Northfield's town motto is "cows, colleges, and contentment."  My own experience may be better described by these three "C"s. 

Hello again everyone,

How's it going?  I'm doing okay here.  I've been pretty much nonstop busy here recently.  I think today I'll tell you about my classes.  Classes follow a rather odd block schedule.  An average class is 70 minutes long.

Adventure 4: Observational Drawing (MW 8:30-11:00AM)

Observational drawing is my first class of the week, starting bright and early Monday morning at 8:30.  It is a double block, two and a half hours instead of 70 minutes.  Upperclassmen tend to call it "Obs Draw", but I've been calling it "Observational Drawing" or "drawing," despite the cumbersome length, because I'm worried about sounding like I think I'm too cool for school.

Observational Drawing is a great class so far.  I'd recommend it to anyone who has the slightest interest in visual art of any kind.  Some people don't want to take it because they say they don't know how to draw, but, as Fred (the prof) says, you wouldn't avoid taking French 101 because you don't speak French, right?  I know that won't convince everyone, but let me know if it convinces you.

So Obs Draw (yeah, I'm giving in, it takes too long to type) is the prerequisite for pretty much all the other art classes, or so I hear.  So I'm really glad that I got to take it as my freshman seminar.  You get to sign up for one all-freshmen class before you sign up for all your other classes.  This is called your Freshman Seminar.  Asking, "What's your freshman seminar?" is a good conversation starter when meeting other freshmen, unless they are in your freshmen seminar--then it becomes an awkward conversation starter.

We started out only drawing with pencil lines, focusing on shape and form.  More recently we've been doing tone studies, shading with pens and then pencils.

Adventure 5: Calculus II (MW 12:30-1:40, F 1:10-2:10)

This class... THIS CLASS.  Well.  I'm not sure what to say about this class, since I'm blogging for admissions and I'm supposed to make you want to come here.  Just kidding, it's not that bad.  There is a lot of work though.  And, chances are, even if you were at the top of your high school math class, you'll still be struggling.  And a lot also depends on the prof you get.  Calc II was one of my sister's favorite classes and she's not a big math person or anything.  The deciding factor in my appraisal of Carleton math is the Math Skills Center at the CMC.  Basically, I do all my Calc homework at the CMC and it totally redefines my concept of math homework.  Check out these flowcharts I made explaining the difference (If you don't understand flowcharts, read this explanation.  I'm not condoning underage drinking, but this is funny anyway).

Doing math homework:

• At home
• At the Math Skills Center

The bottom line: Math would suck if it weren't for the Math Skills Center.  But since it is there, the inherent frustration of doing math by yourself is gone.  It's a lot of work, but you generally know you can do it eventually.

Adventure 6: Ancient Athletics (MW 1:50-3:00, F 2:20-3:20)

So remember how I told you about freshman seminars?  Well this is a freshman seminar too.  Most people only have one, but this was still open when we all signed up for the rest of our classes and so I ended up choosing it.  I don't have a whole lot to say about Ancient Athletics.  Basically, it's a pretty interesting, mid-to-low-stress class.  There are regular papers, but they haven't been too bad yet.  I did have an adventure with the first paper.

Adventure 7: Don't save in a lab computer's "My Documents"

Well, that title pretty much told the story for me.  I was working on my paper two nights before it was due and I finished about half of it.  Unfortunately, I had saved it on the "my documents" of a lab computer instead of my network drive and it got erased overnight.  I knew that was going to happen and I told myself I was going to email it to myself but then I just forgot.  I stayed up late the next night.

Alright.  That's all for now folks.  Talk to you soon.

Peace,
Jon

P.S. Added DVD bonus content: I've included an image of Mai Fete Island, which I pass every day going pretty much anywhere from Goodhue.  I drew it a while ago with a ballpoint pen and colored in Photoshop.