(no subject)

[meanfreepath]

Gone to all the primary classes I'm registered for this semester (Musicianship lab, Music 40B, doesn't meet until tomorrow afternoon, but it's more or less going to be a continuation of 40A).

It dawned on me yesterday and today that my academic experience this semester is going to be a lot different from previous semesters. I've become used to having seminars, particularly in physics, and their accompanying working style. I am not in any this semester. I've also had at some sort of math course (usually theoretical) every semester except sophomore spring, during which I was frustrated to no end by the necessary lack of mathematical rigor in Physics 50. No math this semester.

This is why solid state yesterday just felt different. From what I could tell, Walter seems to be a very clear lecturer. Even so - having a lecture-based physics course was something I haven't had in so long that it was just weird. Moreover, Walter apparently favors using ConcepTest questions even in his upper-level courses. I don't think it's a bad idea -- how many times have I been lost during other people's seminar presentations? But this isn't something I've had since Physics 8, sophomore fall... and again it just feels weird.

Music 12 today was more or less what I could have expected. Joel Friedman's style is a little different from Tom's. We spent a lot of the class going over one example and heading off on the tangents that came off from it: the resolution of complete V7 in chorale style. I had known from 11 that there is generally no way to resolve a complete V7 to a complete I without creating problems in voice leading such as parallel 5ths or not resolving a tritone. Joel seemed to favor doing some more radical things -- such as doubling the third or tripling the root, when necessary -- that Tom would never have allowed. The way out of the bind, of course, is to omit scale degree 2; then one can resolve an incomplete V7 to a complete I.

I just got out of Psych I with Andrew Ward. This is the first large lecture course I've had since Orgo I my freshman year. Prof. Ward is not like any other professor I've had. He seemed to enjoy cracking jokes in class and had a levity that is not common among Swarthmore profs or any other teachers I've had. The workload for the course is very reasonable -- I should be fine from just doing the reading while shuttling back and forth between Haverford and Swat.

All in all... I think I'll be able to learn from all the classes I've registered for. But it just feels incredibly odd to have come out of mostly having seminars junior year, and 115 last semester, and be taking 2 freshman courses, one of which is a large lecture. Having the physics at Haverford be lecture, too, only adds to this, especially since most of the class is juniors. Honestly, I still wish Solid State could have won as the senior seminar here. Still, I won't be as snobbish as the classmate of mine who was furious at the possibility of juniors being allowed into the Computational seminar.

I could reverse all of this by going to Computational tonight. Somehow, though, taking 4.5 credits with an unfinished thesis and honors exams is probably a bad idea. But oh... no more seminar breaks, no more scrambling at noon to put the finishing touches on a presentation or problem set...

Comments

[reldnahkram.livejournal.com]

The other thing you can do is, if the leading tone is in an inside voice, resolve it down to 5. This works even better if the voice above it is going 2-1, and even better if the 1 it resolves to is the same octave as where the leading tone should have gone:

F V E
D V C
B V G
G ^ C

If you want to get the other 1 on top, you can't get the voice exchange on the leading tone, but it usually works well enough, if I recall correctly.

D V C
B V G
F V E
G ^ C

[meanfreepath.livejournal.com]

The scenario Joel gave was the resolution of a complete V7 to I in the major (scale degrees for the voicing given below):
4
7
2
5

Obviously 4 in the soprano has to resolve down to 3, and the 5 in the bass has to go to 1. I proposed this:
3
5
1
1

Joel objected to this though because it fails to correctly resolve the tritone between the leading tone and 4 in the soprano and alto. He proposed either
3
1
1
1

or
3
1
3
1
Tom would have preferred a complete I, though, I think. He and Tony Barone also always chided me whenever I doubled the 3rd in I, IV, or V.

[reldnahkram.livejournal.com]

I would go with 3-1-1-1 over 3-1-3-1.

[rose_garden.livejournal.com]

What are ConcepTest questions?

And it's good to get back in the swing of lectures before you go to grad school.

[meanfreepath.livejournal.com]

Oh... I forgot you hadn't had Catherine for Physics 8.

They're short (usually multiple choice) conceptual questions asked during a lecture where you think about it by yourself first, then confer with the people around you. At big universities, they often use this a lot in intro classes; students have "clickers" that are remote controls permitting them to answer and the professor to see how people are responding. I wouldn't be too surprised if they do that at UCSB... the method was first developed by Eric Mazur at Harvard.

[meanfreepath.livejournal.com]

One more thing, as for getting used to lectures again, John told me the same thing. When I ran into him in the hall this afternoon, he asked me how solid state was going. I complained how in lectures one ends up having to spend a lot of time on basic stuff that everyone in a seminar would just have read -- today the prof spent 15 minutes on Miller indices.

[qianian.livejournal.com]

sigh... I guess the key is not what Joel tells you, but what your ears tell you.

[meanfreepath.livejournal.com]

See my lengthy description of the situation to reldnahkram above.

[wayman.livejournal.com]

I'm so confused by Andrew's class--it's the only big lecture I've ever had at Swat, it's in a room in a building that (in my mental picture of campus) doesn't exist, and it's with a prof who totally doesn't look or act like a Swat prof. It's like I'm somewhere else when I'm in there. Not sure where, though, but I like it a lot!