DJ's Sooner Stories

3 Weeks of the University Life

Well, it's been a thrilling three weeks since I arrived back in Norman after a short break from a summer in Norman. After a few relative worry-free days, I reentered the good ole academic lifestyle with this semester's daunting schedule. Mondays and Wednesdays feature a morning math double feature of Physical Math I (aka Ordinary Differential Equations plus other stuff) followed by Discrete Math. They're both straightforward lecture classes just like every other math class I've had since Algebra I, but I enjoy learning the concepts they throw at me. Some of it I've already seen a few times, but the new stuff is finally starting to creep in with a vengeance.

My afternoons feature a 2 hour and 45 minute extra long double block of Data Structures and Generational Politics in America. With Data Structures we're learning C++, or Java with all the wrinkles that Java was designed to iron out. My professor in there is very animated and promotes class participation by commanding us to "Say yes!" to the questions he poses. I'm in the midst of the first programming project in there at the moment, and it's been giving me a few headaches although today I finally blew through one of them with the professor's help. My final class of the day comes with Generational Politics in America, an Honors Perspectives course. In it we are discussing the differences in the political and social climate among three important generations in recent history: The Greatest Generation of the 40s and 50s, the 60's Generation, and my generation, which hasn't officially received a name yet although we've been called everything from Gen Y to Gen Me to Gen D to the Millennials. We have had many long and in depth discussions on the political, social, and racial climates of those times. Currently we're focusing on the Greatest Generation and comparing the views of two books written about it: The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw and Coming of Age by Studs Terkel. Brokaw paints the picture of them that we are most familiar with: the hard working humble heroes who overcame crushing odds to defeat the worst evil the world has ever seen and then go on to live long, prosperous, fulfilling lives. Terkel's book on the other hand, takes on a broader perspective of the generation by sharing the stories of a vast spectrum of people and focusing more on their accomplishments here than what if anything they did during the war. Combined they give a good survey of the Greatest Generation, as I have to discuss in depth in a paper I am writing this weekend.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are my days at the Weather Center. I begin bright and early for 8:30 AM Honors Intro to Meteorology I, where we learn about the meteorology. It's a very small class made up entirely of my friends, so we generally have a good time in it. We're still in the early material so I think it will take a little longer for it to take off into the more interesting and difficult stuff. In addition to the lecture class we have a lab where we are learning meteorology programs and contouring weather maps, among other things. Following the morning meteorology I shift gears and buildings for my part time research job over in Stephenson. Right now I am working on extracting attributes about various thunderstorm features from the computer models of them. So far I have gotten the updraft, downdraft, and pressure perturbation done, and the rest should also be finished soon. Fridays is more math in the morning then job in the afternoon.

As for the weekends, the dominant event is, of course, football. Last week we dealt the University of North Texas a whopping 79-10 defeat in our first game of the season. UNT is a pretty bad team, so the score only has some significance, although the almost mistake-free performance of the players bodes well for us. This Saturday at 12 PM EDT/11 AM CDT on ABC we will be facing the University of Miami in what will be one of our biggest tests of the season. My friends and I are making shirts for the game reading "Hey U! We're going to leave you tropically depressed!" We're hoping to get on TV like my friend who wore a Schooner Hat did last week. It will definitely be an exciting matchup so don't miss it.

To finish, here's some pictures from the past few weeks:
Pictures from the Beginning of School, Landphoon, and VolleyBall vs. Alabama
Random Road Trip to Lubbock
OU Soccer vs. Alabama A & M
OU Football vs. North Texas Part 1
OU Footbal vs. North Texas Part 2

posted by DJ @ 5:25 PM