And We're Back!

Second semester, week one = complete. That only leaves me with, well, a lot to go. It's been an eventful first week back. Professors seem to be of a consensus that we are no longer meager first year students that require superfluous coddling; and so unless I'm an exception, workloads have increased significantly. Maybe I'm just a little sick, but for the most part, I don't mind the problem sets I'm being assigned in Chemistry, Physics, and Calculus, especially since some of the concepts we are getting to work on now are a little more interesting and novel than what I'm used to being exposed to. For example, in Physics we are studying electric field theory, or as I prefer to say, more generally, force fields. The mathematics of it is proving both constructively challenging and really quite intriguing.

Outside of academics, I spent this morning downtown making use of the Lexington Community's celebration of MLK day. As a result of originally innocuous conversation at dinner, I ended up agreeing to volunteer to help set up for an annual march downtown of a few hundred people. Granted however, setting up wasn't too terribly challenging, it mostly consisted of taping some papers, hanging some banners, and passing things out. Still, it feels good every once in a while to get out and see what non-Transy folk do with themselves, especially in commemoration of a great and historic figure. In many ways I think it's important as a student to try and put together that the work that we do in the community, or more importantly, our attitudes toward ethics and our ethical choices, are tied in a very real way to the abstractions we read, such as Letter from Birmingham Jail in my FLA 1 class by MLK himself.

For a short news video about the MLK day event I volunteered at, no more than half a mile from Transy, see this link -------> http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/Celebrations_Honor_Martin_Luther_King_Junior_113892304.html

In other big news, one of the more longstanding and significant advances in my status here at Transy has changed today. I am now officially an active member of The Delta Sigma Phi Fraternity, Beta Mu chapter at Transylvania University. I really just like hearing how long and official that sounds. But seriously, it's a major honor and milestone to say that I've come into brotherhood with so many amazing men. I know that even over the course of my pledge period, they have embraced me, and come to change me in ways that have only been positive. I can only hope that I can give back to my fraternity in the same way, and that this sort of symbiotic relationship may continue for the entirety of my stay at Transy.

By the way, aside from electric fields, I highly recommend looking into the history, politics, and pertinent philosophy behind the infamous Galileo trials. This is the current topic of my FLA 2 class "Mad Scientists 2.0" and consequentially is also the topic of my reading at the moment. I leave now to work on writing for it, and for I think it's fair to say that in this instance I'm excited about putting pen to paper. In fact, I'm excited about most everything to do with being back at school. It's good to be home, in a strange sort of way.