An overall what I have learned this semester

This semester has been one of my hardest yet with me taking 17 credit hours. Next semester however I am taking 18 so something I did not learn was what over working oneself is. I took, organic chemistry, introductory neuroscience, sociology, lit and civ, and worked in a lab. This all has been such a great semester filled with learning and striving for bigger things in my life. I feel as though the stress level I had is lower than what a doctor would have. I have been stressed almost from the day I unpacked my bags in August. However lives are not on the line. It is better for me to get accustomed to stress now, at age 20, than down the road at age 40 during a brain operation. Time management is something that I have also worked on, sacrificing sleep but getting the job done. I have had to wake up at 6:30 most days for my lab and that has been a blessing in disguise. At first I would come back and go back to sleep. However I learned that with all this extra time in the day I could get so much more done. I have volunteered over 10 hours at KinderFrogs, done 4 hours of observations, and not flunked any class (so far). I learned a large amount of info academically, however the most important take away from this was the study skills. My worst weekend where those where I was in the study from 7am to 1 am however I got so much done that I never could have dreamed of otherwise. I hope I can take these skills into next semester and continue to study in the pre-med program and keep competitive GPA scores for med school.

What I have learned

I have had a lot of assignments and classes in between my posts so the amount that I have learned is astronomical. For one, I learned that the way we control muscles is difficult to learn. Not like "O wow this is hard yikes" I mean like "I think I'm just gonna say its done by magic and hope for the best". Just mind numbing difficult. I never thought I would miss the days of learning about the eye. I would much rather diagram light. However the stress of not knowing is done and I feel so relived about that. In organic chemistry we learned about the re-activity of carbonyl compounds. Unless you are a organic chemistry professor we most likely know the same amount about carbonyl compounds. I know they do reactions and that tends to be the limit of my knowledge. In sociology we are learning about being more sustainable, which is a specialty of the instructors adding to the interest of the material. I know he teaches a class called sustainability so I know the depth of his knowledge in this area is great. However the biggest thing that hits home is his belief in the subject. He actually wants the world to become more sustainable. And that passion drives the subject and inspires me to be more sustainable myself. knowing what I want to do later in life it is interesting to me how I can actually be a change with this. I want to own my own medical center, and it makes me wonder, what if we could be fully sustainable? That would be amazing. Yes we may not have the soaring profits that make us rich beyond our wildest dreams, however good practice makes good health. All the food served could be organic while patients are staying. We can offer services to those who are down on there luck or insurance, and increase the overall quality of life in the US.

My last meeting with Jon

I met with Jon for the last time on Friday with Katelyn. We talked about him going to K-State for Aircraft engineering and what its going to be like starting all over again. He has had many different experiences starting over, from coming to the USA in the first place to when he was young moving from DR Congo to France, to India. From what he indicated most of his friends that are graduating from IEP will go back home to there own country's anyway. So although he is a little nervous to remake a large amount of friends when he just made a bunch here, if he stayed he would be one of the only ones. I found that interesting that a majority wanted to go back to there own countries. With English being such a worldwide language I can understand wanting to learn it, however it is interesting to me that after being in a different country for a couple years, you would want to move back. Now I don't mean to say "Our country is so great why would you want to leave?" I mean more along the lines of I'm interested how advantageous it is to speak English around the world. Going back to Korea, for example, are you really that much better off now that you know English? What worlds have opened up to you? I would assume that you would work in some kind of business or service industry where English would be be a connection between your country and another. It was weird seeing Jon for the last time. We had gotten close in the 3 months we where partners and most likely I wouldn't see him again. It was a learning experience however the biggest thing I took from that is when it comes down to it, people are people and we really are not that different. We all enjoy hanging out with friends on weekends, getting good grades, and making new groups of friends we can hang out with.

Jon and Katelyn

Me and Katelyn now share Jon as a partner. I was OK with this knowing I would still be his favorite regardless. We met on Friday at chick-fil-a and talked about what we had done for Halloween and what are plans where for the weekend. Jon, it seems, goes out every weekend and tends to be the life of the party. He is always getting phone calls from friends asking him what he is up to and when he is ready to hang out. The funniest part of this is most the times the phone calls are not in English. I find it funny that being here in america in order to live life to the fullest, he goes out so much. It makes me wonder if this was a preexisting state of mind or if he has always been so energetic and full of excitement. Me and Katelyn were both impressed by his outlook on life and his popularity, leading me to call him the Mayor of IEP. What was funny about this meeting was it was also the longest me and Katelyn had had a conversation. I had met with Jon 4 times before yet I had never met her before. Me and her both got to chick-fil-a about 15 minutes before Jon so we talked as well. I think its funny that in these meetings we are learning from people of other cultures far away however you can learn just as much from cultures not far from you. I am from Colorado and she is from Houston. Although our cultures share the same language, general look, and government, it can be surprising just how different they are. I talked to her about her hometown and i reciprocated with info about mine. This was the start of the cold wave and she felt it more than i did. I find it funny that just being from different parts of the US you can feel entirely different climates, from freezing and going to school in -12 degree weather, to have many days well over 100.

Something Else Funny

I laughed uncontrollably the first time I watched the show Bobs Burgers. This show is a hidden gem and the fact that no one else loves it as much as I do is a huge disappointment because it is so good. Me and my family have watched every single episode together. Most shows tend to take a "This character talks no one else does". This show is different and follows a more realistic approach involving certain points where multiple characters talk at the same time. This mimics times that I have laughed with my family or, sometimes, at my family. They tend to all talk at the same time and not take turns when they speak. The way people in the show talk and interact is more realistic however the situations they are in are not, such as owning a burger restaurant and having your daughter tell people the burgers are made out of people to impress her friends. This is in the first episode and I laughed so hard I had to pause the episode to wipe tears out of my eyes. There is a part in the episode where they begin arguing over why the oldest daughter is awkward with the customers which gets me every time. I showed this part to a friend of mine who found it funny but another friend I showed it to just found it awkward and not funny. I was severely disappointed. But when it comes down to it my family loves it like I do. Anytime I am home we watch a couple episodes even having seen them all. The thing that makes this show so funny is very based in reality characters who act like people would act in real life, in situations unlike real life, whose circumstances could never be repeated except in episode.

What did I learn

The answer to the above question is, according to test scores, apparently nothing. However I don't believe that test scores necessarily show how much someone has learned and I can go into a large rant about this however if that was the case this would be titled "Why grades are BS". In organic chemistry we have recently taken on substitution and elimination reactions. These are basically when a molecule loses a molecule or ion of something and in the case of substitution reactions gains another ion or molecule back. If this isn't correct well than it proves something else I learned. O Chem is hard. The average on this test was less than 50%. If anything else in the world was less than 50% it would be considered outdated or incredibly inefficient. Could you imagine if airlines where on time only 50% of the time? Or movies where only good 50% of the time? Your car only starts 50% of the time. this would be criminal, yet it is a normality in O Chem. I'm shocked there's more than 50% of the kids in there. In neuroscience I learned how we see which is one step short from magic. scientists classify light as a particle AND a wave. That is scientists almost saying "ya we have no clue what it is". Instead of saying its a particle and a wave, maybe we should, I don't know, invent a new way of classifying it. Instead of it has particle and wave properties it has.... Light properties. I can feel the Nobel coming my way. In sociology I have learned a great deal of info mainly about how the entire world forms who you are. A person in Japan sneezes and now I don't get married. The amount of jumps they make to how much you are influenced by your world is astoundingly hilarious. However I love Professor Whitworth so that's all that matters. In lit and civ I am learning about humor and blog writing. I can't believe some people get rich having blogs. Mainly because I personally have not read a blog in ever. in my 20 years of being me the first blog I have read turns out to be my own. Irony? Maybe we will have a session all about that in the coming weeks.

Whats Jon been up to?

Jon came over to play more Xbox today because we are men and that's kind of our thing. Today's game was GTAV we obviously we played that until we where desensitized to violence and the F word. Today had a lot more conversation involved than last time mainly because we hadn't seen each other in a while. My bet that if the was a IEP program he would be prom king. He gets a call almost every twenty minutes and about 10% of these are not in English. So proud of him. He asked me what are some good places to eat. I told him about Risceys which is a steakhouse on the Fort Worth Stockyards which if you have a chance go there. I also had the fun task of explaining what calf fries are as well as what some of that vocabulary is. If you do not know calf fries are bull testicles. So this was a fun conversation for both parties involved.
I also believe that that accent gets more ladies than I can fathom. When he is not on the phone talking to his friends about hanging out, he is killing his battery by texting the greater Fort Worth area. I asked him what else is new. He responded by telling me he recently got into K-State university for there Aircraft engineering program. Jonathan has decided that being the coolest man at TCU is not big enough and will be expanding his talents to K-state. He is not going until next semester (or the one after I'm not 100% sure) but has already started looking for houses. I hope that even when he leaves I can stay in contact and i really do wish the best for this guy, who speaks 5 languages lived in 4 continents and will be an aircraft engineer.

A phone call with Jon

On the 28th of September I received a hilarious but learning experience phone call from Jonathan. It was a Saturday so I was busy studying because as previously stated that is all I do. When I looked at my phone I had two missed text messages from Jon that seemed very urgent. large amounts of exclamation marks, some pleases thrown in, you know the thing. I called him back immediately and asked what was up. He said "Ryan, What is the American custom of birthday parties?" Admittedly I was stunned. I had never thought of this as an american custom until i really thought of all the times I've not seen foreign people doing birthday parties. I asked him to clarify in order to better understand the situation. He explained that he had recently been invited to a birthday party and that he did not understand the whole present situation. I explained to him that it is nice to get someone a present when they invite you to there birthday party and get them a card. about an hour later I received a call. "Ryan what should I get her?" Now I am stumped. I have no clue. I am a male and I don't get invited to as many parties as i would like to brag about. I sat down where I was to think. I made a large amount of mmm's and ha's before i admitted that i just didn't know. I asked the girl working the front desk and luckily she saved my life on this one. Starbucks. Girls love Starbucks. Boom. I told him to get her a 25$ gift card to Starbucks and call it a day. the funniest thing I guess would have to be the thought that something as seemingly simple as birthday parties are literally foreign to different people. I wonder if I was to visit France, DR Congo, or India what normal everyday tradition for them would I have a hard time wrapping my head around?

Something funny

I can't remember times i have "guffawed" out loud. I know there must be times I have I am a happy person who likes to joke around. But when given an assignment it becomes impossible to recall these times. I would say one of the last times I laughed really hard was with my friends a couple weeks ago. For one I had just seen the video "The Fox" by Ylevis. One of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. I showed this to my roommate and the girl who happened to be in the study at the time. We laughed so hard we had tears streaming down our faces. When he starts screaming "PA PA PA PA PAPAPA" i still laugh until i cry. It is just funny. this primed me and made me already in a great mood when I started walking towards my friends room in the dorm next to mine. I still had remnants of tears in the corner of my eyes trying to dry as I walked over. Lucky for me they were in a good mood too. Immediately they ask me "You know what would be funny?" I of course asked what. They than showed me a demonstration where one had a cup of water and the other walks up and asks "what are you drinking?" as soon as one had answered he slapped in out of his hand and flipped him off while walking away. This alone made me laugh till i cried. To me the reason this made me laugh wasn't that we would be picking on a random bystander but more how just random and unknown it would be. We are not mean people so if we did this we would turn right back around after the initial confrontation and apologize. But just the thought of unprovoked slapping something out of someones hand made me laugh on the floor. It was too much for my sides to handle I felt as though i was doing an intense ab workout. This is the most recent time I have openly laughed that hard and felt my entire sides clinch up with laughter.

Conversation Partner 2

I met with Jonathan recently and he came over to my dorm to play Xbox. At first we played Call of Duty but we performed so bad online we played a game called Left 4 Dead, which is a zombie shooter game. Would you like to know what we talked about? Nothing. Not a damn thing. The only sounds coming out of our mouths was the occasional swear at a bad guy sneaking up on us or tactics for how to beat this level. One of the funniest comments was when I died and he started yelling at the screen. Even though we didn't have the great big long conversation as normal, partially due to our busy schedules and partially due to our activity, I believe more was learned this time. We are both guys. We both find interest in the same activities. We can just look at a screen for an hour or so, barely talk, and still say we had a great time. universally this is what guys do. We can bond over a video game without words being spoken. I read an article once that said when two or more people sing a song together it binds them closer and the endorphin's released signal creating closer memories to this person.  I can bet that the same is true for video games. We had a great time and the amount of words said to each other was less than 50. It doesn't matter whats said just the actions of hanging out subliminally make two people closer. And I find that funny to have learned something like this this way. Psychologists might run tests on this in the future to see it but I witnessed first hand the basic human nature of "hanging out."

What I have learned so far...

I have been in classes for about three months now. Actually it has only been three weeks, feels like three months. Can't remember the last time I have openly laughed without following it up with "Ok shut up i need to study". This coming weekend (12-15) I will be studying every night until about 12, Organic Chemistry and Neuroscience. Both of those classes are very interesting and slowly killing me inside. I discovered how to distill things. This was my dads favorite thing I've learned and after I told him was quickly asked if this means I can make beer. I said that was not important, but yes, yes I could. I have learned that there are only 24 hours in a day and sadly this is not even close to enough to how many I need. My weekly schedule includes working in a neuroscience research lab, Kinderfrogs, class, and studying at least three hours a night, usually more. I have learned how to name a great many organic molecules from alkanes to alkynes and a great number of molecules that I am assuming my teacher made up on the spot. I have also learned a great many things about the brain such as what makes it fire. The different chemical gradients are crazy and once known in different cells can teach you what makes them fire as well as what toxins and poisons make them inactive and fail. In sociology I have learned a large number of things such as how the science was founded and who the main contributors where to its fundamentals. This has been fascinating because I am a huge psychology fan and this is basically psychology however it changes the focus from the individual to a bigger picture society. In Lit and Civ i learned a large amount from my conversation partner such as the views of the world from a different perspective. He related to me that out of everywhere he has gone he will never go back to Afghanistan because of how horribly he was treated there. I hope to continue learning and not failing her over the next semester an be able to contribute to this blog even more.

Conversation Partner Part One

My Conversation partner is named Jonathan, he is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and he is hilarious. I got Zhenya's email last Thursday and emailed Jonathan immediately exchanging numbers. What I was greeted with was someone who was immediately my friend regardless of the fact he had never met me. I recently looked through the texts we exchanged and can honestly say none of his have less than 3 exclamation marks. This type of excitement is not even shown to me by my mother except in rare occasions where I disappoint less than average. We managed to find a time where we were both free in between his busy schedule and mine of studying constantly. We met at frog fountain on Sunday and headed over to union grounds to chat. The first initial impression of him was "what accent is this?" I cleared this question up and heard how he may be the most interesting man I have ever met. As I explained above he is from DR Congo as is his father, however his mother is from Paris. He was born in Paris as well however moved to the DR Congo and lived there while he was young. I asked him if his home country is corrupt like most African country and he responded that it was. He said that his mother moved to Monaco and he alternated back and forth there because he has a french and DRC passport. He has lived in France, DRC, India as well as the USA. He relied a story to me about how the two weeks before school he packed his things in DRC on August 4th, went to France and saw his mom and left for India the 14 and was there was less than 8 hours before he left for Texas. According to him with all the time changes he technically lost 12 hours of time. He is very lively and talks nonstop about his adventures. He also texts me frequently and his texts make me laugh frequently with the amount of emotion he puts into them. I'm excited to see where this goes and wonder how my 6th entry will look compared to this one.

What is Humor?