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Dec. 18th, 2004 03:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meanfreepathI am now almost done. Both lab reports are in. I'm glad I took the time to learn the basics of LyX; now ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
blaketh recommends that I move on to full, hard-core LaTeX now. I don't know; I'm definitely glad for the capabilies of LyX and not having to memorize every single formatting command. I will certainly use it more next semester as Cheryl Grood wants algebra seminar presentations as typed handouts. It's sort of interesting how for seminar presentations, math is doing handouts, and how physics with our class has moved away from handouts while the current seniors used them all the time last year. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think math seminar presentations mostly focus on the exposition and proof of some important theorem and any associated lemmas or corollaries.
I am not thrilled about the prospect of SEPTA fare hikes and service cuts. It is time-consuming enough for me to try to get home by SEPTA on weekends even now. What I may consider trying at some point is only using the R3 to get into Center City, transfering to a PATCO train into Camden, and then changing from there to the NJ Transit River Line to get to Trenton. As it stands SEPTA is faster, but that may change if the weekend service cuts are sufficiently drastic. Already a round-trip ticket from Trenton to Swat on SEPTA costs me $14. If the fare hikes are around 25%, that could go up by $3. That plus the cost of NJT up to Princeton Junction may make trips home, especially next summer when I'll definitely be at Swat, that much more costly. Ditto for coming back to Swat for fire school classes and evolutions over Spring Break if I take FF1 next semester. According to the local NBC 10 news for Philadelphia (thanks tonightengalesknd for pointing me to it), the situation is also bad in Pittsburgh.
While I was poking around on that site, I came across this story. Nun fired for allegedly threatening to punch a student.
I went to St. Cecelia's School for 2nd and 3rd grade. When I entered for 2nd grade, the school had a great, very accomodating principal who permitted me to skip 1st grade. I was also able to get, in 2nd grade, access privileges to the parts of the school library that were reserved for older students (3rd or 4th graders and up). The principal was friendly and the atmosphere of the school was fairly relaxed. For instance, she would allow a relaxation of the dress code (e.g. no ties required) during the beginning and end of the school year for reasons of comfort.
Then the next year either she retired or was replaced. A new group of nuns, this time multiple members of a teaching order, the Religious Sisters Fillippini (named after an Italian saint), took over the school. Things went downhill from there. Sr. Rose, the new principal, was far, far more strict. Eventually there got to be a point in the year where a friend of mine was falsely accused of something, and when my father wrote the principal a letter corroborating my friend's story, things turned ugly (at least that's my memory of how things happened). I left St. Cecelia's after that year, and I'm glad I did. The year after I left, much more restrictive rules were implemented. One should not force elementary school children to leave school in total silence at the end of the day -- it's simply unnatural. Given that it's been the same group of nuns in control ever since, I'm not surprised that something like this happened. The student was allegedly threatened for going down the wrong stairwell.
I'm not trying to bash Catholic education in general. I went to St. Cecelia's because it was academically better than the public schools in Woodbridge Township, where I lived until 5th grade. My memories of Catholic school involved people generally being nicer to each other -- I wasn't picked on as I was for years after I entered public school in West Windsor, and there was never cutthroat competition. I also remember having an incredibly dynamic 3rd grade teacher at St. Cecelia's, Ms. Zatorski, from whom I learned a great deal. I still have in my room at home somewhere the class end-of-year project, in which we were each given a notebook. Every day, for the last two weeks or so, the notebooks would be rotated around and everyone would have to write something to the owner of the notebook. I still have that notebook with letters and pictures of everyone in my 3rd grade class. Those childhood days of innocence...
I also remember St. Cecelia's because the church and the school were right across the street from the Iselin Chemical Hook and Ladder Volunteer Fire Company #1 (ever a mouthful of a name). Like Swat, they used an earsplittingly loud air horn for fire calls. The school was close enough to the firehouse that the horn would literally make you jump out of your seat when it went off. The company also owned bright white apparatus, something that I've never seen since. But this is entirely a different matter...
blaketh recommends that I move on to full, hard-core LaTeX now. I don't know; I'm definitely glad for the capabilies of LyX and not having to memorize every single formatting command. I will certainly use it more next semester as Cheryl Grood wants algebra seminar presentations as typed handouts. It's sort of interesting how for seminar presentations, math is doing handouts, and how physics with our class has moved away from handouts while the current seniors used them all the time last year. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think math seminar presentations mostly focus on the exposition and proof of some important theorem and any associated lemmas or corollaries.I am not thrilled about the prospect of SEPTA fare hikes and service cuts. It is time-consuming enough for me to try to get home by SEPTA on weekends even now. What I may consider trying at some point is only using the R3 to get into Center City, transfering to a PATCO train into Camden, and then changing from there to the NJ Transit River Line to get to Trenton. As it stands SEPTA is faster, but that may change if the weekend service cuts are sufficiently drastic. Already a round-trip ticket from Trenton to Swat on SEPTA costs me $14. If the fare hikes are around 25%, that could go up by $3. That plus the cost of NJT up to Princeton Junction may make trips home, especially next summer when I'll definitely be at Swat, that much more costly. Ditto for coming back to Swat for fire school classes and evolutions over Spring Break if I take FF1 next semester. According to the local NBC 10 news for Philadelphia (thanks to
nightengalesknd for pointing me to it), the situation is also bad in Pittsburgh.While I was poking around on that site, I came across this story. Nun fired for allegedly threatening to punch a student.
I went to St. Cecelia's School for 2nd and 3rd grade. When I entered for 2nd grade, the school had a great, very accomodating principal who permitted me to skip 1st grade. I was also able to get, in 2nd grade, access privileges to the parts of the school library that were reserved for older students (3rd or 4th graders and up). The principal was friendly and the atmosphere of the school was fairly relaxed. For instance, she would allow a relaxation of the dress code (e.g. no ties required) during the beginning and end of the school year for reasons of comfort.
Then the next year either she retired or was replaced. A new group of nuns, this time multiple members of a teaching order, the Religious Sisters Fillippini (named after an Italian saint), took over the school. Things went downhill from there. Sr. Rose, the new principal, was far, far more strict. Eventually there got to be a point in the year where a friend of mine was falsely accused of something, and when my father wrote the principal a letter corroborating my friend's story, things turned ugly (at least that's my memory of how things happened). I left St. Cecelia's after that year, and I'm glad I did. The year after I left, much more restrictive rules were implemented. One should not force elementary school children to leave school in total silence at the end of the day -- it's simply unnatural. Given that it's been the same group of nuns in control ever since, I'm not surprised that something like this happened. The student was allegedly threatened for going down the wrong stairwell.
I'm not trying to bash Catholic education in general. I went to St. Cecelia's because it was academically better than the public schools in Woodbridge Township, where I lived until 5th grade. My memories of Catholic school involved people generally being nicer to each other -- I wasn't picked on as I was for years after I entered public school in West Windsor, and there was never cutthroat competition. I also remember having an incredibly dynamic 3rd grade teacher at St. Cecelia's, Ms. Zatorski, from whom I learned a great deal. I still have in my room at home somewhere the class end-of-year project, in which we were each given a notebook. Every day, for the last two weeks or so, the notebooks would be rotated around and everyone would have to write something to the owner of the notebook. I still have that notebook with letters and pictures of everyone in my 3rd grade class. Those childhood days of innocence...
I also remember St. Cecelia's because the church and the school were right across the street from the Iselin Chemical Hook and Ladder Volunteer Fire Company #1 (ever a mouthful of a name). Like Swat, they used an earsplittingly loud air horn for fire calls. The school was close enough to the firehouse that the horn would literally make you jump out of your seat when it went off. The company also owned bright white apparatus, something that I've never seen since. But this is entirely a different matter...
