As you can tell, I AM an engineering student...

Late nights, no time, hard work... ahh the fun of being back in the swing of things! Sorry I haven't posted in a long while, the combination of the start of the new semester and getting classes for next semester (I know, pretty soon) all straight has really kept me busy. So to recap:

The first week of the my new semester went extraordinarily well. I got into the groove of things quickly, and all of my classes seem particularly reasonable. Meaning, I have been more than adequately prepared. My friend from Illinois College, Ben, who is doing the same dual degree program as I am doing, and I were talking, and we feel that we are in the best situation possible. It is amazing how comfortable we feel in all of our classes, and we are quickly becoming the guys who other students go to for questions (that's a great feeling, by the way).

SIUE does their scheduling a bit different than other schools. They start to schedule for next semester classes the 2nd week of school year... odd. So, there has been a huge mix up when it comes to the classes I have taken, have to take, and all of that such. It comes down to the fact that I will still be able to finish on time, I will just have to "overload" myself one semester with 18 credit hours instead of the usual 15. This doesn't seem like a huge deal to me, because I did that quite frequently at IC, but apparently to students in this area, 15 is their magic number. In the coming days, once I get the schedule worked out, I plan on listing the classes that a student interested in SIUE should take at Illinois College. I think this would have helped me greatly. Their requirements are much different than what Wash U requires and different from U of I. The basic advice is to try to figure out what school you are going to want to get in, and have a back up. That way, you can work for the one school's requirements, while still completing as much as you can of the other school's.

Now as for as my semester going... I had my first quiz on Wednesday, marking my first real grade of the semester. It went very well, and I'm pretty excited about it. I also have my first test next Tuesday, which has me nervous already. I have had a constant (not overbearing) load of homework. There is always some to do, but it doesn't feel like too much. The classes here are taught slightly different than at IC, and some of that can be contributed to the fact that we have 40-85 students in a couple classes. The professors here are more "problem solving" oriented in their lectures, and the theory is left up to the student to learn through readings and such.

This is sort of opposite of IC, which I thought I would love. As it turns out, that's not the case. It is MUCH easier (even if it doesn't seem like it at the time) to learn the basic theory and FUNDAMENTAL ideas behind a particular TYPE of problem, and be able to learn how to solve all the problems of that TYPE rather than only being able to solve a particular problem. Luckily after three years of training, I have realized the importance to doing this very thing, and I have been fine. Some of my other classmates have problems transferring one problem to another simply because they haven't understood the underlying fundamentals, and therefore cannot relate them. (Yes, Dr. Steckenrider and Dr. Chamberlain, you may gloat now)

Well after all of that, I think I'm caught up for the most part. I promise to keep updated at LEAST once a week, and that will make for shorter, more lively posts!

As always, comments, emails, colorful metaphors are welcome...



Joe