Crunch Time!

This Monday was probably the most relaxed yet most illuminating Monday ever. First off, lets start off with the relaxing side of the day. It started off with class with a lecture about Burke and his vision of Conservatism. During discussion sessions, my TA, Gaurav, was wondering where we stood in relation to Burke's argument. It was odd seeing some student feel very passionate about there position against the views of Burke. I, on the other hand, felt indifferent in the situation. This made me realize that I am not very involved in politics, nor do I really have a strong standpoint of "left" or "right." It seems that I'm just sitting in the middle listening to both sides but not being affected by either. 

Later in the day, we all went to play pool due to our motivation after watching the Mosconi Cup in billiards on TV earlier in the day. We also played basketball because Frank accepted a challenge from some of his classmates in Hotel, I ended up not playing that much since I got tired fairly quickly. We ended the sports activity with bowling with Alex, Hannon, Eric Wilson, Morgan, and Alyssa (Frank and Eric had office hours). All these activities taught me that I am extremely out of shape. Sometimes, I am amazed that I can walk to class every day without passing out halfway.

As for the illuminating part of the day, we received our first graded assignment back: our midterm. I received a B-. During our writing workshop in the afternoon, Gaurav spoke to us one-by-one about the missing components in our midterm. For me, he told me that, while I understand the full and broad concept of everything, I have a hard time going into detail about certain aspects of the essay. He explained how that detail is everything. While I'm not thrilled with this B-, it has motivated me to study more every day, so I decided to start right away. After class, I headed alright to Uris Library and into the "Harry Potter Library" to start my reading and go over lecture notes for the day. For future ILCers, I highly recommend this place since for individual working time since everyone seems to mug you if you make any noise (although you may also get distracted by the beautiful scenery and not get any work done at all). The B- has really opened my eyes to the long distance I need to cover for the rest of this course. On the bright side, now that I have done my first test, I know exactly what to expect and what is expected of me in my writing. It's crunch time!