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Special Edition ยท Blog Entry
Today, this blog entry will be a special one. Because for today, no mathematics will be included here! I could have self-studied a little bit, but I did not. Maybe I was lazy, but then again, today's the first day of classes. So I'll cut myself some slack.
Of course, I began with breakfast. Waffles. After that, I went over to Jadwin Hall for PHY 105, which is the honors freshman course on classical mechanics. I actually arrived so early that I thought I was late, for the teacher was teaching the previous section. I entered with someone new, whom I quickly learned the name of: Yury. He seems pretty nice and pretty chill. We waited for class to finish, and then we moved up to the front row for our real class to begin. To be honest, the stuff was kind of elementary, but hey, it's the first day. We talked about an overview of the course, and then we began to concern ourselves with kinematics, in both Cartesian and polar coordinates. The lecture was actually slower than I imagined. I imagined PHY 105 to be this super-fast, high-octane course from beginning to end, but it seems as if it will gradually ramp up in difficulty.
After that, I met with my RCA, Sarah. She is a really nice RCA, and I am happy that I am her zee (is that what it is called?). We walked around and entered the Center for Jewish Life. I was welcome, although I am not Jewish. It was basically just a check-in to see how Princeton was going. After that, I ate chicken shawarma at the Center for Jewish Life, and then moved to McCosh Hall to have my first Latin class.
I was put in LAT 101, which is Beginner's Latin, which I was initially peeved by, but this might just turn out to be a blessing in disguise. For while the content of my other courses are very time-consuming and difficult (at least, for a freshman), LAT 101 is quite trivial, so to speak. In fact, this class is so elementary, I don't even know where I was going with that statement but we were learning sum es est sumus estis sunt (which are all the present tense verbs of the word "to be"; this should be ingrained in the minds of any Latin student). We also learned about present verb endings. After class, I asked a question about the etymology of sum, esse, and she gave a thoughtful response.
I had little time to dawdle, however, for Topology was up next. I met my friend Syed in the halls of McCosh right as I was walking out. Then, I entered the classroom, room 314 (fittingly) of Fine Hall. There, renowned topologist Professor Gabai taught us the rudiments of set theory, including order, Cartesian products, and the axiom of choice. We also considered the minimal uncountable well ordered set, which was pretty wild. Anyways, this was the longest class of today, clocking in at an astonishing 80 minutes. But I wasn't fazed; I was pretty locked in during this class. After class, I introduced myself to Professor Gabai and asked him a logistical question about my edition of Munkres's textbook.
After class, I went to office hours for PHY 105. There, I completed the rest of my physics problem set. Problem 5 was trivial, especially after the lecture. Problem 6 was actually tricky, and I required key insights that I missed that were given to me in the form of a hint from friends. I am a little scared that I will be unable to complete the tests if I cannot even complete Problem 6, but Problem 6 is supposedly a challenge problem, and is not graded anyways, so maybe I shouldn't think too much about it.
After dinner, which was pizza, I hung out at Fine Hall in the common room, with some friends, Lex, Thomas, and James. I mainly just goofed off there, and did no actual study. But I did work out some topology problems informally in front of everyone else. Most of them weren't so difficult, and I was able to complete them in one go, but one of them I need to think about. Whatever, that is tomorrow's problem.
Tomorrow is less busy. Today I had 3 classes. Tomorrow I have 2. And tomorrow seems to be a humanities filled day: Beginner's Latin and my writing seminar. Exciting! I guess. Anyways, thanks for reading.