We have started our second course: Field Ecohydrology: CEE 307. If you’re unfamiliar with Princeton’s course number
notation, CEE stands for CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING. That’s right, ENGINEERING. A class of all Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology students taking an ENGINEERING COURSE. It’s like the three stooges, except there’s twelve of
us. The first assignment was
assigned to get us familiar and oriented with MATLAB! That’s right, everyone’s favorite torture device: MATLAB. I’m convinced it works better than Chinese water
torture. That *blip* thing it does
when I try to run buggy code, haunts my dreams to this day. When I mess up something in real life,
I hear the *blip*. Anyway, luckily
(luckily? Am I actually lucky that
I took Integrated Science, or am I just insane?) I took INTEGRATED SCIENCE
where they made us do MATLAB without
teaching us how to do MATLAB.
That’s like the old Monkey and a Typewriter example. Eventually the monkey will type out Moby Dick given enough time (and
paper). Well, I must be one
advanced primate, because I am one of the top MATLAB programmers in this
rag-tag bunch of ecologists. And
it only took two years of INTEGRATED SCIENCE to do it! The funny thing is, after two days of
MATLAB tutorial in this class, I actually understand
a lot of the functions I’d been dickin’ around with during INTEGRATED
SCIENCE. Did you know that if you
teach people how to do things, they understand them much better than if you
just ask them to complete an assignment without teaching them how to do the
assignment? I mean, revolutionary
idea right? Maybe someone should
let the people over at the INTEGRATED SCIENCE DEPARTMENT know about this new,
exotic theory. (Seriously, three
intensive days of a MATLAB tutorial and we would’ve been SET FOR LIFE.)
Anyway, besides this MATLAB business, the course is pretty
so-so. We’re talking a lot about
rainfall and stream flow and water vapor.
I mean, it’s interesting stuff, but I’m just not as interested in it as
I was the previous course on animal ecology. The only redeeming quality about this course is THERE IS NO
FINAL EXAM! I’m so excited. The Panamanians like don’t have tests
or quizzes or assignments ever, but finally we can bask in some of the glory
that is NOT HAVING A FINAL EXAM.
But it’s made me realize, if it were for examinations, I would pay WAY
LESS ATTENTION during lectures.
Like this morning, I started to zone out during our lecture. At first, I was like “OH SHOOT! I GOTTA PAY ATTENTION!” But then I realized I’d never be
directly tested on this material.
If I needed the information to accomplish an assignment, I could always
just ask something that was. So I
spaced out. And when I was ready to
stop day dreaming and get back into the lecture, I did. Was I being a bad student? Perhaps. But I wasn’t disturbing anyone else, and the professor will
never know (unless he reads this blog.
But let’s be real… no one reads this blog.). So that it. We’ll
see how this class goes, but so far I have little interest and I imagine it
will just continue to exponentially decay until our final project is due. I’ll keep you posted.
P.S. Love how
my Oscar predictions were mostly ALL TRUE. I should be in the movie industry. Why am I not pursuing this dream?
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