Professor Ranno, You Suck-Day 79-March 29th, 2018

This morning was a successful one, I actually remembered what I time I had French on Thursdays unlike last week. I woke up around 9 this morning and watched an episode of Silicon Valley before eating breakfast. The episodes are only thirty minutes long and a new season just started. Afterwards I headed downstairs for my daily ritual of cornflakes, coffee and a pastry.

After breakfast, I spent some time making my lunch for the day. I made a typical banana and nutella sandwich and threw in some snacks. Not my healthiest meal, but I will taste good at least.

Feeling like a suburban mom with my white bread sandwich and tupperware

Soon after making my lunch, I headed to class. French today was useful as always and I left class with a greater knowledge of the French language. Today we did more practice with the new tenses and Harry and I presented a small assignment we had worked on. In the small break after French, I ate my lunch.

My next and last class for the week was my circuits lab. It couldn’t be worse than last week’s, or so I thought. It was.

It was way worse.

It literally took Vesko and I six hours to finish. For reference, our labs are only supposed to be three hours long. By the end, I was infuriated with our professor. All the other sections finished at least two hours before we did. We spent almost two hours on the first question of the lab because our professor would not help us. Doing it the correct way would have taken fifteen minutes, but we had to measure and graph certain variables without knowing what they even meant and just making assumptions.

A good lab instructor, like my one for DC circuits, would have helped our class in these confusing moments. Instead the professor would only draw something on the whiteboard that only confused us more. I only figured out what to do by discussing with other groups.

I tried really hard to look at this from the positive side, but it was difficult. I assume the professor figured we would learn the material better if we figured it out on our own. At the same time, I pay $30,000 to be here for the semester and would hope he would at least give us hint when we have been working one question for two hours.

I never want to see an oscilloscope again in my life

We ended up having to skip a whole section of the lab because if I stayed any longer I would have missed dinner. I spoke to the professor at the end of this long lab, and I made it clear how frustrated I was. I told him that it was an incredible waste of my time and productivity to spend six hours on a three hour lab, especially when all the other sections finished two hours earlier. I wanted to learn the material, but in a much more efficient way. I had an attitude and have no regrets.

In situations like this where I am really pissed off, it’s useful to go to the gym to workout. Unfortunately for me, it was dinner time when I got home since the lab lasted so long. The gym was not an option. Instead, I will just be petty and name this blog entry appropriately.

In the twenty-five minutes until dinner, I laid down and didn’t do anything. I had enough of this day.

Dinner tonight was a bit different for two reasons. First, due to daylight savings time it was still light out while we ate dinner. This felt particularly odd. I would have pointed this out in French to Anne-Marie, but I didn’t know enough words. Secondly, Jessica wasn’t eating dinner with us for some reason. I think she left for the weekend. I may have had a dinner alone like this before, but I honestly can’t remember.

This dinner really showed how far my French has come, especially since Jessica was not here to help translate. As tempting as it was to sit there silently, I made some efforts to make conversation in French. It was rough at some points, but I was proud of myself.  I asked them about their days and told about my long lab. I also asked Andre for some French film recommendations since I wanted to watch some movies on the bus ride to Venice.

I must have been feeling particularly social after dinner, because I facetimed my friends Karan and Venus each for a little bit. I packed for my trip and spent some time mass-producing nutella and banana sandwiches. I made five of them to have for the bus ride and to share with my friends if needed. I did this while watching an episode of the Sopranos.

I spent some time writing this blog, and it was midnight before I knew it. I have a early bus tomorrow at 5:45, but I am not to worried about going to bed early tonight. I will have plenty of time to sleep on the bus tomorrow.