip (that was working fine last night) to play.
- Monday afternoon seminar: I learned that "stress" does not equal "bad," and that this is actually a quite important fact on many different levels. I also learned lots of complex-sounding new words, like psychoneuroendocrinology.
- Tuesday afternoon seminar: I learned that faces are special...and not-so-special...and a bunch of other fun terms like voxel, Greeble, and fusiform face area.
- Easy-does-it Saturday seminar: I learned that classes with non-degree seeking people move very slowly.
posted by Jessica at
12:42 PM
3 Comments:
I learned that you and I are a lot alike!
I always have those regrets, and I wondered why I seemed to be getting along OK despite never accomplishing as much as I thought I should. What I've come to realize more recently, though, is that my expectations are far higher than almost anyone else's. Other people are less disappointed not because they're doing more, but because they expected less.
By
Jen, At
9:42 AM
Oh, I learned that PowerPoint lesson once, too! Yuck. But I have to agree that learning the term "fusiform face area" is one of the highlights of our program.
By
Anonymous, At
9:46 PM
So . . . what the heck is a fusiform face area anyway? One of my favorite phrases from my field of study has always been "transgenerational ego mass". Its bound to make you feel smart and impress your friends.
By
Anonymous, At
11:14 PM
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