Boulder and the rest of the Earth

I've been having a really interesting week and have learned so many things I'd like to share with anyone reading this blog.

I watched Food, Inc at a meeting of the CU Going Local club and for my Nutrition, Health, and Performance class. I thought it was a really well-made documentary about the food industry and really has me thinking about the food I and others around me choose to consume. I recommend it if you haven't seen it.

I started reading David Halberstam's The Fifties, a really comprehensive book about the entire decade, for my Film of the 40s and 50s class. The book covers so much ground - in just the few chapters I read so far, I learned about Levittowns, GM, Eisenhower, McCarthyism, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, and on and on.

And then today, in my Astronomy lab, I took measurements which allowed me to calculate the circumference of the Earth - all without traveling past Baseline (a road on the edge of campus). I learned that Baseline used to run directly along the 40th Parallel (Boulder's latitude), something I didn't know, even though I've lived in Boulder for so long. I say used to because it has since been reconstructed to curve a bit away from that line, but parts of it are still exact. It's confusing to get into all the details of our lab experiment, but if you Google Eratosthenes Challenge, you'll get a good sense of what we were doing.

Pretty cool! It still amazes me the kind of ground we cover in all my classes week by week. Having a class last only 15 or 16 weeks is so different from having full-year courses like in high school. And learning about things like astronomy, history, health, film - all at a college level? Well, that's why I'm here!

If you're a student (or even if you're not), what's something you learned about this week that really struck you as interesting? I'd love to hear in the comments!

It's almost Friday. The Boulder International Film Festival is happening here this weekend. I plan to at least go to one of the short film events, which I really enjoyed last year. I encourage you to check it out if you're at all interested in film, particularly the independent or international type.

Cheers! :)

Relatability

More and more since I started college, I've been noticing a really wonderful trend: the topics in my classes have actually been relating to each other and to everyday life.

For example, the discussion of woman's role in religion and how Christianity plays into that, which started in my Ways of Knowing class was continued in the discussion of Paradise Lost in my Masterpieces of British Literature and then showed up in the book I'm reading for fun, Mists of Avalon. There are many other examples crossing across my five classes and many interests.

This may be highly specific to the classes I'm taking this semester -- Biology might not have as many crossovers, for example -- but it's really been adding to the whole college experience. The moment of recognition when you hear something in conversation that you were just talking about yesterday in class, that's a really cool feeling.

Anyway, I don't have much more to say on this topic (or as Forrest Gump would say: "That's all I have to say about that") but I wanted to see if anyone out there in the blogosphere knows what I'm talking about. Feel free to comment as comments are always appreciated.

I'll be writing soon on class registration - right now all I can tell you is that it's coming up and I'm excited! I figured out what my ideal schedule would be, but I'm not sure if it will happen. Fingers crossed, I guess.

Cheers :)

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