Journal Entry

Tuesday, September 26, 2000

Monday has come and gone. Mondays are the worst, I think. I made it through math, suffered through chemistry, and naturally enjoyed the EMT lecture. For all you non-EMT enthusiasts, read the next paragraph. Everyone else, skip to the 3rd paragraph.

In math yesterday we learned the "tricks" of integrating. For non-math majors, integration is finding the antiderivative of a function, basically the reverse of finding the derivative. For anti-math folk, it's just another manual skill rarely used in the real world. In chemistry, we finished up colligative properties, basically the properties of substances that hold them together in a particular fashion at a given temperature and pressure. It's the reason ice is one of the few solids that float in its own liquid. Then we moved into chemical kinetic and potential energies. I can't believe how much this class has been simplified for engineers. I also got my Chem prelim back. My raw score is a 138 of 150, which is a 92%. The average was a 121 (or about 80%). I'm not sure what the curve will do to my grade since, according to the grading policies, the "average" should be a mid-B.

In EMT class Monday, we covered basic life support--mainly CPR techniques at a higher level than basic "lay" people (the everyday Joe Schmoe first responder) CPR. In fact, the lay techniques will be changing over the next few months, initiated by the Cardiac Something or Another organization, a division of the American Heart Association. Some of the proposed changes include not checking for a pulse on an unconscious patient, and simply starting compressions. This is because often lay people have no clue how to take a pulse, and simply waste time doing so. They also propose that lay people don't give breaths at all--only compressions, for the simple reason that no one likes to give mouth-to-mouth, or if they do, the airway doesn't get opened and they start into choking procedures unnecessarily. Thirdly, infant CPR is changing to an easier, two-handed thumb-compression method. We will be going over CPR in lab, so class ended nearly 2 hours early.

On Sunday, I discovered something very awful. My CS website implies that the only university-excused prelim (an almost-midterm exam) conflict is another prelim scheduled for the same time. I e-mail my writing seminar instructor informing them that I will be absent. I get an e-mail back Sunday saying that it's against CU policy to force attendance to an exam during a student's class and that they are required to offer an alternative.

Great... So I e-mail the course administrator (who deals with conflicts) the DAY BEFORE the prelim. I'm thinking, "No way is this happening." The CS website clearly states that conflicts must be dealt with no less than 2 WEEKS in advance. Well, to my luck, I get an e-mail back midday Monday saying, "An early exam is scheduled for 5:45pm. E-mail me back if you can make it." Wonderful. Straight from EMT to prelim to FWS. What a day this will be.

Well, as luck had it, EMT ended early and I had time to do what little studying there was to do. I ran off to the prelim (a little on the too-easy-almost-freaky side) and then to the writing seminar. If I miss my FWS more than 2 times (only excuse is that I must come as close to dying without dying, and then get a paper signed) then I fail the class, no questions asked.

Cornell football. Not quite at the level one would like, but we were vindicated on Saturday. Homecoming weekend, homecoming game. Cornell stepped up to Yale, and boy, did we show our stuff. In retrospect, we really should have lost that game. All luck. It came down to the final 0:02, and a missed--get this--32 yard field goal. Cornell 24-23. It doesn't get any better. Read more at the Cornell Daily Sun.

And that's all from my end of things. Until you come back, it's me signing off.

Aaron