So, kiddies, I’m back… from outer space… I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face… Wait, what am I talking about? Is that a Gloria Gaynor reference? I mean, I will, in fact, survive, but for realsies? *shrugs* A’ight, moving on.
But yeah, like I stated, I’m back. In pog form. *shakes head* Ok, gots to get down to business. Too many random references for this early in a post. Anyways, so I’m sitting here in me house just chilling and thinking about how much I suck at writing on this thing. I’m not saying that my suckage is going to change (because let’s be honest here, these entries of mine are EPICALLY long, and I simply don’t have the time to rep everything up that I’d like to over here), but it’s defs time for another entry. Ergo, hope you enjoy, Amy! :-)
So I got back up to Minneapolis at about 3:35 pm on Sunday, January 20, in the year of our Lord 2009. I was to be moving into the famed 1018 house on University. Not going to lie, I was having some mixed emotions about this. I mean, I was going to be living with 11 other guys (with 2 other peeps in my room). That’s a lot dudes, f’real. I knew err’body was going to be chill because they’re all Campus Crusade for Christ’ers like myself. But nonetheless, lotta dude-age in one place. Especially considering that last year I had my own room for a fair amount of spring semester. Granted, I didn’t have my own cuarto in the slightest whilst in Spain because Luís NEVER left the room, but whatevs, I was never around, so it didn’t really matter. Meh.
But I have to say that things are pretty solid over here. I’m not around too much, so that’s good, but most importantly, the guys are all super-cool. I knew a few of them before moving in, so that was nice, but the guys I’ve met here are tight as well. My two roommates Weston and Eric are straight-money, so I must say, that it’s all hood, indeed.
It’s actually a bit surreal to think about the fact that I live at the 1018 house. I went to a party here my first weekend at the U freshmen year. Now I live here. That’s crazy. I know just how much of a stud all the guys that have lived here in the past are, and it’s pretty sweet to think that I’m carrying on some sort of tradition like that. I mean, not that I’m half the man that like Ben Cornish (my former Bible study leader), Jon Neal (another stud), and such are (because I’m not), but you know what I mean.
Speaking of first weekend freshmen year, just gotta throw something out there. “In the Presence” is a BS rule. Story time, my sister. So it was Friday, again my first weekend at the U. I’d met a couple guys at dinner that night randomly (Mark and Noah) and had gone out with them and another dude (James) that night to just wander around and chill. At the end of the night, they all said that they were going to go to some party in St. Paul to hang. I knew the vast majority of the people there would be drinking, so I decided to not rep this one up (plus I probs would’ve had to have slept there and such, and I didn’t so much want to roll like that on that night).
Thus, I went back into my hall just to chill and see what was up. Turns out there was a party in one of the rooms right across the hall from mine. I sat around in the hall talking to people for a bit before I finally decided to venture in. I mean, frigg, it was the first weekend (yeah, I’m repeating that a lot, but it’s probs necessary for ye to take the journey with me on this one… Ok, maybe not, but whatevs), and I wanted to meet some people.
I walk into the room and see just a bunch of people drinking. Obviously, I don’t partake in that (and still don’t), so I just kinda start talking to some random people. After like 10 minutes, two people decide to leave. So they open the door and head out. Of course at this friggin’ EXACT moment, two CA’s walk past. So they see what’s up, come in, and basically bust everyone. Yeah, so I got cited for 3 out of the 4 possible violations for this scenario: In the presence of alcohol, in the presence of containers, and something that I don’t really remember but was similar to like just “breaking regulations” or something stupid como así (How redundant are those 3 things? Like, if you break one, you’ve broken them all. Stupid stupid stuff). I didn’t go down for drinking, though, so that’s good. Odd, though, that I specifically chose not to go to a party where there’d be drinking only to get busted at a different party where there was drinking later on that same night..
But yeah, I had to have a meeting with the uber-resident hall advisor-fuhrer lady to explain my situation. As a punishment for being a freshman trying to meet people, I had to complete two online things that just talked about how drinking was bad and such. I then had to write like a 2 page paper on each. Hm… I wonder if I still have those saved on my comp. I am a pack-rat… *searches* Turns out that I don’t. I must’ve just deleted them out of anguish and such. Point is, that rule is complete crap. I mean, what if I were the guy making sure no one gets super-mega trashed and dies? Or perhaps I’m the designated driver? Seriously, what the frigg? I mean, I understand busting people for underage drinking, but c’mon, in the presence? *shakes head* And of course, one can only get like three of these violations before getting kicked out of the dorms. Thus, I had to watch myself pretty carefully for the rest of the year. First weekend. Heck, first day of the first weekend of the first year of school and I’ve already got the residential housing association on my back. Dumb.
Nonetheless, I found it moderately ironic that the next day I was at a Cru party where there was a sign right inside the door that said “NO ALCOHOL ALLOWED.” Of course, I joked with someone else there that someone should point a comma in there, so it would read “NO, ALCOHOL ALLOWED.” Oh grammar jokes, how funny you are! Point is, now I live here. And it’s pretty tight overall. Not gonna lie.
One thing about living in a house is that I wouldn’t have easy access to dorm food anymore. In theory, I was supposed to cook and such now. But I thought about this for a while before moving in. I was going to be busy as frigg with all the crazy crap that I do whilst up here, and I really didn’t think I’d have the time nor desire to prepare my own food on a consistent basis. So I ran the numbers on how much a residential meal plan actually cost. Turns out that it’s like $6.67 per meal. Not too friggin’ bad, I’d say. Couple that with the convenience factor of not having to cook, and I was sold. So yes, I’m that creepy junior who stakes out the dorms, sneaks in after people, and eats around a bunch of freshmen. Good thing I don’t have any shame. Unfortunately, though, my meal plan hadn’t been activated by the time that I got up to school on Sunday, so I had to provide for myself.
I actually ended up getting me some McDonald’s, though, so I have to say that it ended up being pretty friggin’ fantastic. PLUS, I had the McDonald’s dollars that my grandpa had given me for Christmas! Yay for free double cheeseburgers! And yes, I mean double cheeseburgers. No McDouble on this day. I was playing for keepsies, son! This day was turning out pretty legitly.
And no doubt I had plans for my first night back upon my return to school. Had to see my broheims again! I went over to Geoff’s place at like 9:45 or so (he lives in the Melrose apartments which are darn near as far away from me as you can get – like it’s seriously a 25 or so minute walk). I got there and the first thing he told me was that we were going to go over to Chelsea’s place to chill. Turns out he’d called me whilst I was walking to tell me this and offer me a ride. Now just so you know, Chelsea lives about 6 blocks from me (i.e. like 10 minutes max), so I easily could’ve walked this. However, I’m apparently incapable of feeling vibration in my pants (HA!) when I can’t actually feel my leg due to the absurd cold that I was experiencing.
At this point I called Ann to let her know what was up, as I’d told her to me us at Geoff’s for such a thing. Turns out she was just arriving as well. So I hopped in her car and we headed off while Geoff jumped in the car of his brother for to rock that shiz.
We found ourselves at Chelsea’s shortly thereafter. We being the aforementioned people, my broheim Nick, and some other relatively cool guy whose name escapes me at the moment. We didn’t actually do much outside of play Guitar Hero and just generally chill AND make another trip to McDonald’s! HECK YEAH! I was fortunate enough to be reminded of what it was like to be back in the city right away as I saw some dude get arrested and a fight break out at the aforementioned fantastic place of sustenance procuring. Yay Minneapolis, where the crime rate’s as high as Snoop Dogg! Dang, that’s a bumper sticker waiting to happen *pats self on back for making a lame, easy, and obvious joke*.
I got back to the house at like a little after 3:00 in the morning after a fan-friggin’-tastic night. My initial thoughts upon my return to see both my roommates sleeping were something along the lines of, “Wow, these dudes are going to hate me.” (Again, yes, I know that you don’t put quotes around thoughts so back off! :-)). Like, I was going to be the guy who stays up/comes home super-late and sleeps in late on the days he has off. Meh, hopefully I don’t swear at these guys in my sleep..
But yeah, that was my first night back in las ciudades. Waking up the neighborhood, indeed. Sadly, though, classes were to start on Tuesday, so I was going to actually have to do stuff shortly. On that note, I’m now going to give y’all a bit of a rundown of my six classes in general. Heck, how about just an overview of a standard Tuesday afternoon for y’all? A day in the life of Aaron, if you will. Perhaps even “Tuesdays with Aaron.” Oprah’s going to be all over that, for sure! :p
My alarm rings at 6:35 am. Groggy from going to bed at like 2:30 am the previous night, I say a quick prayer and stumble out of bed to begin the day. I take myself a nice little poop, shave, and then hop in the shower in what usually amounts to a futile attempt at waking myself up. I return to my room shortly after to consume my breakfast of a bowl of cheerios, a nutri-grain bar, an apple, and a banana whilst listening to some High School Musical 3 soundtrack, checking my emails, and taking a brief gander at any fight news that I should be aware of.
At like 7:25 I roll out of the house because I have to make it to Carlson (the business school - like a 16 minute walk) and print some stuff out in the lab before class starts at 8:15. Typically, I hate being in computer labs in general. They’re always super-mega crowded and oftentimes full of annoying people (don’t even get me started on the lab at the Fund in Spain), but at this absurdly early hour it’s usually quite all right.
Now I know you’re asking, “Don’t you have your own printer?” Well, yes, yes, I do. But I ran out of ink sometime fall of last year and decided to not replace it. Carlson students pay like a $450 lab fee per friggin’ semester, so this entitles us to basically unlimited printing (within some sort of reason, I guess). Thus, I came to the conclusion that since I was getting ROYALLY screwed by having to pay this much, I was going to take Carlson to TOWN on printing. Entonces, every chance I get, I’m printing stuff. All my homework, articles I’m supposed to read, Bible study stuff, whatever, it all gets printed there. Heck, I may or may not have let someone last year print some stuff as well using my password. So take THAT Carlson!
Seriously, I was talking one of my housemates, Josh, at some point within the past couple weeks about this, and he said that IT (Institute of Technology) kids pay like $40 per semester and get like 500 pages or printing for that (I think those are the numbers he gave me). So let’s run the numbers on that, my friends. That means that I’d have to print out 5625 pages per semester make everything equal. So there’s no doubt that I’m a price taker and not a price giver (microecon reference FOR THE WIN!) in this setting. Ergo, I always try to pwn Carlson in any way imaginable. And in general, just throwing this out there, but I’m not a big fan of Carlson and everything about it as a whole. But meh, that’ll be touched upon more later.
So I finish off printing and head over to Hanson Hall (which is connected to Carlson via a skyway). Now Hanson Hall’s the new building on campus (literally, like it was completed over the summer). It was created basically so Carlson could enroll more students and thus get more money. *shakes head* Tools.
But moving on, this first class of the day is Accounting 3001. The second and final accounting class that all the business students have to take. Now, I don’t want to offend anybody, but let me be real here for a second. Accounting sucks. It’s the most boring, dry dribble that I could ever imagine. It’s oftentimes unnecessarily complicated, and well… just stupid. One has to have a special kind of personality to be an accountant. One that’s typically not good with people. Thankfully, though, my teacher doesn’t really suck too bad. He’s actually kind of enjoyable at times. He’s got a decent sense of humor as well, which helps to lighten the mood. Plus, he always wears a sweatshirt and jeans, which is a welcome change from all the pretentious garbage that goes on inside Carlson. Nonetheless, though, it’s accounting, so it can’t be too grand. And he uses the word “notion.” And I’ve come to the conclusion that if you regularly use that word, you’re a tool. No matter how cool you seem on the outside, you’re probs a tool to some extent, my friend. Overall, though, I quite enjoy this guy.
I typically just sit myself in the back of the room and sorta follow along with what he’s doing/do other homework by myself. Occasionally, I’ll sit with a couple of the dudes in that class that I know, but usually I just want to rock the homework in the back in peace. I had originally registered for that class with my friend Jane from Spain (accidental rhyme!), but sadly she had to switch that class to a different hour after about a week of having it with me. But meh, it’s all good in the hood. Gives me time to work on all the stuff I procrastinated on from the previous night.
That class finishes up at 9:30, which gives me a bit of time to walk back across the skyway and partake in any readings/finish any other homework I might have before Marketing 3010 starts up at 9:55. Nice.
Apparently, marketing’s my major (along with international business), so it should be enjoyable to me, but this class is marketing research, and the teacher sucks. His name is Tony and… well… like I said, he sucks. I believe he’s from Hong Kong (or at least China), but thankfully there’s no real problem understanding him. But he does have a horrible habit of downplaying the difficulty of things we do in class. Like we just went over some complicated probability stuff this past week, and normally, I’d say that such a topic should be pretty chill. I mean, I’ve got legit math skills and have been busting probability for years but this guy just can’t teach it all. He busts through the topic the whole time saying, “It’s very simple, no?” as the entire class sits around with their thumbs up their gluteus maximuses (maximi?). Seriously, this class is by far the hardest one for me to stay awake in. I’m sure that has a fair amount to do with the time-age and such (it being an hour and forty minutes also nearing lunch time), but whatevs. It’s harsh. On the positive side, though, I think I’m getting pretty good at falling asleep without anyone noticing. Either that or people just don’t call me out on it for whatever reason… *shrugs*
And the worst thing of all is that he’s seemingly an Asian who can’t do math. WHAT?! Yeah, like for one of our homework problems he used the trigonometric function “sine” as something to designate whether something was positive or negative, which made NO sense at all given the problem. AND he abbreviated it as “sgn.” What the smurf? Pretty sure it’s “sin,” broheim. And don’t try and tell me that he meant “sgn” as “sign” as in positive or negative “sign.” Because that still makes little sense as a whole. Just say positive or negative then. So dumb. But nonetheless, there’s some pretty chill people in that class, and we spend a fair amount of time in the lab (which means I can screw around the internet while he talks), so it’s all g, overall.
I crush out of this class at 11:35 and head over to the residence hall known as Middlebrook (my former home from last year) for to procure some food-age. I tailgate in behind someone and head down to the dining area to get me some lunch. I always have some difficulty, though, when I’m down there in trying not to LEVEL anyone with my overly-sized novelty backpack that I have hanging off me at this point. Seriously, that thing is huge, and I’m quite positive that at some point, I’m just going to smash someone with it and send food flying everywhere. Then I’ll get kicked out and will never be allowed in Middlebrook again.
Not gonna lie, though, given the manner in which my cohorts and I ate in last year, it’s actually a little surprising that we were never booted from such an establishment. I can’t even begin to tell you all the crap that we did over there. I will say one thing, though: awesomely carved apple-transformer dealies through the utilization of utensils. Think about it..
But anyways, after said procuration said food-age (which includes several pieces of fruit that I store in my backpack for later consuming) I wander into the eating area to find my good friend Katie for to eat. Katie’s currently a freshman this year, but we went to high school together and had some darn fine times not doing anything in math class over the years. And every year for the past few, she, I, and a couple of other peeps end up chilling until some ridiculous hour of the night at the Renville County’s Relay for Life; that’s quite possibly my favorite night of the year. Always marked by awesomeness.
After we finish rocking the food-ness, I head back over to Carlson and use the like 15 or so minutes that I have before my next class to chill in the computer lab and do any online homework that I may have for my horrid sustainability class (which I’m looking forward to talking about in a bit). Of course, at this hour of the day, the lab is crazy-packed with all sorts of peeps. Funsies. I always feel a little weird being in there at crowded times of the day such as this. Not because I don’t like giant groups of personas, but because I feel dumb checking my facebook and/or searching out fight-related things after rocking any h-dub (as in hw as in homework). Like, there’s probably some people who have actual work that they’d like to do, and sometimes I’m just wasting time in there stalking random people on facebook. Meh.
Nonetheless, this time is short-lived as Human Resources and Industrial Relations (HRIR) 3021 starts at 12:45. I head in the back door, as per usual, to the classroom and find my spot within the giant lecture hall thingy (I believe there’s like 120 students in this class) alongside my fellow group members. I make some quick small talk with these guys and some of the people around me before the prof walks in.
Now, most people have a very favorable view of this character. Me, not so much. But that’s perhaps just because I’m hyper-critical of anyone in a position of authority within the business school. He actually seems like a pretty caring individual, is a really intelligent man, and is a well-groomed person (what?). But I don’t know, a couple things he does just annoy me. Like, he’s very concerned about basically never receiving emails from the students. All of them should go to the TA. That’s not that bad, but he even tells us not to reply to the ones that he himself specifically sends out. As in, we’re not to reply to him, but rather start a new thread and send it to the TA. Plus, he uses the word notion a lot and just in general seems to have some sort of slight superiority complex. And during our review session for the test we just took the other day, he was explaining there were going to be 18 multiple choice questions and that we got to cross out 3 of them. Thus, we only had to answer 15 of them. He didn’t exactly word this the best, and a few people were rightly confused. It took him about 7 seconds to become annoyed at the class and threaten to take them away. Dirtbag.
I realize that I’m coming off as a complete d-till here as I’m doing nothing but complain about my teachers, but again, it’s Carlson. So you know that I’m right about this to some extent. Just to get a better idea of what I’m talking about in general, Amy, go to urban dictionary right now and search for “Carlson School of Management.” Do it. Then you’ll know.
But anyways, the class itself isn’t too bad. I quite enjoy the members of my group, so that’s the important thing. The material’s a little dry sometime, but that’s to be expected. *shrugs* Occasionally, this class is a battle to stay awake through, but that’s my own fault for never sleeping during the week.
This class finishes at 2:00, which gives me 15 minutes before Management 3033W (“W” = writing intensive) starts. Not too much of an issue as it’s just two floors up in the same building. So I take my time getting there and rep some water fountain awesomeness and the like on my way over there. I eventually walk in and take my standard place in the back of the room next to Shawna (who also happens to be in my HRIR group). She and I “shoot the breeze” as the kids say until JoAnn Syverson walks in.
JoAnn’s a pretty chill person, but let me preface this by saying that MGMT 3033W is basically a speech and writing class. So, Amy, she’s a speech teacher. Think Richards minus the horrible, think-she’s-seconds-away-from-death coughing. She actually kind of looks like her too… Assuming, Richards were about 10 years younger and like 4 or 5 inches taller. But yeah, I’ve now come to the conclusion that all speech teachers are alike based on the fact that the only two that I know are similar. Yeah, I know that’s not enough to make a legit conclusion with, but whatevs, it’s my blog and that’s how I do, son! :-)
She’s probably actually most well-known for being the person who introduced Obama when he came and spoke at the Target Center (I think that was the venue anyway) a few months back. Not gonna lie, that’s pretty cool that she got to do that.
So yeah, for the most part during this class I’m interacting with my friend Parag, who sits in the row in front of me. Parag’s a super-funny cat that I’ve known since sometime freshman year. Every time JoAnn turns her back, he’s turning around and saying something to me. I know that she sees us talking a fair amount during her class too, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from looking at me like every 84 seconds and saying something. Meh, makes the class go by faster. And what’s she going to say when Parag and I are the two best speech givers in that class? :-)
She actually called him out on this during the last class period. She asked him who he’s always turning around and talking to. She said that she thought it was me, but that I never reacted to him, so she wasn’t sure. SNAP! That’s me just owning her in that case, son!
I actually had a pretty awkward moment with her the other day that I’d prefer forget about. Which is obvious based on the fact that I’m writing about it here, where it’ll be immortalized forever on the internets.. But nonetheless, here we go. This really isn’t a very good story, but if you think about it, you’ll get me on this one. Basically, it was before class, and I’d dumped my stuff off in the room. I looked up at the clock, saw that I had some time still, and decided that it was urinate-thirty. Entonces, I wandered out of the room to the place where such a thing typically occurs. I went in, quickly and promptly finished my business, and bounced out. At the EXACT moment I opened the door to leave, JoAnn opened the door to leave the women’s restroom (which is DIRECTLY across the guys’ one). Thus, we made some awkward as frigg eye contact, shot our glances downward and walked toward the classroom. I did my best to pretend it didn’t happen as I booked it toward the room. *shivers*
But meh, that’s enough about this class. I bust out at like 3:30 and head back home to the 1018 house. I typically get back home at like 3:46, which gives me about 25 minutes to relax (i.e. facebook) before I have to roll off to Sustainable People, Sustainable Planet 3003, which starts at 4:30.
Here’s where the fun begins. Now I realize that the majority of this post has probably been relatively boring up to this point (and I’m going to do my best to go back and throw in some sweet metaphors/analogies/pics later to make it not suck, but yeah, we’ll see…), but it should be more entertaining for this parte :-)
I walk into the class (which is in the armory of all places) and find a random spot in the back in order to be as far from the teacher as possible. I do this because I don’t want him to eat my soul like a snickers bar. Now, he’s not like a mean guy at all; he’s actually super-nice, but I feel like he (and everyone in the class for that matter) hates me because I’m a business student who loves to hunt.
What? Ok, Sustainability 3003 might as well be called “How to be a Complete Hippy 101.” The whole idea behind this concept of “sustainability” is that we as humans are doing too much damage to the planet and need to change our current ways in order to make the earth just as livable for future generations as it currently is for us. Thus, pretty much everyone in that class just strikes me as a complete tree hugger as they all actually want to be there whereas I’m just there to get my liberal education credits and escape with my soul still intact.
The teacher’s name is Derric Farmingtonsworth (or something like that). Yeah, “Derric” no “k” “Farmingtonswort.” Farmingtonsworth? Yep. Doesn’t the name itself just force you to conjure up images of sweater-vest wearing tools from like Greenwich, Connecticut? Well, if you’re actually picturing that, you’re not too far off. Except this guy doesn’t take care of his hair. I swear he doesn’t shower regularly. He comes in with just horrid, matted down looking hair that’s arranged in a way that one could accurately describe as being a comb-over. Except he’s not balding. It’s super-weird. You know a guy’s a tree hugger when he doesn’t bathe before going to a class that HE TEACHES.
So basically I sit in the room for an hour and 15 minutes trying not to have my head explode from all this hippy noise that’s being spread throughout the classroom. Now, I’ll admit that we as humans definitely consume too much, and there’re definitely some things that we should change. But leave your agenda at the door, sir, and be real for a second. This dude’s so far detached from reality that it literally boggles my mind sometimes.
I’ve actually taken to writing down all the ridiculous things that are said in that room during the hour just to (a) keep me awake and (b) so I have a log of them. Kind of like how in my Spain and the European Union class last semester when I kept track of how often my prof said the word “vale” (pronounced “va-lay”). I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this story before or not, but I’ll bust it quickly here for you guys.
So yeah, remember that teacher that I awkwardly tried to cheek-to-cheek kiss at the graduation ceremony in Spain? Yeah, this is her. She had a HUGE affinity for saying some phrases an absurd amount of times during class. Her favorite of these words was the aforementioned “vale.” Just because I am who I am, I had to start keeping track of just how often she said this word. She topped out once at 302 ½ times. Yeah, a half. I count that because she stopped once mid-word as she was interrupted. Now keep in mind that classes were only 75 minutes long. This equates to her saying that word literally once every 15 seconds! CRAZINESS!
But yeah, back to the matter at hand here: this guy. Here’re some of the things that I’ve logged from this class:
(1/27/09)
5:14 pm: He just said “irregardless.” That’s not a legitimate word, my friend.
(1/29/09)
4:50 pm: Some OTHER dude just said “irregardless.” This is indeed a startling trend that must be indicative of the type of people I’m around.
5:05 pm: One step at a time, just like rehab.
5:20 pm: (on a slide of his) “Meat as a Treat, Not a Foundation.” You, sir, can get the [smurf] out!
5:27 pm: Is he actually trying to tie obesity to caloric intake? Genius.
5:37 pm: Is “sprawliest” a word?
(2/3/09)
(After putting up a slide that said, “…it’s both morally and economically wrong to treat the world as a business liquidation,” which is a fine and dandy idea but he had a) “stupid smurf-eating grin on his face like he’s trying to stir up some controversy in class.” He seriously looked like Amy and I probably did after we put our mom’s makeup all over that one random dresser upstairs in our house. Like you know you did something wrong, but you sort of (or definitely, in his case) just to see what the reaction would be from everyone else.
2/5/09
5:20 pm: He just pronounced “Descartes” as “Diz-cart-ayes.” That’s the sign of an educated and hygienically clean man.
So yeah, my writings about this cat are becoming a little more and more anger-filled with each passing class period. We’ll see where this leads..
I’m not sure if I should do this, but what the frigg, the follwing is an email that he sent out to the class the other week:
Howdy emerging system thinkers,
In addition to the Meadows piece, I have attached a supplemental reading for Tuesday by Wendell Berry entitled, Solving for Pattern; its short and provides another take on "systems thinking." It also relates to our in-class-working example of a system, and given the discussion in the forum, I thought you might appreciate an essay by Berry. So please check it out! For those of you interested in the sustainable agriculture reference I mentioned, please check out Berry, The Unsettling of America: culture and agriculture.
You will also find attached two images of the study area for our system example, a conventional corn-soybean farm. Our farm in question is outlined in blue. Take some time to examine the biophysical surroundings at the larger landscape and farm-level.
Note: our farmer acquired a couple adjacent farms during the late 1970s.
Again, for Tuesday's class, please do the following: 1. Individually - List the elements or “things” that would be found in this system based on your current knowledge: social, ecological, economical. Please refer to the Daniel Paper if needed. You can also download the slide presentation as a quicktime movie or download the file into iTunes and watch on your iPod!! Wow, isn't technology cool.
Have a great weekend.
Have fun and be safe,
Derric
Yeah. That’s for real. Mercifully, though, that class gets out at 5:45 and I basically bolt out, kill a panda with my bare hands, and then drink its blood in an attempt to atone for what I was just subjected to for the preceeding 75 minutes.
I head over to Blegen Hall for my last class of the day. I arrive over there right around 6:00 which gives me about 20 minutes to go buy myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the café there, bust out one of the bananas that I stole from lunch, grab a paper, and just chill. I always like reading the “Dr. Date” section of the Minnesota Daily (which is the U of M’s paper). There’s never a time where my self-esteem isn’t raised after reading about all the crazy problems that people have in relation to their love lives. Just warms the heart like hot chocolate on Christmas morning.
This final hurdle to leap is Political Science 3835: International Relations. This is actually a very interesting class. In theory. Like, the readings and such are super-intriguing, and I feel that if I had the motivation to, you know, read them, I’d learn a lot. Unfortunately, I don’t usually really have that ambition to get through a hundred or so pages of reading a week for just this class. Although, this is one of those times where I’m going to actually try and get myself into the material because I think it’s worth it in this case. Wait, who am I kidding? No, I'm not.
Unfortunately, the prof's lectures don’t match up in the slightest with the readings in terms of legit-ness. He has a crazy monotonistic voice that can only remind someone of Ben Stein’s character from the major motion picture known as “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” It’s weird because he’s clearly extremely knowledgeable in terms of the material at hand, but he has no passion at all in his voice. He seems like he’s interested in what he’s saying, but it doesn’t come out that way at all. Basically, for 2 ½ hours he just regurgitates a BUNCH of information into our mouths like we’re baby sparrows and he’s our mother. Although, I might actually be more prone to asking for the mushed up worm than what he’s tossing back at us.
Eventually for this class, we have to do a 40-60 minute group presentation on some international relations topic. The first group went last week, and it was ridiculously boring and dry. The prof said that he pretty much loved it. Thus, I know that I’m not going to take it seriously at all. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to make it a complete inside joke. A joke so inside that I’ll be the only person in the class who knows what’s going on. My current plan is to see how many High School Musical references I can throw into my speech. Yeah, I know. That’s pretty ridiculous, but meh, whatevs. I’m sure a few girls in the class will think something’s up, but I have no plans on telling anyone this within the class. I’m going to think the entire thing’s hysterical. I’m almost looking forward to this thing… You know, some of these jokes are just for me :-)
Mercifully, this class gets out at 8:50 and it’s all smooth sailing from here. Why, you ask? Because it’s TACO TUESDAY!!! By far my favorite dinner-ness of the week! I head out of Blegen Hall off toward Centennial (or “Cen-Ten,” if you will) to meet up with my broheims. Typically the peeps besides myself = the aforementioned Geoff and Nick, Jack (another member of our group from last year), and Chris (a Cru compatriot and member of my B-stud last year and also a friend of Geoff’s from class). Solid group.
I take full advantage of this night and basically pwn my body in a horrible manner. This is the only time of the week where I can say that I’m really unhealthy. I crush down 4 tacos and 3 or 4 pieces of pizza every time along with some milk, orange juice, and perhaps some other form of juice. And because I have my backpack with me, I go CRAZY jacking fruit. So far I’ve topped out at 11 pieces of questionably acquired pieces of fruta (which includes apples, oranges, and bananas). Not gonna lie, I’m pretty proud of that. And heck, I’ve paid for that food. Well… technically not yet, as I haven’t paid my bill yet, but I will within the next couple days, and that’s not the point. The point is that the dining hall is mine to pillage and ain’t nothing going to stop me, son! *does pushups due to being so pumped up*
But yeah, the lot of us usually spend almost 2 hours down there consuming food and just living the dream. No doubt a phenomenal way to end what’s always a long friggin’ day. I typically end up getting back to my house at a little after 11:00, like 15 ½ hours after starting the whole mess. Nice. Then, if all goes well, I rock a little Bible reading, screw around on the comp for a while, hit the bed, and then hopefully hopefully hopefully get some adequate sleep.. No doubt that at this point the neighborhood is in fact awake, but even Superman sleeps sometimes. Wait... does he? ...Did I just compare myself to Superman? Wow, I AM a Carlson tool :p
But yeah, like I stated, I’m back. In pog form. *shakes head* Ok, gots to get down to business. Too many random references for this early in a post. Anyways, so I’m sitting here in me house just chilling and thinking about how much I suck at writing on this thing. I’m not saying that my suckage is going to change (because let’s be honest here, these entries of mine are EPICALLY long, and I simply don’t have the time to rep everything up that I’d like to over here), but it’s defs time for another entry. Ergo, hope you enjoy, Amy! :-)
So I got back up to Minneapolis at about 3:35 pm on Sunday, January 20, in the year of our Lord 2009. I was to be moving into the famed 1018 house on University. Not going to lie, I was having some mixed emotions about this. I mean, I was going to be living with 11 other guys (with 2 other peeps in my room). That’s a lot dudes, f’real. I knew err’body was going to be chill because they’re all Campus Crusade for Christ’ers like myself. But nonetheless, lotta dude-age in one place. Especially considering that last year I had my own room for a fair amount of spring semester. Granted, I didn’t have my own cuarto in the slightest whilst in Spain because Luís NEVER left the room, but whatevs, I was never around, so it didn’t really matter. Meh.But I have to say that things are pretty solid over here. I’m not around too much, so that’s good, but most importantly, the guys are all super-cool. I knew a few of them before moving in, so that was nice, but the guys I’ve met here are tight as well. My two roommates Weston and Eric are straight-money, so I must say, that it’s all hood, indeed.It’s actually a bit surreal to think about the fact that I live at the 1018 house. I went to a party here my first weekend at the U freshmen year. Now I live here. That’s crazy. I know just how much of a stud all the guys that have lived here in the past are, and it’s pretty sweet to think that I’m carrying on some sort of tradition like that. I mean, not that I’m half the man that like Ben Cornish (my former Bible study leader), Jon Neal (another stud), and such are (because I’m not), but you know what I mean.
Speaking of first weekend freshmen year, just gotta throw something out there. “In the Presence” is a BS rule. Story time, my sister. So it was Friday, again my first weekend at the U. I’d met a couple guys at dinner that night randomly (Mark and Noah) and had gone out with them and another dude (James) that night to just wander around and chill. At the end of the night, they all said that they were going to go to some party in St. Paul to hang. I knew the vast majority of the people there would be drinking, so I decided to not rep this one up (plus I probs would’ve had to have slept there and such, and I didn’t so much want to roll like that on that night).Thus, I went back into my hall just to chill and see what was up. Turns out there was a party in one of the rooms right across the hall from mine. I sat around in the hall talking to people for a bit before I finally decided to venture in. I mean, frigg, it was the first weekend (yeah, I’m repeating that a lot, but it’s probs necessary for ye to take the journey with me on this one… Ok, maybe not, but whatevs), and I wanted to meet some people.
I walk into the room and see just a bunch of people drinking. Obviously, I don’t partake in that (and still don’t), so I just kinda start talking to some random people. After like 10 minutes, two people decide to leave. So they open the door and head out. Of course at this friggin’ EXACT moment, two CA’s walk past. So they see what’s up, come in, and basically bust everyone. Yeah, so I got cited for 3 out of the 4 possible violations for this scenario: In the presence of alcohol, in the presence of containers, and something that I don’t really remember but was similar to like just “breaking regulations” or something stupid como así (How redundant are those 3 things? Like, if you break one, you’ve broken them all. Stupid stupid stuff). I didn’t go down for drinking, though, so that’s good. Odd, though, that I specifically chose not to go to a party where there’d be drinking only to get busted at a different party where there was drinking later on that same night..But yeah, I had to have a meeting with the uber-resident hall advisor-fuhrer lady to explain my situation. As a punishment for being a freshman trying to meet people, I had to complete two online things that just talked about how drinking was bad and such. I then had to write like a 2 page paper on each. Hm… I wonder if I still have those saved on my comp. I am a pack-rat… *searches* Turns out that I don’t. I must’ve just deleted them out of anguish and such. Point is, that rule is complete crap. I mean, what if I were the guy making sure no one gets super-mega trashed and dies? Or perhaps I’m the designated driver? Seriously, what the frigg? I mean, I understand busting people for underage drinking, but c’mon, in the presence? *shakes head* And of course, one can only get like three of these violations before getting kicked out of the dorms. Thus, I had to watch myself pretty carefully for the rest of the year. First weekend. Heck, first day of the first weekend of the first year of school and I’ve already got the residential housing association on my back. Dumb.
Nonetheless, I found it moderately ironic that the next day I was at a Cru party where there was a sign right inside the door that said “NO ALCOHOL ALLOWED.” Of course, I joked with someone else there that someone should point a comma in there, so it would read “NO, ALCOHOL ALLOWED.” Oh grammar jokes, how funny you are! Point is, now I live here. And it’s pretty tight overall. Not gonna lie.One thing about living in a house is that I wouldn’t have easy access to dorm food anymore. In theory, I was supposed to cook and such now. But I thought about this for a while before moving in. I was going to be busy as frigg with all the crazy crap that I do whilst up here, and I really didn’t think I’d have the time nor desire to prepare my own food on a consistent basis. So I ran the numbers on how much a residential meal plan actually cost. Turns out that it’s like $6.67 per meal. Not too friggin’ bad, I’d say. Couple that with the convenience factor of not having to cook, and I was sold. So yes, I’m that creepy junior who stakes out the dorms, sneaks in after people, and eats around a bunch of freshmen. Good thing I don’t have any shame. Unfortunately, though, my meal plan hadn’t been activated by the time that I got up to school on Sunday, so I had to provide for myself.I actually ended up getting me some McDonald’s, though, so I have to say that it ended up being pretty friggin’ fantastic. PLUS, I had the McDonald’s dollars that my grandpa had given me for Christmas! Yay for free double cheeseburgers! And yes, I mean double cheeseburgers. No McDouble on this day. I was playing for keepsies, son! This day was turning out pretty legitly.And no doubt I had plans for my first night back upon my return to school. Had to see my broheims again! I went over to Geoff’s place at like 9:45 or so (he lives in the Melrose apartments which are darn near as far away from me as you can get – like it’s seriously a 25 or so minute walk). I got there and the first thing he told me was that we were going to go over to Chelsea’s place to chill. Turns out he’d called me whilst I was walking to tell me this and offer me a ride. Now just so you know, Chelsea lives about 6 blocks from me (i.e. like 10 minutes max), so I easily could’ve walked this. However, I’m apparently incapable of feeling vibration in my pants (HA!) when I can’t actually feel my leg due to the absurd cold that I was experiencing.
At this point I called Ann to let her know what was up, as I’d told her to me us at Geoff’s for such a thing. Turns out she was just arriving as well. So I hopped in her car and we headed off while Geoff jumped in the car of his brother for to rock that shiz.We found ourselves at Chelsea’s shortly thereafter. We being the aforementioned people, my broheim Nick, and some other relatively cool guy whose name escapes me at the moment. We didn’t actually do much outside of play Guitar Hero and just generally chill AND make another trip to McDonald’s! HECK YEAH! I was fortunate enough to be reminded of what it was like to be back in the city right away as I saw some dude get arrested and a fight break out at the aforementioned fantastic place of sustenance procuring. Yay Minneapolis, where the crime rate’s as high as Snoop Dogg! Dang, that’s a bumper sticker waiting to happen *pats self on back for making a lame, easy, and obvious joke*.
I got back to the house at like a little after 3:00 in the morning after a fan-friggin’-tastic night. My initial thoughts upon my return to see both my roommates sleeping were something along the lines of, “Wow, these dudes are going to hate me.” (Again, yes, I know that you don’t put quotes around thoughts so back off! :-)). Like, I was going to be the guy who stays up/comes home super-late and sleeps in late on the days he has off. Meh, hopefully I don’t swear at these guys in my sleep..But yeah, that was my first night back in las ciudades. Waking up the neighborhood, indeed. Sadly, though, classes were to start on Tuesday, so I was going to actually have to do stuff shortly. On that note, I’m now going to give y’all a bit of a rundown of my six classes in general. Heck, how about just an overview of a standard Tuesday afternoon for y’all? A day in the life of Aaron, if you will. Perhaps even “Tuesdays with Aaron.” Oprah’s going to be all over that, for sure! :p
My alarm rings at 6:35 am. Groggy from going to bed at like 2:30 am the previous night, I say a quick prayer and stumble out of bed to begin the day. I take myself a nice little poop, shave, and then hop in the shower in what usually amounts to a futile attempt at waking myself up. I return to my room shortly after to consume my breakfast of a bowl of cheerios, a nutri-grain bar, an apple, and a banana whilst listening to some High School Musical 3 soundtrack, checking my emails, and taking a brief gander at any fight news that I should be aware of.At like 7:25 I roll out of the house because I have to make it to Carlson (the business school - like a 16 minute walk) and print some stuff out in the lab before class starts at 8:15. Typically, I hate being in computer labs in general. They’re always super-mega crowded and oftentimes full of annoying people (don’t even get me started on the lab at the Fund in Spain), but at this absurdly early hour it’s usually quite all right.
Now I know you’re asking, “Don’t you have your own printer?” Well, yes, yes, I do. But I ran out of ink sometime fall of last year and decided to not replace it. Carlson students pay like a $450 lab fee per friggin’ semester, so this entitles us to basically unlimited printing (within some sort of reason, I guess). Thus, I came to the conclusion that since I was getting ROYALLY screwed by having to pay this much, I was going to take Carlson to TOWN on printing. Entonces, every chance I get, I’m printing stuff. All my homework, articles I’m supposed to read, Bible study stuff, whatever, it all gets printed there. Heck, I may or may not have let someone last year print some stuff as well using my password. So take THAT Carlson!
Seriously, I was talking one of my housemates, Josh, at some point within the past couple weeks about this, and he said that IT (Institute of Technology) kids pay like $40 per semester and get like 500 pages or printing for that (I think those are the numbers he gave me). So let’s run the numbers on that, my friends. That means that I’d have to print out 5625 pages per semester make everything equal. So there’s no doubt that I’m a price taker and not a price giver (microecon reference FOR THE WIN!) in this setting. Ergo, I always try to pwn Carlson in any way imaginable. And in general, just throwing this out there, but I’m not a big fan of Carlson and everything about it as a whole. But meh, that’ll be touched upon more later.So I finish off printing and head over to Hanson Hall (which is connected to Carlson via a skyway). Now Hanson Hall’s the new building on campus (literally, like it was completed over the summer). It was created basically so Carlson could enroll more students and thus get more money. *shakes head* Tools.But moving on, this first class of the day is Accounting 3001. The second and final accounting class that all the business students have to take. Now, I don’t want to offend anybody, but let me be real here for a second. Accounting sucks. It’s the most boring, dry dribble that I could ever imagine. It’s oftentimes unnecessarily complicated, and well… just stupid. One has to have a special kind of personality to be an accountant. One that’s typically not good with people. Thankfully, though, my teacher doesn’t really suck too bad. He’s actually kind of enjoyable at times. He’s got a decent sense of humor as well, which helps to lighten the mood. Plus, he always wears a sweatshirt and jeans, which is a welcome change from all the pretentious garbage that goes on inside Carlson. Nonetheless, though, it’s accounting, so it can’t be too grand. And he uses the word “notion.” And I’ve come to the conclusion that if you regularly use that word, you’re a tool. No matter how cool you seem on the outside, you’re probs a tool to some extent, my friend. Overall, though, I quite enjoy this guy.I typically just sit myself in the back of the room and sorta follow along with what he’s doing/do other homework by myself. Occasionally, I’ll sit with a couple of the dudes in that class that I know, but usually I just want to rock the homework in the back in peace. I had originally registered for that class with my friend Jane from Spain (accidental rhyme!), but sadly she had to switch that class to a different hour after about a week of having it with me. But meh, it’s all good in the hood. Gives me time to work on all the stuff I procrastinated on from the previous night.
That class finishes up at 9:30, which gives me a bit of time to walk back across the skyway and partake in any readings/finish any other homework I might have before Marketing 3010 starts up at 9:55. Nice.Apparently, marketing’s my major (along with international business), so it should be enjoyable to me, but this class is marketing research, and the teacher sucks. His name is Tony and… well… like I said, he sucks. I believe he’s from Hong Kong (or at least China), but thankfully there’s no real problem understanding him. But he does have a horrible habit of downplaying the difficulty of things we do in class. Like we just went over some complicated probability stuff this past week, and normally, I’d say that such a topic should be pretty chill. I mean, I’ve got legit math skills and have been busting probability for years but this guy just can’t teach it all. He busts through the topic the whole time saying, “It’s very simple, no?” as the entire class sits around with their thumbs up their gluteus maximuses (maximi?). Seriously, this class is by far the hardest one for me to stay awake in. I’m sure that has a fair amount to do with the time-age and such (it being an hour and forty minutes also nearing lunch time), but whatevs. It’s harsh. On the positive side, though, I think I’m getting pretty good at falling asleep without anyone noticing. Either that or people just don’t call me out on it for whatever reason… *shrugs*
And the worst thing of all is that he’s seemingly an Asian who can’t do math. WHAT?! Yeah, like for one of our homework problems he used the trigonometric function “sine” as something to designate whether something was positive or negative, which made NO sense at all given the problem. AND he abbreviated it as “sgn.” What the smurf? Pretty sure it’s “sin,” broheim. And don’t try and tell me that he meant “sgn” as “sign” as in positive or negative “sign.” Because that still makes little sense as a whole. Just say positive or negative then. So dumb. But nonetheless, there’s some pretty chill people in that class, and we spend a fair amount of time in the lab (which means I can screw around the internet while he talks), so it’s all g, overall.
I crush out of this class at 11:35 and head over to the residence hall known as Middlebrook (my former home from last year) for to procure some food-age. I tailgate in behind someone and head down to the dining area to get me some lunch. I always have some difficulty, though, when I’m down there in trying not to LEVEL anyone with my overly-sized novelty backpack that I have hanging off me at this point. Seriously, that thing is huge, and I’m quite positive that at some point, I’m just going to smash someone with it and send food flying everywhere. Then I’ll get kicked out and will never be allowed in Middlebrook again.Not gonna lie, though, given the manner in which my cohorts and I ate in last year, it’s actually a little surprising that we were never booted from such an establishment. I can’t even begin to tell you all the crap that we did over there. I will say one thing, though: awesomely carved apple-transformer dealies through the utilization of utensils. Think about it..But anyways, after said procuration said food-age (which includes several pieces of fruit that I store in my backpack for later consuming) I wander into the eating area to find my good friend Katie for to eat. Katie’s currently a freshman this year, but we went to high school together and had some darn fine times not doing anything in math class over the years. And every year for the past few, she, I, and a couple of other peeps end up chilling until some ridiculous hour of the night at the Renville County’s Relay for Life; that’s quite possibly my favorite night of the year. Always marked by awesomeness.After we finish rocking the food-ness, I head back over to Carlson and use the like 15 or so minutes that I have before my next class to chill in the computer lab and do any online homework that I may have for my horrid sustainability class (which I’m looking forward to talking about in a bit). Of course, at this hour of the day, the lab is crazy-packed with all sorts of peeps. Funsies. I always feel a little weird being in there at crowded times of the day such as this. Not because I don’t like giant groups of personas, but because I feel dumb checking my facebook and/or searching out fight-related things after rocking any h-dub (as in hw as in homework). Like, there’s probably some people who have actual work that they’d like to do, and sometimes I’m just wasting time in there stalking random people on facebook. Meh.
Nonetheless, this time is short-lived as Human Resources and Industrial Relations (HRIR) 3021 starts at 12:45. I head in the back door, as per usual, to the classroom and find my spot within the giant lecture hall thingy (I believe there’s like 120 students in this class) alongside my fellow group members. I make some quick small talk with these guys and some of the people around me before the prof walks in.Now, most people have a very favorable view of this character. Me, not so much. But that’s perhaps just because I’m hyper-critical of anyone in a position of authority within the business school. He actually seems like a pretty caring individual, is a really intelligent man, and is a well-groomed person (what?). But I don’t know, a couple things he does just annoy me. Like, he’s very concerned about basically never receiving emails from the students. All of them should go to the TA. That’s not that bad, but he even tells us not to reply to the ones that he himself specifically sends out. As in, we’re not to reply to him, but rather start a new thread and send it to the TA. Plus, he uses the word notion a lot and just in general seems to have some sort of slight superiority complex. And during our review session for the test we just took the other day, he was explaining there were going to be 18 multiple choice questions and that we got to cross out 3 of them. Thus, we only had to answer 15 of them. He didn’t exactly word this the best, and a few people were rightly confused. It took him about 7 seconds to become annoyed at the class and threaten to take them away. Dirtbag.I realize that I’m coming off as a complete d-till here as I’m doing nothing but complain about my teachers, but again, it’s Carlson. So you know that I’m right about this to some extent. Just to get a better idea of what I’m talking about in general, Amy, go to urban dictionary right now and search for “Carlson School of Management.” Do it. Then you’ll know.
But anyways, the class itself isn’t too bad. I quite enjoy the members of my group, so that’s the important thing. The material’s a little dry sometime, but that’s to be expected. *shrugs* Occasionally, this class is a battle to stay awake through, but that’s my own fault for never sleeping during the week.This class finishes at 2:00, which gives me 15 minutes before Management 3033W (“W” = writing intensive) starts. Not too much of an issue as it’s just two floors up in the same building. So I take my time getting there and rep some water fountain awesomeness and the like on my way over there. I eventually walk in and take my standard place in the back of the room next to Shawna (who also happens to be in my HRIR group). She and I “shoot the breeze” as the kids say until JoAnn Syverson walks in.
JoAnn’s a pretty chill person, but let me preface this by saying that MGMT 3033W is basically a speech and writing class. So, Amy, she’s a speech teacher. Think Richards minus the horrible, think-she’s-seconds-away-from-death coughing. She actually kind of looks like her too… Assuming, Richards were about 10 years younger and like 4 or 5 inches taller. But yeah, I’ve now come to the conclusion that all speech teachers are alike based on the fact that the only two that I know are similar. Yeah, I know that’s not enough to make a legit conclusion with, but whatevs, it’s my blog and that’s how I do, son! :-)
She’s probably actually most well-known for being the person who introduced Obama when he came and spoke at the Target Center (I think that was the venue anyway) a few months back. Not gonna lie, that’s pretty cool that she got to do that.So yeah, for the most part during this class I’m interacting with my friend Parag, who sits in the row in front of me. Parag’s a super-funny cat that I’ve known since sometime freshman year. Every time JoAnn turns her back, he’s turning around and saying something to me. I know that she sees us talking a fair amount during her class too, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from looking at me like every 84 seconds and saying something. Meh, makes the class go by faster. And what’s she going to say when Parag and I are the two best speech givers in that class? :-)She actually called him out on this during the last class period. She asked him who he’s always turning around and talking to. She said that she thought it was me, but that I never reacted to him, so she wasn’t sure. SNAP! That’s me just owning her in that case, son!
I actually had a pretty awkward moment with her the other day that I’d prefer forget about. Which is obvious based on the fact that I’m writing about it here, where it’ll be immortalized forever on the internets.. But nonetheless, here we go. This really isn’t a very good story, but if you think about it, you’ll get me on this one. Basically, it was before class, and I’d dumped my stuff off in the room. I looked up at the clock, saw that I had some time still, and decided that it was urinate-thirty. Entonces, I wandered out of the room to the place where such a thing typically occurs. I went in, quickly and promptly finished my business, and bounced out. At the EXACT moment I opened the door to leave, JoAnn opened the door to leave the women’s restroom (which is DIRECTLY across the guys’ one). Thus, we made some awkward as frigg eye contact, shot our glances downward and walked toward the classroom. I did my best to pretend it didn’t happen as I booked it toward the room. *shivers*But meh, that’s enough about this class. I bust out at like 3:30 and head back home to the 1018 house. I typically get back home at like 3:46, which gives me about 25 minutes to relax (i.e. facebook) before I have to roll off to Sustainable People, Sustainable Planet 3003, which starts at 4:30.Here’s where the fun begins. Now I realize that the majority of this post has probably been relatively boring up to this point (and I’m going to do my best to go back and throw in some sweet metaphors/analogies/pics later to make it not suck, but yeah, we’ll see…), but it should be more entertaining for this parte :-)
I walk into the class (which is in the armory of all places) and find a random spot in the back in order to be as far from the teacher as possible. I do this because I don’t want him to eat my soul like a snickers bar. Now, he’s not like a mean guy at all; he’s actually super-nice, but I feel like he (and everyone in the class for that matter) hates me because I’m a business student who loves to hunt.
What? Ok, Sustainability 3003 might as well be called “How to be a Complete Hippy 101.” The whole idea behind this concept of “sustainability” is that we as humans are doing too much damage to the planet and need to change our current ways in order to make the earth just as livable for future generations as it currently is for us. Thus, pretty much everyone in that class just strikes me as a complete tree hugger as they all actually want to be there whereas I’m just there to get my liberal education credits and escape with my soul still intact.The teacher’s name is Derric Farmingtonsworth (or something like that). Yeah, “Derric” no “k” “Farmingtonswort.” Farmingtonsworth? Yep. Doesn’t the name itself just force you to conjure up images of sweater-vest wearing tools from like Greenwich, Connecticut? Well, if you’re actually picturing that, you’re not too far off. Except this guy doesn’t take care of his hair. I swear he doesn’t shower regularly. He comes in with just horrid, matted down looking hair that’s arranged in a way that one could accurately describe as being a comb-over. Except he’s not balding. It’s super-weird. You know a guy’s a tree hugger when he doesn’t bathe before going to a class that HE TEACHES.So basically I sit in the room for an hour and 15 minutes trying not to have my head explode from all this hippy noise that’s being spread throughout the classroom. Now, I’ll admit that we as humans definitely consume too much, and there’re definitely some things that we should change. But leave your agenda at the door, sir, and be real for a second. This dude’s so far detached from reality that it literally boggles my mind sometimes.I’ve actually taken to writing down all the ridiculous things that are said in that room during the hour just to (a) keep me awake and (b) so I have a log of them. Kind of like how in my Spain and the European Union class last semester when I kept track of how often my prof said the word “vale” (pronounced “va-lay”). I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this story before or not, but I’ll bust it quickly here for you guys.So yeah, remember that teacher that I awkwardly tried to cheek-to-cheek kiss at the graduation ceremony in Spain? Yeah, this is her. She had a HUGE affinity for saying some phrases an absurd amount of times during class. Her favorite of these words was the aforementioned “vale.” Just because I am who I am, I had to start keeping track of just how often she said this word. She topped out once at 302 ½ times. Yeah, a half. I count that because she stopped once mid-word as she was interrupted. Now keep in mind that classes were only 75 minutes long. This equates to her saying that word literally once every 15 seconds! CRAZINESS!
But yeah, back to the matter at hand here: this guy. Here’re some of the things that I’ve logged from this class:(1/27/09)
5:14 pm: He just said “irregardless.” That’s not a legitimate word, my friend.
(1/29/09)
4:50 pm: Some OTHER dude just said “irregardless.” This is indeed a startling trend that must be indicative of the type of people I’m around.
5:05 pm: One step at a time, just like rehab.
5:20 pm: (on a slide of his) “Meat as a Treat, Not a Foundation.” You, sir, can get the [smurf] out!
5:27 pm: Is he actually trying to tie obesity to caloric intake? Genius.
5:37 pm: Is “sprawliest” a word?
(2/3/09)
(After putting up a slide that said, “…it’s both morally and economically wrong to treat the world as a business liquidation,” which is a fine and dandy idea but he had a) “stupid smurf-eating grin on his face like he’s trying to stir up some controversy in class.” He seriously looked like Amy and I probably did after we put our mom’s makeup all over that one random dresser upstairs in our house. Like you know you did something wrong, but you sort of (or definitely, in his case) just to see what the reaction would be from everyone else.
2/5/09
5:20 pm: He just pronounced “Descartes” as “Diz-cart-ayes.” That’s the sign of an educated and hygienically clean man.
So yeah, my writings about this cat are becoming a little more and more anger-filled with each passing class period. We’ll see where this leads..
I’m not sure if I should do this, but what the frigg, the follwing is an email that he sent out to the class the other week:Howdy emerging system thinkers,
In addition to the Meadows piece, I have attached a supplemental reading for Tuesday by Wendell Berry entitled, Solving for Pattern; its short and provides another take on "systems thinking." It also relates to our in-class-working example of a system, and given the discussion in the forum, I thought you might appreciate an essay by Berry. So please check it out! For those of you interested in the sustainable agriculture reference I mentioned, please check out Berry, The Unsettling of America: culture and agriculture.
You will also find attached two images of the study area for our system example, a conventional corn-soybean farm. Our farm in question is outlined in blue. Take some time to examine the biophysical surroundings at the larger landscape and farm-level.
Note: our farmer acquired a couple adjacent farms during the late 1970s.
Again, for Tuesday's class, please do the following: 1. Individually - List the elements or “things” that would be found in this system based on your current knowledge: social, ecological, economical. Please refer to the Daniel Paper if needed. You can also download the slide presentation as a quicktime movie or download the file into iTunes and watch on your iPod!! Wow, isn't technology cool.
Have a great weekend.
Have fun and be safe,
Derric
Yeah. That’s for real. Mercifully, though, that class gets out at 5:45 and I basically bolt out, kill a panda with my bare hands, and then drink its blood in an attempt to atone for what I was just subjected to for the preceeding 75 minutes.
I head over to Blegen Hall for my last class of the day. I arrive over there right around 6:00 which gives me about 20 minutes to go buy myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the café there, bust out one of the bananas that I stole from lunch, grab a paper, and just chill. I always like reading the “Dr. Date” section of the Minnesota Daily (which is the U of M’s paper). There’s never a time where my self-esteem isn’t raised after reading about all the crazy problems that people have in relation to their love lives. Just warms the heart like hot chocolate on Christmas morning.This final hurdle to leap is Political Science 3835: International Relations. This is actually a very interesting class. In theory. Like, the readings and such are super-intriguing, and I feel that if I had the motivation to, you know, read them, I’d learn a lot. Unfortunately, I don’t usually really have that ambition to get through a hundred or so pages of reading a week for just this class. Although, this is one of those times where I’m going to actually try and get myself into the material because I think it’s worth it in this case. Wait, who am I kidding? No, I'm not.Unfortunately, the prof's lectures don’t match up in the slightest with the readings in terms of legit-ness. He has a crazy monotonistic voice that can only remind someone of Ben Stein’s character from the major motion picture known as “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” It’s weird because he’s clearly extremely knowledgeable in terms of the material at hand, but he has no passion at all in his voice. He seems like he’s interested in what he’s saying, but it doesn’t come out that way at all. Basically, for 2 ½ hours he just regurgitates a BUNCH of information into our mouths like we’re baby sparrows and he’s our mother. Although, I might actually be more prone to asking for the mushed up worm than what he’s tossing back at us.
Eventually for this class, we have to do a 40-60 minute group presentation on some international relations topic. The first group went last week, and it was ridiculously boring and dry. The prof said that he pretty much loved it. Thus, I know that I’m not going to take it seriously at all. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to make it a complete inside joke. A joke so inside that I’ll be the only person in the class who knows what’s going on. My current plan is to see how many High School Musical references I can throw into my speech. Yeah, I know. That’s pretty ridiculous, but meh, whatevs. I’m sure a few girls in the class will think something’s up, but I have no plans on telling anyone this within the class. I’m going to think the entire thing’s hysterical. I’m almost looking forward to this thing… You know, some of these jokes are just for me :-)Mercifully, this class gets out at 8:50 and it’s all smooth sailing from here. Why, you ask? Because it’s TACO TUESDAY!!! By far my favorite dinner-ness of the week! I head out of Blegen Hall off toward Centennial (or “Cen-Ten,” if you will) to meet up with my broheims. Typically the peeps besides myself = the aforementioned Geoff and Nick, Jack (another member of our group from last year), and Chris (a Cru compatriot and member of my B-stud last year and also a friend of Geoff’s from class). Solid group.I take full advantage of this night and basically pwn my body in a horrible manner. This is the only time of the week where I can say that I’m really unhealthy. I crush down 4 tacos and 3 or 4 pieces of pizza every time along with some milk, orange juice, and perhaps some other form of juice. And because I have my backpack with me, I go CRAZY jacking fruit. So far I’ve topped out at 11 pieces of questionably acquired pieces of fruta (which includes apples, oranges, and bananas). Not gonna lie, I’m pretty proud of that. And heck, I’ve paid for that food. Well… technically not yet, as I haven’t paid my bill yet, but I will within the next couple days, and that’s not the point. The point is that the dining hall is mine to pillage and ain’t nothing going to stop me, son! *does pushups due to being so pumped up*But yeah, the lot of us usually spend almost 2 hours down there consuming food and just living the dream. No doubt a phenomenal way to end what’s always a long friggin’ day. I typically end up getting back to my house at a little after 11:00, like 15 ½ hours after starting the whole mess. Nice. Then, if all goes well, I rock a little Bible reading, screw around on the comp for a while, hit the bed, and then hopefully hopefully hopefully get some adequate sleep.. No doubt that at this point the neighborhood is in fact awake, but even Superman sleeps sometimes. Wait... does he? ...Did I just compare myself to Superman? Wow, I AM a Carlson tool :p