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Nov. 7th, 2008 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brokenrecordYesterday was kind of awesome.
First, I had been stressing over those two tests I had last Wednesday since I didn't feel like I prepared enough for either of them. I got both back yesterday, and on one I got a 97 and the other 100. The 100 is especially ridiculous because that's better than I did on the first test, and I definitely didn't study more for it. This is why my study habits are terrible! The less I study, the better I do! There's something wrong with my brain, I think.
Second, President-Elect (!) Obama had his first press-conference since being elected and seriously, it ridiculous how excited and giddy that made me. It's not like I typically (meaning, ever) watch the press conferences George Bush gives or that Clinton gave (then again, I was 11 when Clinton left office, and even if I was interested, there wasn't youtube or anything like that, obviously). Part of it is just because it makes it more real that he's actually going to be the president. It still hasn't sunk in. But also, it's nice listening to a president who can string words into coherent sentences and sounds thoughtful and intelligent and can pronounce words correctly. And I'm still all politics-obsessed (if you hadn't noticed. If you don't care at all about politics or hate Obama or whatever, don't worry, I'll get over this soon enough and start obsessing over something else) so anything that feeds my political obsession is good news. And I totally loved him seriously discussing the type of dog they were planning on getting and him referring to shelter dogs being mutts like him, and asking about how that woman hurt her arm and all that.
Anyways. Other things that made yesterday awesome: I turned in my major plan to the registrar! I'm officially a psych major!
Also awesome was working on a math project with my group. I really like my group, for one. But also, I managed to figure out a problem entirely by myself while both of them had no idea and it just felt really great figuring it out on my own and being able to explain it. And honestly, I just really enjoy doing math.
And this has led to an important decision. Ok, originally I was going to major in psychology and minor in math. But... I think now I'm going to try to double major in psychology and applied mathematics. I've looked over the required courses and I think I can do it. I mean, I need like two courses more time than I have left here (which is really annoying because I totally didn't need to take Astronomy or the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies classes I took freshman year for any requirements or my major, but oh well, too late to do anything about it now. Astronomy was cool, anyways, and the WGSS class was the easiest class I've ever taken), but I have a few options. First, this is including a German class every semester. I can either not take any more German (which I don't really want to do, because I like German), or I could just not take Advanced German senior year (so I'd still have 3 more semesters of it, and while I'd like to do advanced German too, this is preferable to not doing any German). Second, I could take an extra semester. This isn't ideal because it would cost loads of money (Macalester is very expensive and my scholarship is small and I don't know if it would even count towards an extra semester and I'm not on financial aid) and I'm not sure how willing my parents would be to pay for that. Third, I could take classes during the summer at UCI. I have to check to see for sure if I can do this. It's most likely I could do this in math. Fourth, I could take five courses for two different semesters instead of 4. Not ideal, but people do it and survive. Fifth, instead of one of the classes I am planning to take for the psych major, I could try to find an internship instead. Obviously I could also do a combination of this (meaning, do an internship and take one class at UCI or not take one semester of German and take 5 classes one semester).
Anyways, the point is, this is not totally impossible. I think what I'm going to do is do what I was already planning next semester, which is Research in Psych II, Elementary German II, Differential Equations, and either something that fulfills the requirements for Math/Psych majors, or something that fulfills the Internationalism requirement. Then next semester I'll talk to someone in the math department about whether I can transfer credits from UCI to here and if it's at all possible for me to do this.
I think I might be totally crazy for considering this, though. I'm going to have to do a directed research project in psych which involves conducting my own study and writing a huge paper on it and presenting it, and if I major in math too, I'm also going to have to do a huge paper on some math thing and present it to people and have it be approved and stuff. And the thought of doing that in psych was terrifying enough, let alone having to do it in two different subjects. Ugh but I want to do this, and I feel motivated to do this (at least, at the moment).
I don't even know what the purpose of double majoring would be. I guess just because I still have absolutely no idea what I want to do after college. Being a clinical psychologist is really appealing, as is pretty much any type of counseling work. But then I've also always been interested in being a teacher, and if I were to teach, I would most want to teach math (probably Calculus). And then I've also kind of considered occasionally doing something like being an accountant or an engineer or something like that. So I don't know. This helps keep my options open for a little longer. Although I am going to have to decide someday, and I'm clearly no closer to making that decision. Why do I have to grow up? :(
The MN senate race is still ridiculous. Thursday I mentioned the gap had narrowed from 700 something to 342. Where is it at now? 221. How is it even possible that a race with this many votes is this close? I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, but it's SO CLOSE, and I think the recount is supposed to favor Franken (if only for two reasons: one, the machines used in the Twin Cities and possibly Duluth are the same ones as these ones in Michigan that were found to be making errors reading the ballots, and these areas favored Franken, and two, when doing a recount, they can count ballots where the person did a checkmark for the person or circled the oval or something else that the machine wouldn't pick up as intention to vote for the person, but an election official can decide counts to whoever, and theoretically people more likely to make these mistakes are immigrants and first-time voters, which should also favor the Democrats). And there was a governor race in... Oregon? Maybe? Or Washington? I think Oregon. And it was super close like this and the Dem was behind before the recount and after they were up by a very tiny amount of votes. So who knows. Here's to hoping!
Also, I'm thinking I'm going to buy one of Franken's books due to how obsessed I've become with this race. Also I'm pretty sure Emma loves Al Franken and told me like last year that I should totally read one of his books. So, anyone have an idea which one I should get? I believe he has like three out.
First, I had been stressing over those two tests I had last Wednesday since I didn't feel like I prepared enough for either of them. I got both back yesterday, and on one I got a 97 and the other 100. The 100 is especially ridiculous because that's better than I did on the first test, and I definitely didn't study more for it. This is why my study habits are terrible! The less I study, the better I do! There's something wrong with my brain, I think.
Second, President-Elect (!) Obama had his first press-conference since being elected and seriously, it ridiculous how excited and giddy that made me. It's not like I typically (meaning, ever) watch the press conferences George Bush gives or that Clinton gave (then again, I was 11 when Clinton left office, and even if I was interested, there wasn't youtube or anything like that, obviously). Part of it is just because it makes it more real that he's actually going to be the president. It still hasn't sunk in. But also, it's nice listening to a president who can string words into coherent sentences and sounds thoughtful and intelligent and can pronounce words correctly. And I'm still all politics-obsessed (if you hadn't noticed. If you don't care at all about politics or hate Obama or whatever, don't worry, I'll get over this soon enough and start obsessing over something else) so anything that feeds my political obsession is good news. And I totally loved him seriously discussing the type of dog they were planning on getting and him referring to shelter dogs being mutts like him, and asking about how that woman hurt her arm and all that.
Anyways. Other things that made yesterday awesome: I turned in my major plan to the registrar! I'm officially a psych major!
Also awesome was working on a math project with my group. I really like my group, for one. But also, I managed to figure out a problem entirely by myself while both of them had no idea and it just felt really great figuring it out on my own and being able to explain it. And honestly, I just really enjoy doing math.
And this has led to an important decision. Ok, originally I was going to major in psychology and minor in math. But... I think now I'm going to try to double major in psychology and applied mathematics. I've looked over the required courses and I think I can do it. I mean, I need like two courses more time than I have left here (which is really annoying because I totally didn't need to take Astronomy or the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies classes I took freshman year for any requirements or my major, but oh well, too late to do anything about it now. Astronomy was cool, anyways, and the WGSS class was the easiest class I've ever taken), but I have a few options. First, this is including a German class every semester. I can either not take any more German (which I don't really want to do, because I like German), or I could just not take Advanced German senior year (so I'd still have 3 more semesters of it, and while I'd like to do advanced German too, this is preferable to not doing any German). Second, I could take an extra semester. This isn't ideal because it would cost loads of money (Macalester is very expensive and my scholarship is small and I don't know if it would even count towards an extra semester and I'm not on financial aid) and I'm not sure how willing my parents would be to pay for that. Third, I could take classes during the summer at UCI. I have to check to see for sure if I can do this. It's most likely I could do this in math. Fourth, I could take five courses for two different semesters instead of 4. Not ideal, but people do it and survive. Fifth, instead of one of the classes I am planning to take for the psych major, I could try to find an internship instead. Obviously I could also do a combination of this (meaning, do an internship and take one class at UCI or not take one semester of German and take 5 classes one semester).
Anyways, the point is, this is not totally impossible. I think what I'm going to do is do what I was already planning next semester, which is Research in Psych II, Elementary German II, Differential Equations, and either something that fulfills the requirements for Math/Psych majors, or something that fulfills the Internationalism requirement. Then next semester I'll talk to someone in the math department about whether I can transfer credits from UCI to here and if it's at all possible for me to do this.
I think I might be totally crazy for considering this, though. I'm going to have to do a directed research project in psych which involves conducting my own study and writing a huge paper on it and presenting it, and if I major in math too, I'm also going to have to do a huge paper on some math thing and present it to people and have it be approved and stuff. And the thought of doing that in psych was terrifying enough, let alone having to do it in two different subjects. Ugh but I want to do this, and I feel motivated to do this (at least, at the moment).
I don't even know what the purpose of double majoring would be. I guess just because I still have absolutely no idea what I want to do after college. Being a clinical psychologist is really appealing, as is pretty much any type of counseling work. But then I've also always been interested in being a teacher, and if I were to teach, I would most want to teach math (probably Calculus). And then I've also kind of considered occasionally doing something like being an accountant or an engineer or something like that. So I don't know. This helps keep my options open for a little longer. Although I am going to have to decide someday, and I'm clearly no closer to making that decision. Why do I have to grow up? :(
The MN senate race is still ridiculous. Thursday I mentioned the gap had narrowed from 700 something to 342. Where is it at now? 221. How is it even possible that a race with this many votes is this close? I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, but it's SO CLOSE, and I think the recount is supposed to favor Franken (if only for two reasons: one, the machines used in the Twin Cities and possibly Duluth are the same ones as these ones in Michigan that were found to be making errors reading the ballots, and these areas favored Franken, and two, when doing a recount, they can count ballots where the person did a checkmark for the person or circled the oval or something else that the machine wouldn't pick up as intention to vote for the person, but an election official can decide counts to whoever, and theoretically people more likely to make these mistakes are immigrants and first-time voters, which should also favor the Democrats). And there was a governor race in... Oregon? Maybe? Or Washington? I think Oregon. And it was super close like this and the Dem was behind before the recount and after they were up by a very tiny amount of votes. So who knows. Here's to hoping!
Also, I'm thinking I'm going to buy one of Franken's books due to how obsessed I've become with this race. Also I'm pretty sure Emma loves Al Franken and told me like last year that I should totally read one of his books. So, anyone have an idea which one I should get? I believe he has like three out.
