I’ve had every class at least once now, so here were my first impressions:

applicable algebra

My professor is the same one I had for Calculus IV, and he’s just as wacky as ever (the nutty Swede). I figure it will be another tricky class, like calculus was, but just as enjoyable because he’s a very funny and informative professor.

web programming

It was pretty boring today, but fortunately the guy realizes he’s boring and so is limiting the number of lectures. The design of the class is interesting in that it’s all team-based: 30% of our grade will come from our team’s work. It’s also great that there isn’t a midterm or a final.

leadership

This seems like an awesome course. It’s the one for which only 16 students out of the College of Engineering were picked, and I got recommended by the Director of Undergraduate Studies for my major, so I feel really special for having gotten in. We’ll be traveling to Washington, D.C. in a couple of months, and everything is paid for, including round-trip airfare, hotel costs, and food. We’ll have the first day we’re there to just wander around and see the sights, and we’ll be taken to some place like the Kennedy Center or Ford’s Theater for a performance. The point of the trip will be to meet with members of Kentucky’s Congressional Delegation and other leaders. Beyond the trip, the class will involve various guest speakers; after each speech, about three students will be chosen from the class to go out to dinner with the speaker. On the course schedule, one of our classes is called “Etiquette Training,” which will involve a formal dinner. I bet I end up buying a suit for this class, because all I have currently are just nice dress pants and shirts.

linear algebra

In talking with a professor from last semester yesterday about this class, she told me that there were two versions: an honors one and a regular one. While Kathy last semester was in the honors version and had trouble with it, I think I’m in the regular one, and it’s so far a joke. We were introduced to lines and planes today, and I about died of boredom. Kathy said her first day, they were doing matrix addition and subtraction; the substitute today said something like, “There’s an object you’ll use later on called a ‘matrix’, but I don’t want to get into those today.” Good gravy. I’m thinking this one will be a GPA booster. There was no way to know when registering for classes what version of the course each section would be, and Kathy said there’s no differentiation on her transcript that she was in the honors version, so I’m hoping that I’m not missing out on anything by having gotten into a regular version.

networking

The lecture was actually pretty interesting, and I get the feeling this will be one of those difficult but useful classes. I don’t know that I’ll enjoy it; it’ll take a couple more lectures to see if they’ll all be able to hold my attention.

honors

I’m excited about some of the books we’ll be reading in this class: one is a biography of Alfred Hitchcock, another is a science fiction novel by Arthur Clarke, and the others don’t strike me yet, but we’ll see. I bought Franz Kafka’s “The Castle” yesterday for it, since that’s the first novel we’ll be reading, and after reading a few lines of it idly in the bookstore, it didn’t sound horrible. This is another seminar-type class where about 15 students sit around a big table and discuss what we’re reading, which I’ve enjoyed in past honors courses.