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Scheduling snag
Nov. 22nd, 2004 03:31 pmMy plans for next semester have hit a snag, and I really don't know what to do about it.
I always thought I could take Ling 57, the Movement and Cognition course with Donna Jo. I finally got around to asking her about whether I could take it, highlighting that I had a pretty strong math background even if I hadn't done any ling before. She also emailed me the syllabus from the last time she taught it, which really looks cool. The math excites me and I'd love to get to folkdance on Monday afternoons. Looking at the syllabus, they got people to come in to talk about the evolution of American folkdance, calling, Morris dancing, and tai chi (I had no idea John Alston was a practitioner of it).
Alas, her response to me was, "I'd love to have you in the class -- but you'd have to take a ling class simultaneously." She proceeded to recommend Syntax or Semantics as being of interest to mathematicians. I simply do not think I can pull off 5 classes next semester, even if two of them are fairly easy (I've heard Ling 1 is not very much work). Catherine's quantum seminar alone will be a lot of work, abstract math is something that I really have to work at because it does not come naturally to me, and stat mech is presumably weird. Plus, I think Physics 14 thermo was particularly weak last year. Plus, I want to keep the possibility of going to fire school open, as well as maybe getting started on senior thesis research (at least maybe starting to read relevant books/papers, which would be particularly important if I do anything other than plasma).
So, what am I to do? I'm pretty sure I don't want to take only quantum and one of algebra or stat mech just to accomodate the Movement and Cognition and the one other ling class. I don't know -- I might be convinced if someone can give me a good argument for this. There's a Russian lit class on war and peace that looks interesting, but meets TTh afternoons. I want to be in the Thursday afternoon quantum seminar because the fire company meets/drills on Thursday nights. I could take CS 21. I could think about the Bryn Mawr complex variables course, although the chair of the BMC math department said that it might be a little too easy. I might do macroeconomics. I could take Modern Europe, 1789-1918 with Weinberg. I could sign myself up for DiffEq or Topics in Analysis at Swat (Huah for a suicidal semester of 4 or even 5 math/physics classes!)
There is Opera with Barbara Milewski, which might be fun, or the first semester of music theory (which I'd need to take any of the interesting music history courses). Intro Psych is also something worth taking as I know practically nothing about psychology.
In short, my original plan has gone down the tubes. I am now utterly perplexed about what I ought to do next semester. I am just so terrible at making decisions (witness me flipping through the hymnal for an hour on Saturday night, trying to pick music for the next morning's mass). Recommendations and suggestions are highly welcome.
Edit: I suppose I could have signed up for Movement and Cognition as a math course, feigning ignorance of there being a linguistics coreq (hey, I'll probably be taking math 102 next semester, so I'm qualified to take math 7, right?). But that's not really an option now since she has my name from the email, and besides, I'm not a sneaky kind of person. Besides, coreqs exist for a reason.
I always thought I could take Ling 57, the Movement and Cognition course with Donna Jo. I finally got around to asking her about whether I could take it, highlighting that I had a pretty strong math background even if I hadn't done any ling before. She also emailed me the syllabus from the last time she taught it, which really looks cool. The math excites me and I'd love to get to folkdance on Monday afternoons. Looking at the syllabus, they got people to come in to talk about the evolution of American folkdance, calling, Morris dancing, and tai chi (I had no idea John Alston was a practitioner of it).
Alas, her response to me was, "I'd love to have you in the class -- but you'd have to take a ling class simultaneously." She proceeded to recommend Syntax or Semantics as being of interest to mathematicians. I simply do not think I can pull off 5 classes next semester, even if two of them are fairly easy (I've heard Ling 1 is not very much work). Catherine's quantum seminar alone will be a lot of work, abstract math is something that I really have to work at because it does not come naturally to me, and stat mech is presumably weird. Plus, I think Physics 14 thermo was particularly weak last year. Plus, I want to keep the possibility of going to fire school open, as well as maybe getting started on senior thesis research (at least maybe starting to read relevant books/papers, which would be particularly important if I do anything other than plasma).
So, what am I to do? I'm pretty sure I don't want to take only quantum and one of algebra or stat mech just to accomodate the Movement and Cognition and the one other ling class. I don't know -- I might be convinced if someone can give me a good argument for this. There's a Russian lit class on war and peace that looks interesting, but meets TTh afternoons. I want to be in the Thursday afternoon quantum seminar because the fire company meets/drills on Thursday nights. I could take CS 21. I could think about the Bryn Mawr complex variables course, although the chair of the BMC math department said that it might be a little too easy. I might do macroeconomics. I could take Modern Europe, 1789-1918 with Weinberg. I could sign myself up for DiffEq or Topics in Analysis at Swat (Huah for a suicidal semester of 4 or even 5 math/physics classes!)
There is Opera with Barbara Milewski, which might be fun, or the first semester of music theory (which I'd need to take any of the interesting music history courses). Intro Psych is also something worth taking as I know practically nothing about psychology.
In short, my original plan has gone down the tubes. I am now utterly perplexed about what I ought to do next semester. I am just so terrible at making decisions (witness me flipping through the hymnal for an hour on Saturday night, trying to pick music for the next morning's mass). Recommendations and suggestions are highly welcome.
Edit: I suppose I could have signed up for Movement and Cognition as a math course, feigning ignorance of there being a linguistics coreq (hey, I'll probably be taking math 102 next semester, so I'm qualified to take math 7, right?). But that's not really an option now since she has my name from the email, and besides, I'm not a sneaky kind of person. Besides, coreqs exist for a reason.
