Category Archives: growing up

While I will not be graduating until December 2012, I still feel like college is almost over and that I need to start preparing to be a “real adult.” As I prepare to take my senior year final exams, I have become pretty sentimental about college.

I found myself thinking about memories from classes I had taken earlier in college and realized that there are a lot of random memories attached to different classes that I have taken. As a result, I am going to devote the next series of blog posts to reflecting on classes: what I learned, how I felt about them, random memories…etc. So here it goes, starting with Freshman year.

First Semester Classes————————————————————————

1. Advanced General Chemistry. I was beyond shocked when I received my first exam grade in college from this class: a big, fat, D. The main thing I took from this class was the amount of effort necessary to do well in school and how much help working in groups is. My lab group was really close in this class, and even though I didn’t end up doing anything with chemistry, I really liked this class.

2. Principles of Microeconomics. Opportunity cost: the cost of not picking an available alternative. After learning this, calling into work became much tougher to justify when I began to think of it in terms of “Is it worth not getting the $30 dollars I could have earned at work today just to sit around watching Modern Family?”

3. Vocal Instruction for Non-Voice Majors. Since I got mono first semester freshman year, a severe sore throat made it nearly impossible to practice singing. When I had my jury (singing exam) at the end of the semester, I messed up and sounded horrible. Despite the embarrassment, I still was given a good grade for effort!

4. Choral Union. Culver’s is one of my favorite fast-food type restaurants. One day when I had a concert for Choral Union in the evening, my friend and I took a bus to Culver’s. Little did we know, the return bus only comes once per hour… we missed the bus, and were stuck out by the mall for an extra hour. This nearly made me late to my concert, but I sprinted to get ready after we got back and made it just in time.

5. Introduction to Philosophy. Our discussion about whether or not humans have free will was absolutely fascinating to me. I forget what the theory was called, but there was one that thought of everything we do as a series of cause-and-effect. So, instead of being able to make decisions freely, our preferences, actions, thoughts, emotions, reactions, etc. are all a result of our past experiences and a series of cause-and-effect.

Trip to Chicago to see Rent

Second Semester Classes——————————————————————–

6. Cultural Anthropology: Human Diversity. Before taking this class, I always knew that there were some religions with “weird” medical practices and stuff, but I never realized that there were significant differences in medical practices between different cultures, too. We learned about different ways of viewing disease/illness from different cultures’ perspectives. This really shifted the way that about sickness when I was sick, and made me question Western Medicine a little more.

7. Principles of Macroeconomics. As we entered into the recession, my professor for this class was on some advisory board for some governmental organization. One thing he said that will stick with me is that he (someone with a doctorate in economics) doesn’t know the right answer to fix everything. Therefore, he said that you should always doubt when you hear politicians claim that they have all of the answers to “fix” the economy which is a very complex and not-well-understood concept.

8. Introduction to Modern Literature since 1900. In high school, I was always that person who managed to squeeze by in English class without ever really reading books. However, I decided to take this literature class to force myself to begin enjoying reading again. It definitely ended up working, I always would go sit in coffee shops and read the novels for this class as a “break” from my other school work.

9. Evolution and Extinction. You would think I would have known about this before, but there have been 5 major extinctions on our Earth that wiped out a very significant number of species alive at each point in time. Each was caused by various events such as earthquakes, flooding, and asteroids. We learned about the different species alive during each major era, and about mechanisms of evolution. I wish I had spent more time really memorizing everything we learned in this class because I don’t remember much, but I wish I did because it was some cool stuff!

10. Concert Choir. This was my first semester in Concert Choir and my first time in this excellent of a singing group. Everyone in the choir can sight read music so well, which really gave us the chance to make music with the notes on the page. I met a lot of cool friends in the group and my choral singing improved significantly in this semester.

11. Vocal Instruction for Non-Music Majors. This was the semester that I regained confidence in my vocal abilities after getting mono first semester. I became really excited about and devoted to music during this semester and decided to audition for the School of Music for Sophomore year.

First Madison Halloween