Coming up on summer midterm

Next Monday is the midterm for the online organic chemistry class. All material covered on the exam has now been done in class. Tomorrow I will complete the homework for the most recently covered chapters, then I can go back and review older material and do the practice exams. I think the intensity will increase further after the midterm, since a lot of the material done at the beginning was at least partially review from general chemistry. We've only done four reactions (SN1, SN2, E1, E2) and I suspect there are a lot more to learn.

Back home

Today we did the remainder of the drive back home, starting from Council Bluffs. After getting back, I caught up on some things and did some studying for the online chemistry discussion, which took the usual two and a half hours. I still have a lot of work to do for chemistry: three chapters in two days.

Omaha

Originally I was going to use this evening to attend a live online discussion for chemistry class, but it got canceled due to technical difficulties on the instructor's end. So instead my father and I looked for interesting things to do around the Omaha area. We settled on the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge. After walking it, we found quite a bit of nice park area.

South Dakota

Continuing our visit of the Mountain timezone, my father and I headed to Mt. Rushmore this morning. On the way, we stopped at the very nearby Crazy Horse mountain carving. The carving itself is still in progress; the visitor center had a lot of interesting history on the carving and the Native Americans it honors.

After exploring that, we got to Mt. Rushmore.

Beginning our trip back home, we went through the Badlands.

Colorado

After doing some business in Colorado, my father and I had time to look around. We first did the Ruse Escape Room, which was a new style of experience for both of us. With the live hints provided, we solved the mystery. The puzzles were fun and the story was interesting - a very good time.

On our way to the next destination, we stopped in the Red Mountain Open Space to do some walking. Even the head of the trails is fairly deep into the mountain range, accessible only via a very long, winding gravel/dirt road. The hiking trail was an amazing tour of geological variation.

Chemistry class is moving along

The online summer organic chemistry class started last week and is very much up to speed now. The online textbook has questions interspersed throughout the text and homework questions for each chapter. Since we're still covering introductory/review material, the class has so far assigned two chapters per discussion, and discussions happen twice a week. I've found that reading/answering one chapter or doing one discussion's homework per day is a good pace.

Studied for fall CS

Over the past few weeks, I've been reading the textbook and doing the past exams for CS 173, Discrete Structures, which I'll be taking in the fall. It's much more of a math class than a programming class, and it has a huge emphasis on proofs, something I haven't done a lot in the past. So I wanted to make sure I could get a handle on the material. Today I read the last few chapters and attempted the last examlet; it went decently. I'm now acquainted with all the topics, so the class itself shouldn't be terribly challenging.

Starting organic chemistry

The summer online organic chemistry class starts next Monday. The relevant web sites have already opened up, so I started looking at the assignments. The first thing I noticed is that the first chapter is extremely long - I've been reading it for literally hours and am only about two-thirds through. It's mostly a review of general chemistry, so maybe later chapters will be more manageable. Fortunately I have a clear schedule this summer and will be able to devote lots of time to the material.