MISC Bren Stuff

So...while procrastinating on my 110 pages of reading I have to do for classes tomorrow, I thought I'd update on a few random stuff.

1) Bren is doing a student mentor thing this year. It's student started and student run. This is the first year they're doing it. Basically it's a 2nd year student (all volunteers) takes on about 5 1st year students, introduces themselves, and is there as a - well - mentor for whatever we need help with navigating Bren! My mentor has a horse, likes Harry Potter (she only mentioned it because I told her), and is a EPE/CMRM dual specialization! EPE is what I want to specialize in and the CMRM (Coastal Marine Resource Management) is also an interest I have and would like to take classes in, but not dual specialize in. So...she's perfect for me! She just brought her horse here too. She said I can come with her sometime when she goes to see her horse too. :D

2) I have 4 classes this semester. One of them is 2 weeks of lecture with 4 discussions throughout November. But...I have 2 finals and 2 final projects. Three of my four classes have the finals/projects due by Tues, December 8th and that's finals week. If my last class (I have yet to go to it) also has the due date on the 8th, there's a possibility I could come home a few days earlier than expected! (Last day of the quarter is the 12th.) So far I only have 1 midterm too. I will be writing a lot of papers, but that's to be expected in a grad program. It seems like most of the profs (in general) do projects/papers instead of normal "test" finals and they don't have required text books too. That's kind of nice. I think Bren is one of the only programs that realizes a) students don't buy text books and b) students don't buy text books from the campus. We were actually told that Bren no longer requires the profs to submit book requests through the campus. So they have their own "list" they compile each quarter for students to let us get our books however we want. That's kind of nice and a lot of profs, to help with waste, post readings on-line for us to read or print at our will.

3) Today it dawned on me that I'm in a graduate program. Or maybe it's just the format I'm not used to since CSUMB teaches by teachers writing on the board most times; we had classes and labs with the same prof; and we didn't have TAs. Every class has a TA, a lecture, and separate discussion section. It could be because these are core classes so having a discussion with 90 students is not as easy as having 30 students. :P Anyway, it just kind of dawned on me today. Not sure exactly what triggered it, but it did.

Anyway, it's 4:40 pm and I have no excuse NOT to do my reading now. :) I already cleaned my sheets and towels; I ate earlier and have food for tonight; I cleaned up all my Bren e-mails and responded to stuff I needed to do; and updated my planner and school materials for my classes. So...off to read about climate change and ecological stuff.