Kevin Renfrow

Wow. A crazy thing’s been happening the last couple of days. There appears to be a leak in the sky! It’s actually been raining down here in the LA area. In fact, the forecast is calling for rain all the way through next Monday (I’m not sure how much though). I’ve already been blamed for bringing down the bad weather with me. Maybe it’s true… but even so, the 48 °F right now is much warmer than the 30 °F up in Toledo, OR.

Just think, despite the storms, above the clouds lie a beautiful sunny day.

Ignoring the weather for the moment, today was my second day of classes for Spring semester. It was also my first day of many 8:00 AM classes to come. I started the day off with Chemistry where we reviewed thermodynamics. My teacher, Professor Karukstis, did a great job covering the material and was very well organized. She has a tablet PC which she uses to write and display the notes on a projector. She is even kind enough to create PDFs of the notes and distribute them on the Sakai website after class. I will have her module of Chemistry for the first third of the semester before rotating to other subjects and professors.

My second class was Differential Equations with Professor dePillis. Her personality reminds me a lot of a teacher I had back at Isaac Newton Magnet School in 7th and 8th grade. There are a lot of interesting people in the class. Take, for example, Arthur and Wynn. If it wasn’t for today’s class I would not have known that combined they are capable of drinking orange juice out of a giant vat at a rate of 200 gallons an hour. On a more serious note, I am relived to find out that I actually have worked with differential equations already. Back in calculus we solved a few problems involving expanding spheres and other containers of whose volumes were changing over time. Those examples were indeed models of differential equations.

Next came my awkward hour break between my morning classes on Mondays and Wednesdays. On a more generic week-by-week basis, I’m not sure what I will utilize that time for, but today I went to the financial registration held in the Platt campus center. It’s a really easy process that basically involves simply verifying your account information and making sure you are paid-up with your bills so that you can be officially enrolled. Oh, and if you don’t stop by financial registration, they’ll slap a $250 fine on you - in case you needed extra motivation to attend.

My last class of the day was Physics. This semester in Physics we are studying classical mechanics, so we’re back to clocks that stay synchronized, lengths that don’t dilate, and, for the most part, more easily measurable applications of Physics. Though the topics should be more intuitive, the subject also dominates my schedule for this semester. Every day except Friday I have either Physics lecture, recitation, or lab. In fact, we’ve already completed and turned in a homework assignment for the class in addition to an in-class diagnostic quiz. I really like my recitation professor though. Professor Lyzenga is also the current professor lecturing at our Tuesday and Thursday gatherings.

I spent this afternoon kind of relaxed. I read about 60 pages for my Religion and Science class at CMC tomorrow, but other than that just did a little organizing around the room. The rest of the evening I’ll probably try to get a chunk, at least, of the math homework due Friday afternoon out of the way and socialize a bit with friends. I still haven’t unpacked my suitcase or duffel-bag completely, but meh. Plenty of time for that later.

That’s it for now.

A little about the author: Kevin is a student at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA. He loves the outdoors and enjoys backpacking, camping, hiking, biking, kayaking, and just about everything. When he's not in the great outdoors, he spends his free time working on web development projects and tinkering with computers. Kevin is currently serving as the Web Coordinator for the Western Region, Order of the Arrow, BSA.