The Halfway Point

This week is passing a lot more quickly than last week, and I can’t believe we’re now over halfway through the course! Today was a special day for class, since we got to test three participants this morning. We had to get to class at 8:45 instead of the usual 9:30, and it definitely felt earlier. I was a little nervous to conduct our study because even though we’d run through everything yesterday, I was concerned that we’d somehow overlooked something or something would go wrong. The kids showed up later than expected, so we had plenty of time to wait around anxiously. However, the worry was unnecessary. We were able to run our experiment smoothly on all three participants.

Similar to yesterday, Cassie let us out for lunch later so we were able to avoid the kid clusters. Also like yesterday, our afternoon session was brief so we got out of class with plenty of time for homework. This week has felt a lot more manageable than last week in terms of work, and I find myself with ample free time. This is due to a combination of getting out of class earlier, less homework assignments, and my developing ability to complete homework efficiently. Since I had so much extra time today, I decided to go ahead and do tomorrow’s homework as well. This was necessary because tomorrow I’ll be going on the RA led trip to the iO Theater to see Improv Shakespeare, an event I’m looking forward to. The majority of my Shakespeare experience is from English classes and family trips to Ashland, and I’ll be glad to have another source to compare in my Shakespeare knowledge.

I was happy to be able to attend Zumba again today, with Tiffany and some of the other girls from Developmental Psychology. Zumba is very atypical to how I usually exercise, and it’s a lot of fun to kind of just get into it and feel a little goofy. I’ll definitely try to go sometime next week as well.

As I mentioned earlier, today marks the halfway point of our course, and while this might seem crazy, it also feels realistic to me. This experience has been strange because normally whenever I’m away from home everything feels new, exciting, and different. However, I’ve now become somewhat accustomed to the University of Chicago and my routine here, and it’s not like I do something special everyday, beyond the magic of learning. This ordinariness in itself is a weird experience for me, but it’s also very cool to realize how quickly one can adjust to new situations. Our cohort college touring feels like a lifetime ago, and my everyday antics back in El Cerrito feel like forever ago. Still, I can tell I’m starting to get mildly homesick and I think I will be ready to return in a week and half. But not yet! For now, I’ve still got new things to learn, new places to visit, and new memories to make.