YSP Day 1: A (P)Review

I thought that students who went to the University of Chicago did not go to kill fun. Fun did not die, because learning was fun. People would sacrifice fun to learn, but they never would have to do so. UChicago was beautiful, but only in its bubble. UChicago was a private liberal arts school. UChicago was basically the best, with foreign exchange students flocking everywhere, brilliant minds floating in the city's veins of wisdom and history and culture.

Then I went to the school. Actually, my dad drove me there as I slept with a fat Designer's Convention book caught between my legs. If I knew anything about architecture, I would say that the buildings were beautiful and majestic, draped in climbing ivy with thick irony, because UC is technically not an Ivy League. But I know jack about architecture, so all I can say is that UC is nice. On the outside, it looks a heck of a lot better than UIUC. The great majority of students don't look like smokers. Intellect oozes between the heavy set doors of inquiry based learning. The school colors aren't orange and red. It disappointed me that Eckhart Hall was equally as depressing as Noyes Lab, brown doors and tiny desks alike. I was sad that Huffington Hall was analagous, if not worse, than the Illini Union.

The diagnostic test was okay, since I remembered to use L'Hopitals on part d of a question concerning series. I met a lot of dorky people who love math a lot more than I do, and I met a lot of people who wouldn't stand a chance of making it to UC for real. The boys needed to wear deodorant, and I needed to get away. One professor wore an eyepatch and was wheeled in a chair because he had two prosthetic legs. He demanded respect in a whisper, although after he rolled away, I wished we'd have a real Professor Moody. Mr. Eby was great, and if Mr. Pearson didn't teach English, he would be amazing too. Our other professor was equally sharp and complicated. He knew everything about over and under 3-foils, but he spoke too slowly about Russian history and didn't bother to teach anything that was more than trivial. Then again, how can I determine what is or isn't trivial? It's just that I don't see how the renaming of Leningrad makes anyone a better person.

One thing worth noting though. Robert Lee Moore established three rules of IBL (inquiry based learning). The second step, called Step 1 (preceded by Step 0) is to send students out with scripts into the desert to work. Since we don't have deserts (the theory was developed in Austin, TX) in Chicago, we're going to have lectures in the barn, which is actually the 3rd floor of another math hall or something. The professor said this as if it were funny. The only humorous encounter I've had was gaining a profit from buying a $3.85 sandwich with my $5 coupon.