An engineer dies. He arrives at the Pearly Gates, but they don’t let him in, so he goes to Hell. Hell is a pretty rotten environment. Right away, the engineer starts making improvements-lights, bathrooms, air conditioning-and after a while, Hell doesn’t look so bad any more. God notices this, and asks the Devil what’s going on.

“Well, it’s this engineer we’ve got,” says the Devil.

“Engineer?? You’re not supposed to have any engineers in Hell!” says God. “There must have been a mistake. All engineers go to Heaven. Send him up here, right away!”

“No way,” says the Devil. “We’re keeping him here.”

“I’ll sue!!” cries God.

“Yeah, right,” sneers the Devil. “Where you gonna get a lawyer??”

i have never seen a hurricane season like this. Sure, let’s go ahead and follow up the worst american natural disaster of the decade with another cat 5. that sounds like a great idea.

LSU, trapped in between a rock and a hard place (a dead new orleans and a doomed houston), grasping for any bit of semester that they can salvage, rushed into a decision to continue with classes friday, despite the fact that every school in south louisiana (including the public school system in Baton Rouge) is closing its doors for Rita.

In previous years, we used to pray that there was a hurricane so that we could get out of class and have hurricane parties. Needless to say, things are different now.

so it hit us last night, but it really hit west of here. so we didn’t really lose any power.

Anyways.

I got slammed with homework over the past week. First tests in all my classes are late september / early october. Trying to keep up with things has left me sorely lacking the social scene. I meet up with Bennett Broussard and Pierre Gamble after classes in the quad to play hackey sack on most MWF. we joked around a little, saying one day we should all wear our old STM uniforms, id’s and all. I think that would be hilarious, though a little disturbing. There are enough STM alum who attend LSU who would get the joke, but probably less who would appreciate it.

So i was pretty excited about going to the LSU game this weekend, my first game as a student. but then Rita moved it to monday. So far we got 3 home games taken away from us, and this would be 4, if the SEC hadn’t pulled through with the magical date change. Most of the students, however, are still feeling cheated because a “Monday night game is not the same kind of football as a Saturday night game”, i guess just for the attendees.

Julie decided that it would be a good idea to take in a refugee kitty cat. This new cat (”hazelnut”) quickly lost points when he refused to be nice to Harvey. He obviously has low self-esteem, which is compounded by an inferiority complex. Whenever hazelnut spots harvey, he will stop and grumble a little, maybe a nervous hiss or two, and then run for his life. He secretly wants all the attention but knows that he’ll never be good enough. It’s a good thing he was neutered. Can you imagine girl trouble on top of all that? And to think, we used to consider Harvey a bum. Harvey is a fine kitty compared to this gutless grumbler. I hope hazelnut’s owner finds a good home soon, because i’m sure he’ll be better suited as the king of his own castle.

begin long boring story about transfer credits:
Tuesday i got an email reply from the Engineering undergraduate advisor, saying “Come to my office hours to finalize your transfer credit.” I thought, YESSSSS he finally saw one of the 6,032,643 emails that i sent him and decided to actually finish what we started in July. Remembel, in early August i had dropped off all my paperwork for the Advisor to look at and sign and do whatever with, and i was kind of waiting to see my transfer credit appear in my records. and despite my messages, i never got contacted about it. Until now. i look at his office hours, and lo and behold, there is not one 30 minute block of time all week that both he and I are free. I considered my options, and decided to skip out of a class early on tuesday to catch him at the end of his timing. Anything to be finished with and process this crap, my credits don’t even exist at LSU right now except for some writing on some slips of paper. I show up and wait outside his door for about 10 minutes as he is answering some stupid survey questions from some lady. He sees me and says, Hey, come back tomorrow, my office hours end now.

So i skip a class on wednesday and walk in his office. He says hello and pulls out my file. At this point, i’m waiting for him to say “Sign here, here, here and here, because i need your valuable signatures on these special papers.”

What does he do? He looks at the papers in front of him. He writes a room number down and hands them to me. “Take these and go to 3450 CEBA, the dean’s office.”

What? you mean i’ve been in academic limbo for 3 months so that i can eventually be your courier? All i have to do is take them somewhere else? You should have a sign on your door that says “Undergraduate Advisor. I’m really the Undergraduate Time Waster. I can’t do anything to help you. You might as well go to 3450 CEBA because they have what you want.”

So i go to said office, severely jaded, and try to get somebody to take responsibility for these forsaken papers. “You have to see a counselor before we can accept anything. Oh yeah and today, the counselors are all out of the office, dealing with hurricane transfer students today only.” Oh. Ok. In that case, i should probably pack some sammitches and bring my sleeping bag and stake out a place in line tomorrow.

This story is already way too long. But here’s what all this amounts to.

they won’t give me credit in calculus 1 unless i give them a genuine copy of AP scores (from 2003). Oh yeah, i’ve got those hangin around. I mean, i know the logistics of everything. they want proof. they want to cover their ass. but Still. counselors are supposed to be the people who have the power to think.

Back at Mercer, my engineering friends are all taking their classes with familiar old professors, knowing what is expected of them and even have a concrete idea of how difficult the material will be. I know how i probably would’ve done in those classes, as well. But here at a new school, I start over. It’s been a few weeks, and i’ve had the opportunity to get a feel for my professors. If anything, me writing this here will serve as a record of my initial impression of classes.

Digital Logic with Skavantos. At a brisk 7:30 in the morning on wednesdays and fridays, I attend a lecture on computer math with a man who reads his perfectly scripted play-by-play instructions from pre-written notes. This is convenient, because i can teach myself by reading the notes (which are all posted online). But as an added bonus for waking up and coming to class, he does it all with a very thick Russian accent. What sends me into internal fits of laughter, however, is this: whenever he teaches (ahem, reads to us) some numerical technique, he does not hesitate to turn right around and make a totally shameless plug for his upper-level courses, as per “So all yoo do is dees, buuut if you want to know why, you must take my E.E. Thirty-Seven Feefty-Four course.”

Electronics with Audiffred. I don’t know about everyone else in that class, but to me, Bryan Audiffred teaches more like an upperclassman friend who is helping tutor me in this subject, rather than teach it. And he has a great wit. He has obviously mastered the material, but he has absolutely zero intimidation factor, and that is good news. I hope this class is as easy as it seems.

Electric Fields with Rabalais. One of the prerequisites for this course is Physics 2, also known as Electromagnetics. I was terrified of this course at first, since i absolutely hated anything that had to do with the word “flux” after i escaped Physics. But this class surpised me. Rabalais has a somewhat formidable reputation among students here, but as i sit in his class, i am relieved to see a man with a working knowledge of the material who is very prepared and adept at teaching this otherwise daunting EE course.

Dynamic Feedback Control with Chen. The prereq for this course is Signals, which was most definitely my absolute favorite class at Mercer University. I loved learning about everything from Convolution to Fourier Transforms, and it’s all because of Dr. Barnett. He had the most calculated, well-spoken, perfect approach to teaching the subject. Well that was then. And Dr. Chen is now. Oh. My. God. I have officially entered the communication barrier zone. The man is so foreign, you need a translator just to look at him. His hair is ALWAYS matted down in the front and totally off-the-wall crazy on top, like he has been sleeping at his office on some couch for his entire life. We’ve spent the past 3 weeks without actually doing anything but some historical perspective and review of Signals. Yesterday, i gave up trying to follow when he was reviewing something as simple as Partial Fraction Expansion and totally lost me. Taking this class makes me doubt my ability to learn information, and worse, makes me doubt the information i already knew. I searched for my immaculate Signals notes so that i could at least start from somewhere in coherent English. but i couldn’t find them, so i am probably dropping the class. Sad, really.

Power with Czarnecki. I really didn’t like the power and motor section of my Circuits II class. Too much mechanics. But Czarnecki is hilarious. His English sounds like it came straight from the dialog of a trim German Soldier in some old movie. He’s Polish, but the Rhineland runs thick in his veins. “Der ees some Ecksssss, Vere ze Maganetique Feeld Intensitee ees Whan-Hundared times ze Area.” Every time he says the letter x in some word or by itself, he elongates just the end part of the pronunciation, like “ecksssSS.” It almost sounds aggravated, but its just the way he does it. He lectured us one afternoon on the benefits of being a Power Engineer, as opposed to most other kinds of EE’s. I was surprised at how convincing it was. I had absolutely no interest in Power as a career until he spoke about it. Power Engineers are needed everywhere, every time. Oh, and one more thing that i love about this guy. Every diagram, every word he draws on the blackboard is so perfectly constructed and proportioned that it could be trasferred to drafting paper and look like it belonged there. Reminds me of a certain Dr. Jack Mahaney that i once knew…

So in conclusion, i could swing some good grades this year if i stay on top of things. Got any good professor stories? i want to hear them. My AIM name is deugenschlaben, and these days i get online quite often. leave me a message and tell me about it.

yesterday during a lull of activity in the tutoring lab, one of my fellow tutors, an indian fellow, decided to be friendly with me and initiate a little casual conversation. He’s very intelligent, a veteran of the math lab, and has been tutoring for 4 years now. I sometimes ask him to come help me with a student when i forget how to attack a problem correctly.

I could tell that’s really what he was trying to do. just harmless, innocent attempt at putting his metaphorical arm around my shoulder and be buddies.

But all he would talk about was how inconvenient this Hurricane has been for him, using only the most violent terms (”This is just retarded, i can’t f-ing believe this”), dropping f-bombs all over the place, and being completely indiscreet about all of it, talking loudly and whatnot. Note that he lives in Baton Rouge, and the hurricane did absolutely nothing to him, his possessions, or his family. I knew of several people in the room who were actually from New Orleans, and their sleepless eyes and disheveled hair told much more about the pain and suffering that the hurricane actually caused.

It was so confrontational that i could barely respond. I knew none of the hateful terms he used were intended to be offensive to me, and i thought he was trying to stir up some feelings of resentment in me, so that we could be resentful together. but it was such an empty attack, anger for the sake of anger. As he walked around with a pissed off confidence, i tried to imagine a bleeding heart hiding inside him, one with compassion and quiet understanding. I thought of the thousands of people on campus right now receiving medical treatment, in the triage staging area, and mentally tried to put him in the middle of all this, to see if it would crack his iron shell.

If there’s anything i’ve seen more from this hurricane, it’s anger. The first signs of this were the people on TV shouting about how the only reason there weren’t better rescues was because the people who stayed in New Orleans were black.

I’m back in Baton Rouge.

Thanks to everyone who wished/called/visited me happy birthday. It was as good as it could have been, considering the circumstances.

Not much else to add other than that. Glad to be at home where the news reports of doom aren’t on all the time. More to come later.