Bobcat High, Day 1

The commuter parking lot was already surprisingly full (about 65% full) by 7:30 a.m. I'm glad I have an 8:00 class so I will be getting in early enough to ensure a free parking spot.

It is much easier to navigate one's way toward the main buildings of campus with a whole bunch of other people walking the same direction.

I experienced the classic night-before-school-dream situation when an Asian man carrying a "college mathematics" textbook walked into the room. "Was anyone else expecting this to be cal 2?" I asked. About 8 people were like, "Yeah, me too." The prof went to figure out what was going on with the room. A guy said to me, "I didn't think he looked much like a Dr. P---- [distinctly non-Asian name]." The Asian prof had a fairly strong accent; as soon as he left, one girl who is in the business calculus class said to another, "I already can't understand what he's saying and we haven't gotten to the math part yet." We were told to go to another room, where indeed Dr. P and a whole lot of other people were waiting. The desks were rather filled up, but a nice girl on the front row said "You could pull that chair around and sit next to me." I ended up with the very best seat in the room - front row, right end - positioned with clear views of both the front and side chalkboards; I hope that after one class, it has been established as my very own. I discovered to my utter delight that Dr. P is starting the semester with a review of "Techniques of Integration," which will also be on my UT calc 1 final. (I guess not everyone has been spending several hours a day doing math for the past couple of months. Shocking.) This means I will not be trying to learn totally new math while studying the old math, which was a concern of mine. In fact, doing the homework tonight, I discovered a couple of neat tricks in my new textbook that my UT textbook didn't even include, which simplifies things like taking the integral of sec x dx or dx/(1 + sin x) hugely. I'm thinking now that, if anything, this class is going to make me learn the previous material more thoroughly. We have a quiz tomorrow, the first of 25; we will be graded on those instead of homework, which Robert points out is a smart way to handle the problem of students going to a frat problem bank to get the answers.

The marketing professor was late to the class, which rendered his later monologue on "professional behavior" amusing - he did get the Bobbsey Twins to come to the class and let us know about the situation, though. While we waited, I finished the worksheet from calc and listened to a guy chatting up a girl he didn't know in the seats just behind me. His technique was the tried-and-true "ask her a lot of not-too-difficult questions." I learned a lot about this girl, who is from Killeen, from a military family, is a finance major, just got into town yesterday, is living with 3 other girls off-campus, is not driving her car because she doesn't like to walk and doesn't want to have to park in the distant commuter parking lot by the stadium [which is farther away than the lot I used at 7:30]. He asked her at one point why she didn't join the Army (since it's the family profession) and she paused for a moment. I could not resist turning around and saying "Well, if she doesn't want to walk from the commuter parking lot, she probably wouldn't enjoy being handed an 80 pound pack and told to march 20 miles." He recovered from this interruption very well, I thought, saying something like, "Yeah, that's true. You would have to be an officer then." I said, "Right, telling some other fool to march 20 miles with a huge pack." They were very cute. I wish the guy well.

The marketing professor, Dr N, turned out to be a variant of the tall, dark, and dorky (and skinny) variety (which is to say, attractive) with a slight Indian accent that made words like "wirtuous cycle" and "man-DA-tory" interesting. He also has a verbal quirk that I can't tell yet whether will ultimately be annoying or not. He frequently puts an upward, questioning tone on the last few words of a sentence, then pauses briefly, and says the final word in a normal voice. So a sentence would be like: "So you will want to make sure you are on time for the ....? class." It's odd and I'm not sure what the genesis of it is; perhaps he started doing the questioning pause to elicit student input on certain things (e.g. "The ultimate goal of college is to get a.....? job.") and then it became habitual. He has obviously put a lot of thought into avoiding problems like students begging/pleading/crying/attempting to bribe him to round up their grades, students having their "grandfather die 3 times during the semester" in how he structures the class grading. A favorite moment for me - "The tests will be multiple choice, on scantron. I will supply the scantron." Excellent. I found myself watching him with the thought: perhaps someday I will have this same job, teaching intro to marketing. He was talking at one point about the increase in salary that comes with a bachelors and with a masters and said that having a doctorate does not increase one's salary over having a masters, on average, but pointed out, "In what other job [compared to college professor] do you get three months off every year?" I was like, Preach it, brother. One guy left the class in the middle to buy a bottle of water and thus became an object lesson for both "professional conduct" and the power of marketing to convince people to spend about $7 a gallon on bottled water, which is crazy. After class, I wanted to ask the guy, "So did Dr. N slip you a twenty in appreciation for setting him up like that?" but I didn't get the chance.

When I was walking across the quad at 10:45 or so, it was totally packed with students. And being the first day of class, there were all the usual booths for organizations (including ROTC and sororities/fraternities) and random crazy people with signs. A pretty blond girl (who looked totally normal) was carrying a gigantic sign that said in part: "Defy the World. Deny Yourself. Jesus ." When I walked past her the second time, she was ranting in a shockingly loud voice, but all I made out was "...along the river. You are looking for it too!" At the top of some stairs, two guys were holding a "Ron Paul Revolution" sign. One of the Ron Paul supporters said something to a guy walking about two people ahead of me; the walking guy kind of shook his head and the Ron Paul supporter muttered loudly at him "Communist!" About a dozen of us laughed.