Days 90, 91, 92, and 93: Sixth Week of Classes

Monday started off with sleeping in a little bit, and then heading out earlier than I needed to so I could draw at Campus A and to enjoy the nice weather outside. I rode the bus to the back of campus in order to go to the pond, and continue my drawing of the pagoda.

When I was a bit impatient with drawing, I headed back towards the main building, enjoying the natural beauty along the way. I also saw the electric blue bird that I saw the past week, realizing that it was a finch of sorts, not a hummingbird.

I went into the classroom for Heat Transfer early, and started grading. One of my students, Vivi (who also was a TA last semester, and helped show us around when we got here), came in the room and reminded me of the room change. It turned out she didn't remember what number room we were moving to, but I remembered it was right across the hall.

I talked to her a bit, and worked on reviewing an old statics lecture too. Soon after, Pablo walked in, and I reviewed some of the heat transfer homework with him to make sure that the answer keys could be fixed.

After class, I made my way back to campus D, handing in the attendance sheet from the English conversation hour to Hemia, which she was a bit confused at at first.

Then I made my way to the printing shop to print off some midterm course evaluations for Manufacturing Processes that the students had to take. I saw a winding path in a field in the back of the building that I vowed to explore soon.

Afterwards, I grabbed dinner, which consisted of lo mein, a lotus root side dish with chicken, cucumbers, rice, and the cabbage soup. I was making my way out of the dining hall to go do some grading in the TA office, and I saw Dom coming into the cafeteria. I had inadvertently looked past Celia and Amanda, slightly offending Celia. It turned out that they had just gotten out of the C++ exam, and I decided to hang out with them for a little bit at the dining hall.

I had been thinking about getting juice, and Will taught me how to say watermelon (Xīguā). So, I tried to order watermelon juice, and none of the vendors had it, so I ended up getting mango juice. It wasn't the best juice that I'd ever had, but it was pretty good. We talked about lots of things, including a possible housing situation with Dom for one of my friends, and Amanda brought up a possible trip to one of the most beautiful places in China, called Jiu Zhai Gou, and it was a national park.

We got a lot of the details together, but a lot of it came down to Amanda, and the Chinese TAs getting in touch with an agent. I headed out, and graded for a couple hours, and then headed home.

Tuesday morning, I slept in again, having stayed up a while the previous night trying to work on my philosophy paper, and my blog.

Around 10, I headed out seeking a place outside to grade to continue to enjoy the nice weather. I wandered around, trying to find the place that I had seen the previous day to sit outside, but I kept finding dead ends.

Eventually, I found a few benches outside under some shady trees, and I sat there, grading models quizzes, inputting the grades in the spreadsheet, and eventually trying to grade the rest of the heat transfer homework (getting stopped by the fact that the student's answers all varied wildly from the answer key, and I had to double check with the professor that the answer key wasn't wrong).

At this point, I had about 40 minutes until the digital design lab, so I started to pull out my leftovers to eat them for lunch, while I read my book. Dom walked up, and we talked for a bit about how many hours that we were each going to get this week.  He went to get food, and I settled in to eat my lunch. Afterwards, I grabbed my bike, and made my way over there.

Dom had a lot of C++ grading to do for the exams that they had just taken the previous day, and he was able to try work on that during lab. I tried to go over some of the concepts that the students were covering, through the digital design textbook that Suri had lent me, as well as work on philosophy homework.

Lab got out early, so I decided to explore a bit, and went up a hill near the building that lab was in. Doing this, I found where all the scenic spots on campus converged, and sat there for a while, reviewing Digital Design stuff.

I had made plans with one of my students, Black, to have dinner, and he met me at the hill in order to find our way more easily. We started to walk around the pond, and he taught me a few Chinese phrases. These included women (shi pengyou), right (dui), goodbye (zai jian), and swan (tian e).

Black swans (not geese as we previously thought)

He walked with me to the first dining hall, and he said that the TAs in the previous semester had mostly gone to the second dining hall because it was closer to the apartment. I told him that I had actually never been to that dining hall, and he offered to take me there. He helped me order beef noodles that he liked, and I sat down to enjoy them. I discussed life back at home with him for a while, and how life has been here for me, enjoying the discussion. I couldn't finish the noodles, so I put them in my to go container for later.

Noodles for dinner

After spending dinner with Black, I walked back to the office with him, and he reviewed the words that I had learned with me. I sat down for my office hour, but not surprisingly, no one came.

I had to walk back to the area near the lab to get my bike, and then I went back to the apartment for the rest of the night. I waited for a bit to make a video call, but as my friend wasn't awake yet, I went to watch part of Moana with the others. When she did awaken, I talked to her for a while, and then worked out some last minute details for Astro Night at UC (on the other side of the world!)

 Wednesday started off with the statics lecture. I headed out of the apartment early in order to work on looking at the lecture before the other students got there. I sat through lecture, explaining a problem to the students on the chalkboard, and passing out the Manufacturing Processes midterm evaluations.

After lecture, I went to go scan these papers in at the print shop, and then, realizing I had forgotten an answer key for the Heat Transfer homework I needed for class later, biked back to the apartment quickly, and then returned to campus to get a chicken sandwich and wrap combo for lunch.

After grabbing that, I took my time getting to the bus stop, enjoying the beautiful weather and the gorgeous flowers.

I got to campus, and finished grading the homework for Heat Transfer that I needed to give back to the students. I went upstairs to the classroom, and I finished up some other work as well, waiting for class to start.

Afterwards, I headed back to Campus D for our weekly meeting. It was our first (and only) time with both Wei Wei and Greg at a meeting, since Greg was heading back to Cincy at the end of the week. It was interesting, to say the least, to see their different styles. At the end of the meeting, we discussed our plans for the weekend, and realized that over time, they had changed to going to Chengdu to see the pandas, and to Mt Emei to climb the mountain and see the monkeys that lived there. It turned out that only myself, Will, Pablo, Sean, Celia, Robert, and Suri were going. The others wanted to save their money, or in Alexandra's case, spend time with her family.

Yes, to answer your question, I was really tired during the meeting

Soon after, I headed back home to watch some anime, work on my blog, and relax.

 Thursday I went to Models, as per my normal, and sat through lecture. Greg was there for the first half of it, talking to the freshmen during the break about the necessity for them to pass all their classes the first time around. Apparently in the past, JCI had let some of the engineering policies slide, but they had been trying to clean up their act for the ABET inspection (which is the international certification board for engineering).

Sean teaching class

After lecture, I headed to the dining hall with Dom to get some food to go back to the apartment with. I had decided against hanging around campus, partly because it was raining heavily outside, and partly because I was going to head back to the apartment to make a video call. I got a small pizza of sorts, with clear sauce and some meat and vegetables on sweet bread, as well as some tomato bread. Dom gave me his Pepsi from the chicken sandwich place. We ran into Amanda on the way there, and decided to walk back talking to her. She was interested in doing a research co op at UC next semester called WISE, which stands for Women in Science and Engineering.

I went back to the apartment, made a video call while eating lunch, and then caught the bus to Campus A for our unofficial office hour for heat transfer to help the students review for the upcoming midterm.

I got off of the bus and wandered down the road toward the main building, taking my time because I would be early for the office hour anyway.

Getting to the office, I saw Sue and Jane were already there! I told them that they were early, but they said that they had started at 1:30, which surprised me. They said that Pablo had gone downstairs for a coffee, and we started waiting on him. While we were waiting, Greg came in, and said that he needed the office for meetings. I internally sighed at the bad timing of this, and told Greg that the students needed to review the concepts for the test. He replied in kind by saying that these meetings were so that students could go to UC in the spring, so they were more important! Pablo soon came back, and said that he had forgotten to tell me about the time change for the meeting.

Greg dismissed Jane and Sue from the room, so the rest of us could have a meeting with another student who wasn't doing well. We tried to be strict but fair, encouraging him that he would do well and be able to go to UC in the fall.

Afterwards, we went down to D Café, where Jane and Sue were waiting on us. Pablo ordered some food, and I talked to Jane for a while. Jessica and Nick were also there, having their office hour for Prob and Stats, and I was able to talk to Jane for a while. She was a SOL a few years ago, and I asked her if she stayed in touch with her SOL community back at UC. She said she didn't, because of VPN issues, but I offered to help her out with getting back in contact. She was pretty happy to hear that, and soon after, her and Sue headed out.

I waited in the café with Jessica and Nick for a bit, ordering a mocha and waiting on it, heading out to the bus soon after.

When we were waiting on the bus, Greg came over to talk to us about the student's situation, and he was able to get a few points in before the bus came, and he went off to another meeting. On the bus ride back, Jessica, Nick, and I were talking about how to improve the JCI program to accommodate for these sorts of things, and various others.

I wandered off to the TA office to grade some things, running into Dom, who was still there from his office hour, and after an hour of it, headed home to take a shower.

excessive bumper stickers here

Thursday night, I headed home, a bit spent from everything, but worked on my philosophy paper, trying to download some anime, as well as grading the Heat Transfer homework that I had to hand back in class the next day.

While I was in the shower, trying to download the anime, Wei Wei came into the apartment, and talked to Jessica. Apparently the wifi guy did not come in the afternoon, and he needed the router, so when I was trying to download stuff, they took the router, foiling my plans.

About 30 minutes later, though, the guy came in, restoring the internet with Wei Wei acting as translator, and all was well.