-For my first class, I spent an hour skyping a French engineering student and talking about feminism in our respective countries. We alternated between French and English.
-For organic chemistry we had a project where we had to come up with three steps to synthesize a useful organic molecule, and they had to be things we could do/buy for our weekly labs. My group's procedure was selected as one that the rest of the groups are going to have to perform. We figured out how to make melatonin in 3 steps, and the starting material is just $15 a gram, and now we're going to actually carry out a lab based on what we've figured out. This is the real deal as far as chemistry goes. I actually had to find a book published in 1930 on our library's shelf and translate it from the original German to figure out part of the procedure. It's such a rewarding experience.
-On a sidenote, I also found chemistry journals from the early 1800s just sitting on the shelf in our library. The actual original 200 year old books. And lots of them were in different languages or from countries that don't exist anymore. This is very cool.
-My crazy idea about not studying for my archaeology exam was a surprising success. (I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS. I rarely studied in high school, and I have to study for everything in college. This class is a rare exception where I can just pay attention to the lecture and the readings and be set. Unfortunately, I was not able to work pygmy mammoths into my essay, but you can't win 'em all.)
-I'm taking a seminar class along with the research program here, and today our class was going around the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. We looked at mummies for a class.
-I spent an hour acting like a fool dancing ridiculously cute dances and singing ridiculously happy songs for a charity/singing club.
-I have run out of clean underwear and had to ALL the laundry at 1 am. Where I ended up having a conversation about evolutionarily static gastropods of the east coast of the U.S. and the amazing complexity of life and metabolic pathways and this chart. This episode caught me quite a bit off guard, but occasionally honors housing can do that to you.
That was just today. I've also:
-Gotten free tickets to see the Hamburg Symphony.
-Been taken to the basement of the natural history museum where they keep all their fossils for a class.
-Allowed to handle several famous fake Michigan artifacts in said museum for an entirely different class.
-Seen Starkid live at the place where they all started.
-Played Mafia for 5 hours with a bunch of strangers.
-Watched classic Doctor Who with the TARDIS club in a classroom for hours on end.
-Picketed and protested puppy mills for the Michigan Animal Rights Society.
-Studied for hours in the 123 acre arboretum.
-Been present at 2 of the most thrilling football games in Michigan history. I don't even like football, and I've rarely been that excited in my life.
...and several other things I can't think of at the moment. And I haven't taken advantage of anywhere close to everything that's available to me. Any one of these things would be incredible, but in context it's just part of normal college life. I love it.
On that note, I have 2 days left until spring break and I couldn't be more relieved. (Do all Europeans think of "Spring Break" when they think of American university life? The French students seem to. They all want to party in Panama City when they eventually visit the states.) I'm really excited to go home and be crazy with my sister and be with my dog and eat really good food all the time.
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