Confession: persevering is a lovely rhyme with engineering, but I haven't done a terrible amount of either of them thus far. This semester hasn’t been as relaxed as last semester or the summer, but
it’s definitely less onerous than last fall. I get enough sleep, I have time
for independent study, and I’m still managing to take 20 hours of class.
This
weekend was a good example of that lack of stress. I started out by writing an
essay for one of my classes – essays are fairly enjoyable when I have something
I want to say, which I did. After that, I had nothing pressing, so I just went
out and walked through Cambridge for about 45 minutes. It’s cooled down to
mid-October Texas temperatures, and the weather was nice.
It was
strange to see Cambridge covered in greenery and gardens; I usually picture it
all in gray and white. After my walk I went back to work and did my readings
and Naval Science p-set. It was a very relaxed, but still productive weekend.
Hopefully the trend will continue.
Last
Wednesday I started ROTC, which is going fairly well. I’ve signed my contract
now, so it’s official – and I get paid, at least a little bit. I get along with
the new lieutenant, who’ll be my ROTC advisor for the next two years, which is
nice. Most of the lieutenants rotate back out after two years in the unit, so
the staff turnover is pretty high, and it’s always kind of a lottery to see who
you’ll get.
I’m
especially glad I get along with the lieutenant because he’s also our Naval
Engineering instructor, and that is going to require a lot of explaining. We
had our first real class on Monday. Of the three readings, I understood one
without any trouble, and two were nearly incomprehensible. I felt better,
though, when I discovered that the MIT engineering majors found the reading
equally opaque. Part of the difficulty is that the navy, being that of the
United States, doesn’t use the metric system, so that when you’ve finished your
normal physics class in joules and kelvin, you suddenly have to start thinking
in British thermal units and Rankine.
ROTC
overall is getting more enjoyable as the years pass; I understand the system
better, and I’m in charge of more. At the moment I’m the Mustering PO for my platoon,
which means I’m the link between the squad leaders (in charge of 3-5 people in
our unit) and the platoon commander (in charge of 3 squads in our unit). Also,
life is much better now that I have officially driven in Boston. My first trial
went smoothly; the next one is tomorrow morning.
Classes
are beginning to pick up – at the moment, topics range from the physiological significance
of the soul to an Italian opera to Nietzsche to Socrates to thermodynamic (one
of them doesn’t really fit, I know). It’s always nice studying things one
likes; one tends to find more energy to do them, although with the sun setting
fairly early, it’s hard to convince myself that there are still several hours
of work to be done when it’s 6:00 and dark outside.
What am
I doing with my free time? Last weekend was spent immersed in German, as a
result of which I was excellent in my German class and not so great in my
Arabic. Today it was the other way around; it’s a pendulum. My time and energy
has shifted over temporarily from German to apologetics and philosophy – I needed
to get a few issues cleared up – but I’m looking to get back into German soon,
with maybe a foray or two into creative writing. It’s nice being able to choose
what to do with my free time instead of trying to figure out how to get all the
requirements done.
Wednesday
is my busy day, so I’ll have to leave you now. Until next week!
One of my classes - sometimes I have to just stop and remind myself that I study at Harvard.
No comments:
Post a Comment