JB School

School has started again - actually this is already the second week in. Last term finished out well - I actually made the honors list with a final GPA of 3.5; 3 As and a C. This term, however, is turning out to be both aggravating and intimidating. My Anatomy and Physiology texts still haven't arrived from being ordered online, which means that I've had only the copies of the classroom presentations to study from; not an ideal situation. The fact that the course has an immense amount of information to memorize and that a huge proportion of that data is visually oriented means that I'm struggling a lot. Ironically, once I get through these three terms of A&P the courses should be somewhat easier for me, as the format of the information I'll need should return to something closer to what I can handle.

My Chemistry course is already driving me bugnuts - the assignments and homework load are incredibly voluminous, while the actual lessons are disappointing at best. Case in point, I just spent three hours this afternoon showing my work on remedial math. Problems involving converting between cash in nickels and quarters were about the peak. I'm hoping that this is just to make sure that everyone starts at the same level, and that the actual chemistry stuff will be worth going through this - between the level of the material and the idiosyncracies of the grading methods (the assignments and homework are processed through two different sites using completely different interfaces and notation), I'm finding the course to be incredibly agrivating so far.

Trigonometry, on the other hand, has been a bit more satisfying than I thought it would be. Not sure that the methodology of the last few chapters has stuck yet, but the math makes more sense to me than last term's did, at least so far. We'll see if that lasts, but I have hopes.

I also got a note from my mother last night that I finally got my acceptance letter from OIT - technically it just gets me to the school; I won't go into the actual program for another year if I make it into that, but it's another big step along the way. Eden and I are heading down there in a week for the orientation gig; I'm actually looking forward to that quite a bit. We're going to round off the numbers and actually make it a run from Friday to Sunday so that we can enjoy the trip and take a look at Crater Lake. Pictures will probably go to our blog when we get back - I've only seen it once before, but I'm really looking forward to sharing it with my lovely wife and seeing what she'll manage to pick up on the camera.

As a final bit of news, my student loans finally got straightened out for this term and last. It was a pain to get everything in order, but as soon as the funds finish getting dispersed next week, I won't technically have to worry about it again until the fall. That said, I'll be getting a head start on this next time.