This past week has been really busy with school work. With an engineering curriculum, I am already very busy, but I have been even more so this past week. Last Thursday afternoon, I took my third Chemistry test. In most of my classes, I have very high grades and am doing quite well. The effort I am putting forth in my studies are paying off there. However, Chemistry is a different story. It isn’t that I am having problems understanding the material, because I am not. And my Chemistry homework scores are high and reflect my effort and that I understand the material. (I have even consulted different text books, outside my class materials, for extra practice and review.) My problem is with the actual tests themselves, the formatting of which seems to cause me trouble.
Each Chemistry test is only 30 problems long, which already does not allow for mistakes without impacting chances for high grades, and for the first two chapter tests, each of those problems required many steps of detailed work to get to the solutions. Test answers are also either right or wrong. There is no partial credit. These tests have to be taken very seriously.
Whenever I do Chemistry problems for homework, I am very methodical and always show all of my work so I know exactly what I am doing and what the next step will be. (My high school AP Physics teacher always commented on how good my habits are and that they will make me a successful engineer.) This process of showing each step helps me to avoid errors while I am calculating an answer. On the test, however, my professor does not allow the use of additional paper to solve problems and says that we have enough space in the borders of the test if we really need room for calculations, which is ridiculous. (He seems to think using calculators eliminates work on paper and that we should do the rest in our heads.) The students in this particular professor’s class are very upset with his rule and most say they cannot solve complex Chemistry problems in their heads. I know that he is an exceptionally bright man as he earned his PhD when he was only 20 years old. Some have even referred to him as being a genius. It seems to me that he is orienting the class towards people who are only like him and who automatically grasp the material, and it really makes it difficult for the rest of the students who are either having more difficulty with the material or who have a different method of working through problems.
The professor also does not do a good job of explaining the material. In lecture, he will simply read the material from a power point presentation that another professor had created, without providing any comments or elaboration. He will then show us some practice problems but does not explain why he does certain things. He just speeds through examples that rarely make sense. So, his lectures are almost pointless to attend. (I have never skipped one, however, because I keep hoping it will pay off at some point.) The only students in my class who seem to know what is going on during lectures are those who were in AP Chemistry in high school and already came in with a good understanding of the material. Unfortunately, I did not take AP Chemistry, so I do a lot of outside study and practice to keep up in this class. If I had the time in my schedule, it would be worthwhile to also sit in on another professor’s lectures, but I really don’t have the time, and Chemistry lectures are one of those classes that always seem to be full.

On a more positive note, I had a great time on Halloween this past weekend. Most of my friends went out to parties on Friday night, but I declined so that I could complete all of my schoolwork so I could go out on Saturday night instead and also not have to worry about much schoolwork on Sunday. On Saturday night, one of the guys living in the room next to me dressed up as Paul Bunyan and rode his bike to parties while carrying an axe over his shoulder. He actually got stopped on his way by one of the VT Police Officers, who suggested that he find a better way to carry the axe so he didn’t scare others on campus! The officer explained that he could not stop my friend from carrying the Halloween prop since it was technically a tool, and not a weapon. Because of that fact, my friend has decided to keep the axe in his room since it against no rule and looks pretty cool.
One of my other friends got together with several other guys and dressed up as those miniature plastic green army men that have been around forever and can be bought at Dollar Stores. They looked exactly like the toys, but life size. They spray painted themselves green and made cardboard weapons and plastic stands so they would look exactly like the plastic green army men, and then held poses representative of the little toys in different places around campus and downtown Blacksburg. They actually did this both nights and had a lot of fun.
Back to Friday night. My roommate came in drunk and decided to hand out all of his candy that he had purchased at Wal-Mart earlier in the day. He’s a pretty happy/outgoing guy, but still, I had never seen him this happy before. It was really funny to watch. The next morning, when he woke up, he was wondering why he had given out all of his candy the night before. He’s a ‘funny drunk’ and always provides entertainment when he comes back to the dorm after a night out.
On Saturday night, I went out with a large group of people from my building in search of a good party. After about a half an hour of searching, I split off from the main group along with three other guys from my floor. We went to an apartment building above Gumby’s Pizza and ended up staying there for three hours. It was the best party that any of us had been to. It was mostly dancing, and the DJ was really good. Once we returned to the dorm (around 1 am), we were all pretty tired, but stayed up talking until 3 am before heading to bed. One of the guys we had been with, whom I had just met that evening, had been drunk for 28 hours straight. He was a friend of one of my friends on my hall who had come from his college in West Virginia to party at Virginia Tech for the weekend. He is also a ‘funny drunk’ and pretty entertaining to watch him, especially for those of us who had not been drinking.
Overall, Halloween night was the best time that I have had while at Virginia Tech so far. I can’t wait until the next time we find a really good party to attend. Every couple of weeks they say there’s a pretty decent party, so I am hoping to join this group again soon.