The Beginning of the End

It's about to be 10th week, and then my freshman year will really be coming to a close. I've registered for classes fall term. I'm pretty excited: French 204, Anthropology of Humor, Folk Dance, and Norse and Celtic Mythology. I've been less interested in Biology lately.
This Saturday was Rotblatt (the 150th year, too). I was in line for a T-shirt at 3am. It began to lightly rain on us, which was fun. When they started tossing our shirts around 5am, the crush of people was unexpectedly forceful. One of the barriers was knocked down, and I was pretty certain I would get lost between the groups of people pushing in two different directions. Luckily, I claimed my shirt and was freed from the mass of people. Rotblatt itself started around 5:30am, I believe. It's a softball game with an inning for every year of Carleton's existence, and must be played with a drink of some type in one hand. Mostly, it appears to be a reason for the student body to get outside during Spring Term.

9th Week Update

I've been painting a lot recently, mostly space because it's easy and doesn't need to exactly match up to something real. The stars have made a complete mess of my desk.

Room Draw was last week; I will be living in the dorm that's generally considered the worst dorm on campus, but I know a few people living on my floor, so that's good, and I'm also not on the far side of the lake from everything else, which was a possibility. I'm going to be so lost at the beginning of next year when I don't know where all my friends live anymore.

I finished reading Purity by Jonathan Franzen recently. It was a really interesting book. It was cool to see the stories of all the separate characters begin to intertwine and entangle. Strangely, I feel like every mother-child relationship in the book was definitely odd.

I've started reading Circling the Sun by Paula McLain. It's about Beryl Markham, so I suppose that makes it a form of historical fiction. I'm really enjoying it, although I'm not very far along yet.

Recently I re-watched Ant-Man, and I think I enjoyed it a lot more the second time. The first time I watched it was probably 3am in the morning and I'd been awake for 20 hours or so, which, for me, is unusual, and I was really annoyed by how Hope wasn't allowed to do anything and this random thief just becomes a super-hero for them over the course of a few weeks. I think the second time I watched it and was a little more awake, I was able to get how this conflict was an actual part of the movie that made sense within the movie, and enjoyed it more. I feel like Ant-Man worked well in part because it wasn't just a superhero movie; it was a bit more of a heist movie, that happened to have a setting full of superheroes and cool powers.

NYLT Day 4

Today, we learned about the EDGE method for teaching, which was pretty familiar for most of us. Our guides demonstrated using the method to teach us how to use a GPS device for geocaching, which we practiced. We also learned about conflict resolution, which was probably the most interesting subject so far.
In the model troop meeting portion of the day, we learned about packing a backpack (for backpacking, not for school. Even Scouting cannot save us from the weight of textbooks). There was also a geocaching challenge. Our patrol was the slowest, but we did not give up and finished the course. The Making Ethical Decisions presentation was the last session for the day, and then the individual patrols had campfires to themselves.
I do wonder what type of Scout this course is designed for - I know it could be good for any Scout, but I think it would be particularly good for crew leaders of high adventure activities, the top three officers in Venturing crews, and patrol leaders in troops. I would be curious to know the age and rank of the Scouts going through the course in councils where the course has been established and successful for a period of time.

Course Selection Time

It's that time of year - time to select courses for my last year of high school. It's stressful, because I know this is my last year to take classes before college, and there are so many classes to take. Basically, I want to take all the classes.

There are a lot of options. For math, I want to continue taking more calculus, as well as taking statistics. For biology, I definitely want to take Human Infectious Diseases, as well as Ecology. Plant Physiology and Animal Physiology are also options. For chemistry, there is Biochemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Analytical Chemistry. I don't know how much physics I will take, but my options include AP Physics C, or Thermodynamics and Modern Physics. There are also electives I want to take - like Number Sense, a course geared towards preparing for math competitions.  I don't know yet what I'm going to choose, but it's going to be a hard choice.

Of course senior year is going to involve more than just coursework. I know that college applications are purportedly a time-sucking vampire. I'm also interested  in doing research. Of course I want to keep up with my extracurricular activities as well - Venture Crew, Mu Alpha Theta, Science Bowl, and probably others. Eventually it will all work out - for now I just have to decide what I want most.