Second day of classes

Today was my second day of classes at UIUC. The first class this morning was of the introductory integrative biology class. Just like with the first meetings of classes yesterday, the instructor explained some course policies and the online system. Interestingly, we were given (non-graded) biology/comprehension quizzes to fill out, as some sort of educational research program.

The next class was the first meeting of Religion and Society in the West, with the expected introductions. In this course, there is a passage and an essay question for each lecture. Each essay submission receives either an 0 or a 100. Only eight 100's are necessary for full credit. Tonight I read the first passage (Hesiod's Theogony) and noted the relevant portions that I plan to focus on in my essay.

After a couple hours' break, it was time for two discussion sections. First was that of calculus, in which we worked on a review worksheet in groups. Then was the chemistry one, which didn't have much material because the majority of the previous lecture was spent on course meta. The TA reviewed significant figures and let us go early.

Tomorrow I again have four classes, but the first is at 11.

First day of class

Today was my first day of classes at UIUC. The first one was at 11 AM, but I had to get up at the normal time anyway because I had to go to the bookstore to buy some three-ring binders for the textbooks that apparently come in loose-leaf (stack of unbound pages) format. There were no sufficiently large binders, so I split each of my two physical textbooks into two volumes.

I had some extra time after the bookstore, so I went ahead and watched the chemistry lab safety video and completed the quiz.

With my newly bound book, I went to the main quad for the general chemistry lecture. Much of the time was taken by an introduction to the online course administration system, which I had already looked around. The professor then proceeded to review very basic concepts, presumably to jog our memory from previous chemistry classes. A worksheet related to the discussion section (which meets tomorrow) was already made available in the online system, so I later completed it just in case.

Right after chemistry was calculus. The course intro was nice and brief; the professor directed us to the course site for all information. He then proceeded to present the basic concepts we need to do calculus. Mostly, he reviewed vector operations. Judging by the titles of the upcoming chapters, this class should ramp up fairly soon.

Later in the day, I rode the bus over to my last class of the day, the chemistry lab, where it turned out I didn't need to have already handled the safety quizzes. The TA went over the lab policies and the safety features in the room. Next week, we'll have an actual lab to perform.

The first day was quite easy to manage. Tomorrow contains four classes instead of just three, and starts earlier.

Quad Day

A few weeks back, I scheduled my mandatory ACE IT training for this morning. After attending that today, I went to Quad Day, the UIUC event at which registered student organizations set up booths to inform and attract new members. There were a lot of people there - I suspect almost all of freshmen were on or around the quad at some point during the four-hour event. My primary goal of finding the Navigators was accomplished only after a lot of wandering through crowds of people.

On the way, I found a handful of interesting groups, though my understanding of all of them is not completely clear yet, so I'll just attend a couple meetings to see what they're about to narrow down my extracurricular activities. I'm thinking about Research Park (which seems to be a good source of connections for internships?), the go club, the Security Studies Group, a society for biology, a data science group, the Federalist Society (which seems to be a forum for law experts to debate legal issues), and of course the Navigators.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes, so I also spent some time planning my physical route from one building to the next.

Finding the way around

Today - the third day of my life at UIUC - started with the orientation meeting to the honors program. After that and the provided lunch, I stopped at the bookstore to buy some batteries for my i>Clicker because it came with none. I used the bus service (which I familiarized myself with yesterday) to get back to the residence hall, but couldn't find a bus to get to the next event in time, so I walked down to the south quad.

Classes start Monday, and it would be a good idea to know how to get to them, so in the afternoon my roommate and I navigated around to all the buildings that we need to be at throughout the week, finding some of the specific classrooms - I will finish finding all of mine tomorrow. The only vaguely difficult transit for me is from the main quad to the engineering hall: a five-minute walk in a ten-minute break. To keep track of where I need to be, I inputted my classes and their locations into a Google Calendar.

Moved in

This morning, I and family boarded the already loaded vehicle and drove down to UIUC. We stopped at a curb and unloaded all the stuff, where I noticed that I had brought an above-average volume of belongings. I checked in and acquired my room keys. Some very helpful student guides assisted us in loading everything onto a draggable carrier for transport to the room. With all three of us working, it didn't take terribly long to unpack. After some slight furniture rearranging my workstation is set up, though it took some finagling - and the assistance of a University-provided Hub Bag - to get the Ethernet connection working.

So far I've attended the mandatory floor meeting, listened to a very entertaining fire safety presentation, and looked around the recreation center. Tomorrow, there is a new student convocation, followed later in the day by a welcome event from the college (LAS).

Moving out

I spent today gathering my items and making final preparations to move into my dorm room at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign tomorrow. I ended up with a fairly large pile of boxes, but I'm hoping the devices that came in boxes of their own (printer and coffee maker) will be smaller than their packaging. There is far more stuff that I'm not bringing, though I will end up with a bit more luggage than comes with me tomorrow because I ordered some necessary textbooks from the bookstore to be picked up in a few days.

After I finish typing this post and waiting for a file transfer to complete, I will power off this computer and prepare to pack it and its peripherals.