I, Curtis

Category: Academic

  • Where’s Logic?

    For the second time in two weeks Dr. Presler is not availible to teach her class. Today there was an exam scheduled, and most students arrived fairly early for the exam. A few minutes ago we were all informed by the department secretary that the exam has been moved to Wednesday and Dr. Presler isnt on campus.
    This means I am now again stuck with just being with myself to do a lot or not much at all depending upon my mood. I was so impressed with myself earlier for getting on campus so early and being able to go to the exam without rushing. It would be nice if Dr. Presler would like send an email or something before she is absent, so I can get an additional hour of sleep. I exited McEniry a while ago to the sound of the Belk Tower singing the alma mater. It is not unusual for me to enter the building under that same sound at the same time of day.
    At the moment I am having mixed feelings, I am glad I am not sitting through a boring lecture that Dr. Presler might give, but at the same time I was looking forward to the Logic exam. I am ready for the exam and I wanted to take it today. Oh well, I can’t always get my way can I?
    UPDATE: Dr. Presler was spotted on campus at 2:50PM, aparently healthy and able to be on campus.

  • Advising

    ALERT THE MEDIA!
    I will be volentarily going for advising in the next week or two. I am a little nervous about it, but I realize that I must do it because of various things that have come up. I considered going to the advisor and just getting the needed signature for my CAEC registration, but now that I have exchanged a few emails with my advisor I am feeling a little more comfortable. I will be discussing the actual CAEC registration as well as other topics with the advisor. One of the primary things I will be discussing is the proccess for selecting a minor. I am pretty sure of my major already (Management Information Systems), but am still having difficulty finding the perfect secondary area of interest for myself. I have decided that I will also be going over my planned Spring schedule with my advisor, just to double check my intentions.
    One sad thing about UNCC that I have discovered, because of the way the bussiness department is structures I will change advisors once my major has been officially declared. At the present rate I should be declaring my major at the end of Fall 2005 semester. I could declare it before then if I were to take Summer courses, but I have decided based on advice from friends that I will not be doing that again next year. This summer the courses were probably beneficial because they kept me focused on something semi-academic most of the time, so I didn’t go totally nuts upon entering UNCC.
    I don’t know why I avoid advisors so much, they aren’t such bad people. I used to not have any problems at all with Alice Williams at Gaston College, I actually looked forward to seeing her. With her I guess it was based on the fact that she was always willing to help me make my educational dream become a reality, she wasn’t focused on pushing me through “her” insituation as fast as possible. When I meet Kristine D. Hopkins for the first time I will probably make my first judgements about her then. I am not capable of being forceful in situations like that, so I will have to leave small hints that I am not just some clueless Freshman (or 1st year Sophomore) seeking a clue.
    I will post information about my meeting with my advisor at the end of the advising session.

  • Fall Break

    My four day weekend has begun!

  • The results are in

    My first week of test results are in and they look pretty good. Logic is a 90.625, Abnormal Psychology is 90, and Intro to Physics is 101.
    I was really suprised by all of the scores. I felt that Deductive Logic should have been a higher score. I prepared for the test and I understand the material, but I guess I got careless when I was taking the test and missed a few things or didn’t think something out fully enough. Abnormal Psychology I wasn’t expecting to do so well in because I didn’t really study, I missed a night of class and I don’t really ever take decent notes. With Physics I was almost certain I had screwed up 2 of the 10 problems. I guess I was wrong. I understand Physics pretty well, but it is very math based and I never do that well with any form of math.
    I am still waiting for scores for my English 1102 paper and my Western History and Culture test. I think I did well on the paper, but I am pretty sure I didn’t do well on the Western History and Culture test. I will post my devistation when those scores are availible.

  • Freshman 15

    I have been doing a lot of theoretical thinking in the past few hours. What is the Freshman 15 truely? In all reality I should be affected by the freshman 15 because this is my first semester on a real university campus. What is the origin of the “Freshman 15” term?
    Being the student of Psychology that I am, my analysis leads me to believe that the “Freshman 15” is linked to a psychological cause based on the newfound freedoms and independance experienced. It could also be the body’s physiological response to the stresses placed on the person during the time. Like a lot of things, the freshman 15 seems to be affecting me in the reverse of what it is supposed to. It is supposed to be a 15lbs weight gain during the expanse of the first year of college. So far I have lost about 5 pounds from my total weight since the semester began. If I go to the total opposite, a loss of 15lbs, I will be a little concerned and will find a way to correct the situation. My body does seem to be finding its own way to balance things recently.
    Another possibility for the Freshman 15 is that it is a fallacy of college. Just one of those myths that start from a few isolated cases. The food on campus isn’t good enough to gain 15lbs from.
    I personally intend to take whatever messures are required to make sure that I stay healthy throughout my college career. I am currently attempting to shape my body and make myself stronger and healthier than before. I want to use this time (college) to enhance my body as well as my brain. I like how my body is coming along so far, I need to be more focused on the health aspect of it than on the physical appearence. I could easily become ego obsessed and loose my mind with making my body harder and more shaped.
    I really shouldn’t be bloging at this hour…2:30AM and all is not well in my world.

  • Minors

    This evening I began a quest, a quest for the perfect minor for me. I will most likely graduate from UNCC (or wherever) as a Management Information Sustems major, but I am deeper than just that. MIS is the degree for me to have to be a professional in my prefered working area. I don’t want to work in Psychology, I just want to experience it. I would really love to officially declare a minor, but I don’t know what to declare, there are so many decent minors for me. The options are as follows:

  • Psychology
  • Sociology
  • Philosophy
  • Computer Science
  • French
  • Kinestology
  • Mathematics (no, this isn’t a joke, conquering the fear can only be done head on)
    I know my options are kinda wide, but I have a lot of interests and they have been growing for a long time. Philosophy is a new addition to the list. I think I would like to do it, because then I am not limited in possibilities for doctoral studies should I attempt to persue them. The whole doctoral thing for me would be for the purpose of me acheiving that as a goal, and also to have a non-mandatory expansion of my knowledge of a field. Philosophy would be sort of the traditional field for that type of expansion. I have always been fascinated by the ancient knowledge of philosophers. There is a painting, a fresco, “the School of Athens” that sort of exemplifies what I want in my knowledge. The fresco is split in the middle between the schools of thought, Plato on the right, Arestole on the left. Plato being of the more structured philosohies based on math, logic and anything of pure structure. Aerestotle on the left has his group of open minded free thinkers of less defined and less certain rules to the thought. The fresco contains people from Pathagoreous to Socrates. Lots of great minds, the collective genious exemplifies what I would like to one day attain. Having enlightened thought isn’t something I do regularly, but it would be cool to have more capability for that.
    There is so much knowledge in this world to learn and I can never know it all, but I would like to attempt most of it. I am aware that there is a great amount of mystery still left in this expanding universe. As an intelligent individual I would like to persue the possibilities for pondering the greatest mysteries and establish theories for each.
    I am probebly overly ambitious, but who cares, lol.
    Summary of today (since the entry deviated): went to logic, understood most of what Dr. P said. Logic went by fairly quickly. I ran to Physics as fast as I could so that I could be on time for the 12:55 exam slot. I got a little worried when I got to question 3 of the exam and was informed of 25 minutes of the exam time remaining. This really caused me to drop the thoroughness shit and take the test in a fast pace manner. I think I did well, I finished the 10 question test with 7 minutes remaining. It was kinda scary, but not too bad. I hope Dr. Naeini is easy on grading, especially with the formula usage. I know if i made mistakes it was in the calulation portion, i think most of my final answers are right. Enlgish was decent today. Went to class for 5 minutes, went with Betsy to get the DVD player from the library and then we went to the Cone center and started watching “Bowling for Columbine”. We will be analyzing it for argumentation quality. We finish it Wednesday.
    That concludes today, I will finish my minor search and get back to blogging about it once something is clearly defined.

  • Overload – Vectors, Syllogisms and Old Art

    It finally happened, I am experiencing mental burn out!
    At one month into my college career I am feeling as though my brain is having to wrap around huge, ungraspable concepts and we aren’t being successful. My primary problem is vectors in physics. I am used to having equations for everything pre-derived for me(thats what we have old guys for right?) and just having to essentially “plug and chug” the numbers. I am having to do a lot more conceptual modeling than i previously would have ever done. I have tried using Google to find information on the topic, but nothing is revealing itself as being very useful. I had a similar problem in high school physics, and I was hoping to be able to find my old notebood and use information in it, but it is no where to be found. Wait, nevermind, found it in the other closet. Oh well, nothing usefull in there anyway. I guess its back to checking Google and attempting to piece together some amount of a clue. Physics test Monday, yippee!
    In Dedeductive Logic I am having some minor syllogism issues. It was worse last night with homework than it is now. I feel like I understand it a little better now than I did last night at least. I think I will just need to practice with these, I remember when I was first introduced to oppositions, I thought for sure I wouldn’t get it, but now I do. Once Dr. Preseler explained the stuff a little more today it was a lot clearer. I asked her for an extension to the homework, she agreed, so I get to go at it again, this time with fresh knowledge of what I am doing.
    Western History and Culture is a class that has only met a few times, the first test is Tuesday evening. I am worried because I don’t know the material that well. There are too many things that we have looked at that I just simply cant remember every detail about. I will review thoroughly this weekend and hope for the best. It is really becoming a history class and I just dont have that type of a mental proccess to handle that. I am logical in nature, as such, I work with things like GITI to keep my factual information in order.
    With Abnormal Psychology there is a lot of material, but I am doing fine with it and I think I just need to become a little more absorbed into the material (as long as it isnt in the form of a case study).
    Writing In Academic Communication is going fine. I am a good writer, all it takes for me is just a little work on some areas where I have preferences away from the accepted standard.
    Today in general went OK, with the exception of the fact that my father was home. I was expecting him to be at work and therefore wasn’t in my nicey pleasant mood to deal with him. Repreccusions of this unknowledge remain to be seen, but the total result likely wont be good.
    For those of you who are familiar with my beverage scale for day judgement: I am presently sipping on a 20oz Mt. Dew Code Red and there is another on standby in the fridge.
    Reccomendation for anyone in contact with Curtis in the next 36 hours: stay alert for sudden mood shifts, volitile temperment is likely.

  • Short Days Are Fun

    Today was one of those short days that you don’t expect to be short.
    Awoke at 10AM to an alarm clock, a cell phone and a laptop. Im getting better at getting the three to go at the same time. I really need to find a nice loud MP3 that starts with like trumpets or something for my laptop. I opened my eyes to a beautiful North Carolina autum sky, this was adequate motivation to get me moving for the day. I ate breakfast and watched some television while in bed in an attempt to stay warm. Today wasn’t one of the warmest fall days weve had.
    I drove to campus to take a Logic test (doesn’t that sound like fun?). Given that some logic tests are easy, we can not conclude that All logic tests are easy (superalternation). The test was fairly easy and yet still required thought. I at no point was concerned about my grade on the test. I think I did very well. It only took me about 30 minutes to complete the test, so I had about 30 minutes left to do stuff. I went to Barnard labs for a bit, checked my email and dealt with a situation with the Assistant Dean of the college of bussiness administration.
    Later I went to Physics, Dr. Naeini took 65 minutes of his availible 50 minute block. We went over homework that I already know how to do. Very boring. The class went by slow and not much was learned.
    Went back to Barnard Labs after Physics to take care of some homework and stuff, then it was time for Enlgish. Betsy wasn’t feeling very well today so we went to class and exchanged our Peer Review forms and then kinda left. Thats where my day concludes and I returned home.
    Not much done since then…

  • Evaluation Time…

    I have a practice of evaluating my instructors in a typed document each semester. Some semesters it stays private (usually the bad ones), this semester it is public. It has been about one month now since classes began.
    Mrs. Dr. Judith L. Presler – Deductive Logic – MWF 12-12:50 –
    Dr. Presler started off a little shaky with me. I was almost certain she would be the evil instructor. She started off very strict and a little overly professional acting. After the first two weeks Dr. Presler became this kind and friendly old lady, sort of like a wise instructor from ancient Greece. There must be something about philosophy instructors that makes appear the way they do. Dr. Presler and Dr. Morton act a lot alike. Dr. Presler gives reasonable review before tests and writes the test to not be too challenging, but also not a snooze. With the test today I was especially appreciative of the little logic guide with the square of opposition that she gave us. I am still planning for an A in the course, the work is easy, the concepts are simple (and logical ;-), and I enjoy being in the course most days.
    Dr. Jeff Naeini – Introduction to Physics – MWF – 1-1:50 –
    Dr. Naeini is a lebanese French-Canadian. He speaks English well, but has a heavy accent. Sometimes it is difficult to understand him, but I have had no problems in the course so far. If a student in the course is attentive then any missed words aren’t a problem to figure out. Dr. Naeini is one of the instructors who you can tell loves his job. Even though we are in a lecture hall situation with 85 students I still feel like I am connected to him. Homework exists in the course, but is only moderately challenging. The homework really helps me understand a lot of the concepts in the course. Dr. Naeini loves to work with technology, but sometimes it doesn’t always enjoy working with him that much. He makes an attempt at using bold new teaching methods. So far this semester I have been introduced to WebAssign and Clickers. I enjoy WebAssign and think it is a valuble teaching tool. Clickers on the other hand are just annoying and should never be used in any serioud academic setting as large as what we have. Dr. Naeini is doing a fine job and is very understanding. My present grade estimate is in the A or B range, depending on the way the tests go.
    “Betsy” Newman – Writing in Academic Communication – MW – 3-4:20 –
    Betsy is nuts, but is a decent teacher. Betsy is probably the youngest instructor that I have currently. She relates to students very well and tends to act a lot like us. She looses things, gets confused, talks to herself and can be a complete spaz at times. Can anyone think of a better person for teaching me? Mrs. Newman is good at what she does. Her techniques for teaching rely heavily on student involvement, something which a lot of instructors think college students are too old for. Peer learning is one of the most successful ways of absorbing knowledge that exists. Betsy’s style is not so lecture oriented, but yet the material gets covered, and no one falls asleep. High school was never as much fun as Betsy’s class. I suspect an A in this course as well.
    Mr. James Frakes – Western History and Culture: Masterpieces of Western Art – T – 6:30-9:20 –
    Mr. Frakes is purely a lecturer. He cares about the subject matter, but isn’t directly interacting with the class. Im not truely sure of what I think about him yet, but I think it will be a very dull semester with him. I can make no grade projections for this course.
    Mr. Kamran Ahmad – Introduction to Physics Lab – R – 2-5:00 –
    Mr. Ahmad is a TA, he directs the lab and is very effective in doing so. He is strict with procedures, but is very helpful. Mr. Ahmad is a very understanding and flexible instructor. I don’t know of anyone else who has that much paitience with blonde chicks. Not much else to say about him, he is a TA and my grade is based upon lab attendance and my lab notebook.
    Dr. Kieth Noland – Abnormal Psychology – R – 6-8:50 –
    Dr. Noland teaches the course quickly, but yet efficiently. He is nice about the way he does things. Dr. Noland does not take attendance because he believes that if we don’t attend class we will wreak havok upon our own grades. I have no indication of a grade in the course as of yet, but I think I will do well, I always seem to with Psychology courses.
    That concludes the instructor evaluations for now. Maybe this will give my readers more of an insight into the instructors as well as give me a point of reference when I fill out a RateMyProfessors.com evaluation at the conclusion of the semester.

  • Roller Coaster Ride

    Today has been one big puddle of emotions, reactions and moods. This will be quite an adventure for my loyal readers, so either grab on to something stable or grab a pillow.
    Lets start with yesterday at 4:30PM when I was enroute to UNCC and the first sign of weirdness occured. It was a perfectly nice day to be driving to UNCC, everything was on schedule and everything was ok with my day (can you not see the horror story plot building here?). I had visual contact with the campus from my position on highway 49 and was waiting at the last stop light before the campus entrance. As I slowed down for the stop my vehicle began a slight shaking and then decided to die all together as soon as it was at a full stop. Me being the incredibly bright person that I am tried to go from dead (switch in on posotion) to restarting the vehicle, this didn’t work as it only reactivated the electrical system. Once I discovered that the vehicle really wanted to be off for a second, I shut it down and then performed ignition again. Vehicle resumed as if nothing had gone wrong. I continued to campus, entered successfully and then notified both parents of the possible issue with my vehicle. I started that evening out already nervous about possible issues with my vehicle. I went to class (Western History and Culture: Masterpieces of Western Art) for 3 hours. I was bored out of my mind most of the time with Mr. Frakes’s analysis of the pieces we were looking at. One of the pieces we were looking at was the sculpture, “David”. While we were on this subject there was an image of “David” on the projector. I counted five seperate times that Mr. Frakes pointed to David’s penis. I would consider this abnormal behavior for an art instructor. Eventually time for the course was up. I was in a non-excited but not depressed mood as I exited the class. I returned to my vehicle not sure what to expect: perfect startup, perfect run all the way home (I was going at a fairly rapid pace, so it was a run for the vehicle).
    My evening didn’t conclude there, I arrived home and began just generally staring into space because I felt like it. At some point Chris requested a call, I made the call and then noticed that I had Logic homework to do. At some point the Logic homework became a group effort as I started reading the questions out loud. Chris is a very logical person and can follow the patterns without any formal logic instruction. I learned 2 things from the experience: 1. Logic is more fun with a partner, 2. Chris hates logic, even though he is great at it. The evening ended a few hours after the homework was finished when I became tired and Chris became non-talkative.
    Today began at 10:00AM for me. I awake to an alarm sounding and my television activating. Once I was awake I ate breakfast, began getting dressed and prepared myself for the day. About the time I was ready to leave I heard my car starting and moving out of the driveway, my father decided to steal my car! My father returned about 15 minutes later, but instead of wasting time yelling at him I decided to not waste time conveying messages to the deaf, ignorant, yankee ears. I proceded on to UNCC, vehicle operated normally with the exception of an unusual smell when I parked.
    The first order on the agenda of the day was the Psychology study at 11:30. I was on time for the study, amazingly. There were only 2 participants in the session I attended. The study was survey based, a 50 item survey about a stressful event. The event I used was me taking the Microsoft 70-220 certification exam, the only exam that I failed. The study coordinator was pretty cute, she was also very nice and made an attempt to make study participants feel comfortable. The only thing I have to complain about with her is the way she handled debriefing. Debriefing consisted of a 1″ x 8.5″ piece of paper, for this study it was ok, but for something more in depth i would expect an actual defriefing session before being released.
    Once the wonderful little study was over with I hauled myself to the other end of the quadrant of the campus to McEniry for Deductive Logic. We reviewed stuff, we turned in homework, we reviewed some more, we heard jokes about Mr. Dr. Presler, we were dismissed. Physics was a little odd today, I took my new seat today beside Ryan. The Clickers now work with the devices (w00000t!). One of the odd things of the class was related to my new placement in the room. I could see better and it was nice to actually not be right in front of Dr. Naeini, but the back-of-the-room-disturbance-people were right behind me. Some people shouldn’t even attend class, they should just stay in their happy little worlds of their percieved perfections and not attmept to interact with people who are different than them. Dr. Naeini is a perfectly nice guy, but for some reason a lot of students feel the need to insult him, disrupt his class and constantly giggle (im thinking the 2 rows behind my seat may actually be the pot-smoking group). The physics class itself went well, there was some knowledge obtained, but towards the end i found myself not able to follow what Dr. Naeini was doing and gave up on the rest of my notes for the day. Once physics concluded I went out of Burson and headed toward Barnard like I always do. I got caught in a cloud of smoke as many students exiting the building began to “light up” for their post-class smoke. I don’t know that I have ever been as disgusted with smokers as I was today (combination of circumstance and mood I suppose).
    I manged to breath long enough to make my way to the clear air of Barnard Computer Commons and took care of neccesary (one day i need to learn to spell that word) administrative issues, such as entering grades from my Logic class as well as entering the homework for the course. After those issues were out of the way I handled my standard email stuff on my 3 normal domains for mail checking during the day – curtis.kularski.net, uncc.edu and now gmail.com. Two of my accounts (uncc and g) are by webmail only, I am not finding this to be horribly annoying because it means i have to check 3 seperate webmail servers instead of just having CMK4’s IMail installation retrieve it at logon. After I finished checking email I spent a few minutes looking at GITI from a truely end-user perspective and found a lot of things that needed to be done to it. There is such a huge difference in using GITI at home where I can call the source code at a moments notice and being on-campus where I can’t easily make code changes on a whim. Maybe this is what makes GITI so problematic, I edit without much thought. I found a bug today in my new navigation bar for Education module components, if I submit a form I am taken to my scripts folder, and the links attempt to call the files based on that, this doesn’t work as the files it needs are in the modules folder, not the scripts folder. This should be a simple fix though.
    When the time arrived for me to leave Barnard I proceded on to my English 1102 course. We recieved back our drafts of our papers today. I have been told I did better than most people, even though Betsy wrote about the same amount on my paper as I did. The woman worries me sometimes. I will be revising the paper over the weekend and preparing draft #3 for Monday and then Tuesday I will work on the final copy for Wednesday’s class. We were told to exchange copies of draft #2 with people around us for our peer review stuff. I have 2 decent papers I will be reviewing. I pray for the mental stability of the two unfortunate souls who have ended up with my paper. I am way too technical in it and it is enough to make anyone’s head spin. English was dismissed about 20 minutes early. I came home, ate dinner and have pretty much been sitting here since I got home. I am thinking about working on GITI at least some tonight.
    Next week I have a tests in Logic and Abnormal Psyc. The week after I have tests in Physics, and WH&C:MOWA. Anyone who interacts with me should take this as fair warning.
    As requested, I am posting GITI screen shots for public viewing. Once they are ready they will be at http://curtis.kularski.net/GITI/v1 for current version (stable) and http://curtis.kularski.net/GITI/v2 for the development project. Development is highly volitile and is totally theoretical at this point.
    Current Music: Leann Rimes – Life Goes On (mp3, local\e:\my_music)
    In the Queue: Eiffel 65 – Now is Foreever; Europe – Final Countdown
    No witty conclusion, just me. Bye Yall!