Okay, So I'm Back!

Hi everyone again!

So I've been told that I have been lacking in my duty to write recently... This is true. So just a quick catch up on what I've been doing this summer before I go into the beginning of this newest school year.

Summer: 

So I spent my whole summer working at Lagoon. That's most of what happened besides Study Abroad. I was supposed to be studying for my GRE, but I didn't want to when I got home from work. Literally, I did a little bit of writing and drawing, but it was mostly working. Not going to say I love working at Lagoon, but it was half-decent. I had a few days of fun. I got to go to Lagoon as a guest with Maren and ride some of the rides. I also went with her to the Loveland Aquarium and babbled on about fish and snakes the entire time when Maren wasn't freaking out over the birds that were there. The other really fun thing that I did was I got to go and watch the Tabernacle at Temple Square do their choir practice with Uncle Brian and Aunt Liz. I really enjoyed the music and it made me excited for the institute choir I was joining this semester.

First Week in the Dorms:

So I spent the week before school in our dorms, getting to know the new place. I posted about it on instagram, with pictures if you guys didn't see them. My roommate, Allison (and her twin brother Bracken- he has a mullet) is pretty okay. I didn't like her much at first. She's really loud and seemed bossy at first, but after a little while the edges were smoothed out between us. She's still a bit chaotic, but she spends a large amount of time outside of the dorms, so it's all good. My other roommates that I didn't know before are Grace and Hannah. They keep to themselves a lot, but when we've talked, they've been really nice and kind of like my last year's roommate. Maren and Karin are great, but I already know them, so that's no big surprise.

So while everyone else was out either at work, Connections, or Band Camp, Maren and I mostly hung around here and got ourselves settled. We caught up on some shows that we watch together and even finished The Rising of the Shield Hero (such a satisfying ending, and hinting at another season in the making) as well as 3-Below. We're still working through Detective Conan, but we're almost to the 200's episode wise, so we're making some progress. We've also been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender every Sunday, since Grace, Hannah, and Allison have all never seen it. Allison and Karin haven't seen all of Harry Potter either... They're lives are so sad. How can they live not having read and/or seen Harry Potter???

Anyways, I also gathered my books and figured out where classes were during that week. I have four books for one class. One class! And it's my online class called Folklore on the Internet! I think it's rather absurd, but that's beside the point. I looked over my syllabuses (when they finally were uploaded) and had a lot of misgivings about some of my teachers. They all sounded really harsh and that made me scared that I wouldn't like the classes I would have. I also met my new church ward, which was okay. Our bishop actually works as the head of the Special Education Department at USU, which is cool. He mostly works with kindergartners though.

First Week of School So Far:

Okay, not going to lie, but the first week has been really busy and filled with a lot of really good things so far, so this might take a little while.

And just so you guys have context, I'm taking 18 credits this semester along with 2 institute classes.

Monday:

I got up really early. This was mostly in part because I was so anxious that I had a hard time sleeping, and just got up and got ready instead. I had a decent breakfast of oatmeal and packed myself a lunch since I knew I would have time to sit down and eat somewhere that day (thank goodness I'm not on the meal plan anymore). Oddly enough, Maren, Allison, Grace, and Hannah all had classes as the same time as me, so we all walked down to campus together. I'm now living a little farther away from main campus in the Student Learning Center, so it's roughly a 15 minute walk to campus every morning. There are bus stops, but most of the time I walk to avoid the crowds on the bus unless it's really hot out.

When I finally got to my class (Evolutionary Biology), I started to look around for a seat. Lo and behold, I spotted Zach from my study abroad in Australia sitting close to an empty seat. I walked towards him and said hi. We exchanged summer stories while we waited for class to start, and he even introduced me to one of his other friends (ironically enough, her name is Allison as well). The lecture starts up and I get ready to take notes. Now let me say one thing. Dr. Messina, our teacher, is good at what he does. He cracks jokes, but still takes his class seriously. He even started with a sort of So What? for Evolutionary Biology, talking about how it is what connects every subcategory you can find in biology itself. After that, he started going over the syllabus, and told us that because this is a communication intensive class, there is a large language component in it. Rather than having us present, he's having us write this 7-8 page paper (no problem, I've written longer science based papers than that for my English class at Compass) on some aspect of Human Evolution.

Now, I'm not that interested in human biology in general. I find animals more fascinating than people, so I'm a little bummed. Then I look at the paper with suggestions for topics. They all sound really interesting. I settled on taking a question from one of three categories: Evolution of high encephalization and consciousness, Bio-geography and human evolution, or Neanderthals. I didn't make my decision on what question I was going to write specifically until Tuesday, so you'll guys just have to wait to find out my paper topic. So by the end of the lesson I was stoked for the class. It sounds really interesting and Dr. Messina is an amazing teacher so far, so I'm super excited. I head off to go eat lunch and start prepping for one of my Tuesday classes that requires reading and notes being done before we meet. I get a good amount through one of the chapters before I had to go and leave for my institute class with Brother Jacobs.

Yep, you read that right. I'm back to Brother Jacobs for another semester. Maren and I both signed up for his class, and just to mess with him, sat in slightly different spots than we usually do. It was funny to see him look up and finally spot us. He just muttered our names before saying "Hi, again." It was really funny to see the slight exasperated fondness there. I think we've grown on him. The lesson was basically the same introduction he gives out every semester, so nothing new.

After that, I headed to my Evolution: A History of an Idea class. It... wasn't what I expected. So I already knew by looking at the syllabus that I might have troubles with the teacher. He sounds like a hard-core atheist with some of his word choices, but I was hoping for the best. What I didn't expect was this older guy from Tennessee (thick accent too) who speaks in monotone and has a special interest in bugs. Honestly, I disliked him as soon as he talked about the spider-wasp experiments he's in charge of for over twenty or so minutes. I left the class wanting to droop. I don't think I'll love this class, but I promise the guy gets better. So after that I went home and hardcore just dived into my classwork to avoid thinking about the Tennessee teacher until I went to bed. I socialized a bit with my roommates, but not a whole lot.

Tuesday:

So Tuesday rolls around, and I'm a little less excited for the day than I was the day before. I am really worried about my Animal Physiology class since the teacher (Dr. French) sounded like a really strict teacher. However, I got myself out of bed and ready for the day. I didn't pack lunch this time because I wasn't sure I would have my lab that day or not since technically we hadn't received any news about it happening. So I go in thinking that I'll just have to skip a meal since the lab goes right up until my next class of the day. This time I'm on a similar schedule to Karin, so I walk with her to campus and help her find her class building(she keeps on getting lost on campus, and it's kind of become an inside joke that she doesn't have any clue where she is going).

I walk into the library (since that's where my class meets) and get up to the fourth floor, trying to figure out why everyone is buzzing around like angry bees (I found out later that the whole internet on campus is down, along with Banner and Canvas, so no one knows where their class is if they didn't write it down like I did). I walk into class, and find that Susannah French is not in fact, a cranky old lady, but like a more strict and biology version of Mrs. Gatfield. I sat down at the closest open spot and wait for the lecture, a little more hopeful than before. I spot Audrey, a girl I shared Genetics and Physics II with last semester across the row and waved at her. The teacher starts talking, and I'm immediately back to being happy and energetic because the class is fascinating. I'm in love with how she teaches the class, and she even talked about what she's doing in her own research. It's in the field that I'm interested in now, and I'm considering asking her to see if I could work as an undergraduate or graduate student for her at some point, but I'm going to wait a bit longer.

So we eventually get to talking about the big final project for this class which is a 20-25 minute presentation about an animal that we are supposed to design based on a scenario we are given. I'm immediately trying not to stim with excitement. The project sounds like so much fun I don't care that I have to present. The teacher even told me that I could creatively draw the creature if I want and add it to the presentation. I'm so giddy from that, and the fact that we didn't have the lab, that I was practically skipping back to my dorm to tell Maren, who just got out of her own classes. I tell her about it and we both start freaking out. She's a huge anatomy nerd. We both looked at the situation my group (only bad part of the project really, but I at least am in the same group as Audrey so yay!) was given and started chattering. I know I have to work with my group on it, but Maren and I made some good notes on starting places for my group. I just hope I don't freak them out.

So I'm back home and I eat lunch. I look at the time, and think that my next class starts at 3:30 so I have time to kill so I work on my online class, Folklore on the Internet. The teacher is super weird. He is an internet folklorist for his job, and he's co-authored a book about Slenderman. It still seems like a really odd class (one of our units is on memes and the other one creepypasta- both of which I like) but not too bad. I then head to my Principles of Vertebrates class only to realize that my class actually started at 3:00 not 3:30. I am so embarrassed as I walk into a class of four other people, half an hour late.

I apologize to the teacher, who is this nice old guy, who says it's all good when I explain why I messed up the time. He tells me to just relax and enjoy the lesson. So this class is all discussion based. 30% of our grade is based on how much we contribute to the discussion with the other 70% being short essays on what we learn. The guy is teaching the class in a way that people will learn in non-stressful environments. So I try my hardest to contribute. Thanks to the notes I took before class, I'm one of the two main people talking, with the other three hardly contributing anything. I think it's a bit weird, but I just want to show that I'm participating. Well, the teacher has me stay back so I can go over the syllabus with him.

He wants to get to know me a bit, so he asks me some questions. He eventually asks me if I had any background in the subject, saying I had a surprising amount of insight in the class that day. I told him that I just read the book before class like he asked, and that I took detailed notes that I was able to visualize in my head. He laughed and told me that the girl I was "competing" with for participation was one of his graduate students who was going into the vertebrate evolution field and that I had participated more than she had. I felt really embarrassed but in a good way. He then asked me what other classes I was taking, and called me a workaholic when he heard how many credits I was taking and that all of my science classes were upper division classes. He also told me that my school information registered me as a freshman so he almost denied me from taking the class because he thought I couldn't handle it. Dani Lawrence set him straight though, so it all worked out. However, I'm still the youngest person in class by at least five or seven years.

So I come back to the dorm excited as ever, and finally sit down to look at my Evolutionary Biology paper questions. I decided that I needed to figure out what I was doing and looked at the questions specifically. I had just finished reading for my Physiology class just a few moments before (of which I already knew 90% of the material because it focused mainly on sea creatures dietary physiology which combines two of my favorite biology past times- sea animals and the gut) and I finally found the question that I'm going to do for my paper:

How did the diets of Homo spp. diverge from those of australopithecines, and what is the relationship between encephalization and diet composition?

Isn't that so cool??? It's right up my alley, and I'm so excited to get ready to work on it! It's incorporating brain growth and gut biology. I was on such a long high that I couldn't sleep again that night- at least, not well.

Today: 

Finally, we're on today. I got up early this morning, but for a reason this time. You see, that day in the Vertebrates class, I heard about one of the graduate student's research on snakes and toad toxins and was invited to come and watch. So I headed out early so I could be there at 8:30 to help out. It was like I was actually a part of the process. They are trying to see if American species of snakes (in this case the garter snake) have the same properties of most Asian snakes. In Asia, snakes can eat really toxic toads and frogs and store the toxin in their body to spray out at predators later. So they were injecting the pregnant snakes with a small amount of the toxin along with DMSO4 (the solution is easier on the cells and lessen the chance of the cells bursting because of the sudden amount of liquid being added to the body).

The graduate student, Megan, asked me if I was okay with holding the snakes. I told her that my uncle has snakes and was working up to breeding them, so I didn't have a problem and really liked snakes. They were so cute too! One of them sadly has a tumor on the lower right mandible area, so she's probably going to die soon after her surgery (they're removing the embryo's to see if the toxin transfers to them, or just stays in the mother). The one I actually got to hold was very squirmy, and the one other grad student in there is scared of snakes so it was funny to see her jump when the snake wiggled its head towards her while I was holding it. The best part is, I was offered a something (don't know if it's an internship, a job, or just a volunteer opportunity) to work with the toads they're extracting the toxin from. Apparently you have to electrocute the toads at a low level to get them to excrete the toxin at a faster pace, but it's tedious work. I might look into her offer depending upon what exactly it entails.

I had to head to class pretty soon after, and it was mostly review again in Dr. Messina's class, so I didn't miss much even though I was pretty tired from all the excitement that morning. I then went and worked for a little while again, and then met up with Maren and Alex to go around the Quad since today is the day that all the clubs and stuff advertise. We ended up with some free ice cream which was worth the almost over stimulation of all the people out there. I hung out with Alex after that when Maren headed to her next class and we talked about Harry Potter for well over an hour before I had to leave for institute.

Brother Jacob's lesson was about the first vision, and it was really cool. It's the same one he gave in the last two semesters last year, but this time it actually stuck with me how credible it is. He pointed out all the usual arguments against the first vision and then pointed out the fallacies that were being used. It's just so cool how in all four accounts of the first vision that they all tied together and you could tell which was the personal record and which was the public one. Honestly, it's a good lesson, I don't know why it took so long to stick.

After that I once again had to go and get through another class with Tennessee teacher. I was dragging my feet, but today was actually pretty good. Tennessee cracked a lot of dry jokes with us. Everyone knows that I have a soft spot for dry humour. He was making fun of the fact that Darwin talks about pigeons for 15 pages of his first chapter, and even made a few jabs at this one Geologist turned Zoologist who thought that all species were fixed to the point where if you set fifty different trout that were all the same species but had slight differences he would say there were fifty species. It was really funny. I was laughing, and honestly, I think I'll have a good time in the class now that I know my teacher isn't a robot.

Once class was done, things started to go downhill. Apparently my body decided that it had been happy for too long so I got really upset and sad, so I've more or less just stayed in my room and either worked on homework or read. I've been on such a high plane, I was bound to come crashing down at some point or another. That's when I was reminded by my mom that I needed to write on this blog again. It's been too long, just like this post. I'm gonna try and be better at blogging so I don't have to write this much down again. It's been well over an hour of me writing this, and I need to get to bed.

Talk to you all later. Bye!