God, yesterday was a great day.
The weather had finally changed. A crisp beeze replaced the monotonous LA year-round “summer” climate. The coolness and the threat of rain reminded me of growing up as a kid on the east coast and of Halloween.
First up on campus was CS31 Discussion. I really like that discussion class. I find the TAs for CS to be really good (always), but I’m glad that Farhad makes us write code, code, and more code in Discussion. Great practice to get. (And, DAMN, I love being able to write all of it without any issues.)
In calculus, I’d been stuck on “rates of change” calculations when it came to the word problems. There’s the Math Lab in the bottom of the Math-Sciences building for tutoring, but the times I’ve gone there there were a lot of other people in the room also looking for help, so I couldn’t get what I needed. Yesterday my friend, Shirley, gave me some foundational explanations and now I can see it all clearly. Yeay! (Shirley’s a EE major and a hardware whiz. She’s already done with all six calculus classes required for Engineering/CS majors. I’m on my first.)
Prof. Watson was great again yesterday in MATH31A. He’s really relaxed, but very thorough with all his explanations. He’s the perfect next-level professor to Prof. Paige Greene and her excellent pre-calculus explanations.
So, after calculus lecture, I went into Ackerman and just pounded calc problems in the textbook for 2.5 hours. Felt so good to get them right. (Answers in back of textbook, natch.)
When I left Ackerman, the air was still cold and the smell of fresh kettle corn mixed in for a perfect autumn feel. I grabbed a bag at the kettle corn stand and on my way to the parking lot I could hear the UCLA Marching Band on the nearby field kick the shit out of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.
FUCKING LOVE GOING TO COLLEGE.
