August 26, 2004
Back to School
I'm back in school again, roughly 22 years after clutching my precious leather-bound diploma at Stanford University in June 1982. I have enrolled in a Master's program at the local university. With a full-time job, a full-time wife, and three little children I thought it would be best to take only one course at a time. So I'm on the five-year plan for a Master's Degree.
Some things have NOT changed about college since Kevin and Sean and I were on The Farm with John Elway. College students look and behave exactly the same. They still carry backpacks, ride bicycles (except Kevin), stand in line during registration, wear scruffy clothes, and sit in the sun while trying to do their homework. They still sit in lectures and take notes.
What HAS changed is the delivery of material, thanks to PowerPoint and the Internet. I remember sitting in the Physics Tank (Bloch Hall, demolished in 1997) taking notes, madly trying to keep up with the professor writing on the board, and hoping I had copied all the essential formulas before he went on to a new greenboard. I even had one of those nifty four-color pre-med pens! Now my instructor posts the lecture notes on the class web site the day before class, so we can print them out and make any additional notes in the margins while he lectures. This is a big improvement since I don't have to watch helplessly as my hasty handwriting gets more and more illegible trying to keep up. I know that I've gotten all the important material, that I have all the correct parameters to the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. The downside is that it puts us students into more of a passive mode during class, and it's all too easy to zone out especially if Graham has kept me up the night before.
I am taking Dynamic Meteorology, one of the core courses leading to a Master's Degree in Atmospheric Science. At the first class our professor showed us a spectacular animation of the earth's general circulation over several months. One could clearly see great gobs of moisture tearing off the North Pacific and slamming into the Alaskan panhandle and British Columbia. Yee-hah!
Maybe someday I'll post a little primer on global warming. ;-)
I got around faster on foot than by bike -- why spend the money, worry about it being stolen, get in horrific bike accidents -- and I also got to admire all the fine sculpture on campus.
I prefer the old fashioned method of taking notes in class. I had an 8 AM class -- the only 8 AM physics class -- where the professor provided the lecture notes in the library. Somehow I, along with the bulk of my classmates, missed most of the lectures. But not to worry - we could peruse the notes at our leisure.
We've been having some pretty dynamic meterology around here lately - last night while walking the dog during a break in the storms, even he had to stop and watch the lightning in the distance. It was a spectacular display.
Posted by: Kevin Murphy at August 26, 2004 11:52 AM
