Playing the "Catch-up" Game

Well... We're about 3 weeks into fall semester, and it seems like I'm already playing Catch-up... but only with the blog! It's hard work to keep up with all the busy work I get from six classes... much more difficult than the measly three I had summer term.

Anyway, Moving on with the story started last post (which you should go read if you hadn't, there's a chance you might have missed it). In my last post, I detailed my exciting experiences of meeting my new roommates and going to church for the first time in my fall ward in addition to my first day of fall classes. But! The real fun began the second day of classes, when I had 3 other classes I hadn't had the first day, and I also had chemistry again. So, on Tuesdays and Thursday I start my day at the wonderful time of 9am with a chance to study the Gospels in the New Testament. The first day of class was fairly routine, as my professor spent most of the class discussing the syllabus and his 200+ page packet of awesomeness. After New Testament I headed down the hall to chemistry where we spent most of class discussing some early atomic theories. Ya know, like Thompson's, Rutherford's, and a couple others? Meh. They're not that important since we have the nuclear model that we use now, but it's still cool to know where that came from though. After chemistry I wandered around for an hour hoping to run across someone I knew, which ended up not happening and I eventually made my way to my Intro to Chemical Engineering class that starts at noon. That class looks to be a ton of fun, as most of the busy work actually has some application and it looks like we're going to be put into groups for a few of the assignments. After Chemical Engineering I headed back to the Benson Building (which was where my morning classes were) for D&C (part 1) which happened to be my first class that actually had someone I knew already in it that I knew about. Anyway, my teacher for D&C - Professor Brooks - seems to be super awesome. About halfway through the first class meeting we got to the material - the Introduction to the Doctrine and Covenants - which I had actually never really read to thoroughly before and it struck me how specific it was. In class we also discussed a bit about the sheer volume of revelation that Joseph Smith had, including how section 76 (the one that includes the information about the kingdoms of glory - good stuff, you should read it) could have been at least 100 times longer that it is. Anyway, after D&C got out, I went home and chilled for a little while. I did some homework, but there wasn't too much due or assigned yet, so my day wasn't very exciting. I went to work from 8 until midnight as usual for a Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, and not much exciting happened there either.

Then it was Wednesday already, and it turned out that classes aren't as exciting the second day. Though a few notable things did happen... Foremost I came across some people I had met summer term in my chemistry class, which was super exciting because we have that class basically everyday so it's definitely a good thing to know a few people suffering through it with me. Another cool thing that happened is my math Professor, Dr. Barrus, informed me that he was perfectly fine if I turned in homework before it was due (which I figured he would be), and I proceeded to give him the homework up through the next week. It was definitely a good feeling to be rid of that monster, and not have to worry too much about it as I had a nice little cushion to work with as I progressed further on the homework. The last interesting thing that happened on Wednesday, though it was kind of a sad thing, was that I found out we have chemistry homework that's online. I didn't plan on it, so the $30 to access it was a little annoying, but I guess I should have seen it coming since I had been doing online physics homework for the past year, but I guess I thought chemistry was above such menial tasks... It's not.

The real excitement on Wednesday started sometime after classes finished, at the Ward Opening Social. It was held at this absolutely Gorgeous park down the road a little ways next to the Provo River. When I got there, we were in the process of playing some sort of ice-breaker, as usual, and it turned out to be the exceedingly drab one where you have to find someone who has done a certain thing or has a certain trait to fill each line on a list. It turned out that whomever made the list figured there would be at least one Canadian in our ward there... but there wasn't so the game ended up being a semi-bust. It was still a little fun, and I was one of the few people who had traveled more than 1000 miles to get to BYU (fun fact: My current address to my place back in Florida is about a 2300 mile drive depending on which route you take - SOOOO glad we flew). After the game they unleashed us on the food, which was super duper tasty. They fed us J-Dawgs, which for those of you who have never heard of them it's basically a large Hot Dog made of beef or polish meat (both of which are incredibly tasty) and covered in this super tasty sauce (called J-Dawg sauce... original right?) along with your choice of condiments on top. There's a slightly funny, and kind of awesome, story about who I ended up sitting with... it ended up being a couple people from my Home Evening group, but due to the incredibly large amount of people I had seen in the 2 days since, I did not recall them in the slightest. So, we sat there making pleasant conversation for about an hour before we realized it... crazy right? After the social I went home and worked on a bit of homework before heading to bed.

Insert comment from today (September 15th now...):
Holy cow... I just noticed how much text I wrote for a mere 48 hours... I might have to cut down on that if I'm ever going to make it through the 2 weeks I'm behind. Oh well, if I get tired then I'll stop, I'm running on about 5 hours of sleep right now, though I did take a nap for about an hour earlier today, so I guess I'll be heading to bed eventually.
Close Comment.

Then came Thursday, which was actually more exciting than Tuesday (hard to believe right?), or at least it was in my view. My day started out with an awesome discussion in New Testament about the different religious sects (of Judaism) around at the time of Christ, mostly the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and what their different views are. My professor, Brother Parker, made an interesting simile relating them to our day, with the Pharisees being more like the Protestants of today, due to their belief in the oral tradition more so than the authority, while the Sadducees are like Catholics due to their emphasis on authority. After that wonderful discussion I spent an hour vegging in chemistry while they discussed the wondrous topic of Stoichiometry (which doesn't seem to be a word in a usual English dictionary...) that I had drilled into my brain like none else in AP chem (Thanks Mr. Campbell!). So after chem I had to run to the shuttle and head back to Wyview for an awesome staff meeting, where I got to meet a co-worker I hadn't met yet since she works in the mornings when I have class. Anyway, so at staff meeting we had a quiz on the RA's, and I got all of them except one because I couldn't remember the RA for building 4's last name... otherwise I got all of them, which was more than almost everyone else that was there (I think my boss got them all... but she didn't tell us). After staff meeting I got a ride back to campus so I could make my noon chemical engineering class, which turned out to have someone that is also in my chemistry class, and that I happened to meet summer term. Anyway after ChemE I headed over to D&C which is quickly becoming one of my favorite classes. Today we got to talk about the six purposes of the Doctrine and Covenants which are:

1. Voice of warning
2. Message is clear that we have a responsibility to take that voice of warning to the world
3. Part of our responsibility is to prepare ourselves and the world for the second coming
4. Purpose of bearing witness that joseph smith was a prophet of god
5. Witness that the book of Mormon is true
6. Identify that the church of Jesus christ of latter-day saints is the only true and living church on the face of the earth

While discussing this Brother Brooks brought up a quote from President Hunter, which I really liked, from the January 1994 New Era. He said "As children of God we must seek to dispel fear from among people. A timid, fearing people cannot do their work well, and they cannot do God’s work at all. Latter-day Saints have a divinely assigned mission to fulfill which simply must not be dissipated in fear and anxiety." I find this to be an interesting quote, largely because of the truthfulness of it, but also because it gives us motivation to lessen the fear in ourselves and others in order to move God's work forward.

Fast forward a few hours to about 4pm when I got a text from my Bishop asking if I could meet with him at 6:20 that night. Of course I said yes, and so began the hours of anticipating what purpose the Bishop could need to see me for. I asked around a little bit and found that usually if things like that happen you get a calling fairly soon after that. So, I went into the interview not really knowing what to expect, and it turned out to basically be a worthiness interview which he appears to do with most everyone the first month or so of the ward (Fast forward 2.5 weeks and I get a calling to be an assistant ward clerk, funny story about that later though). So after the interview I left feeling a little perplexed about why I was called in since it didn't seem to be anything of urgent need, since I already have a limited-use temple recommend, and I didn't get a calling, so I chatted a little bit with one of my co-workers who seemed utterly convinced I would be an elder's quorum president, which I didn't end up becoming. Work that night was fairly routine, not many people came in so I got to get a bit of homework done, and I chatted with some RAs for a little while.

Insert Another comment from today:
It seems like I'm spewing a novel for this post.... if you were to copy this into a real word processor, it would already be 2-3 pages long and I've only covered .. so if you would like me to keep the posts shorter and more frequent (I'm thinking most days in fall semester might end up like Wednesday, with not much happening but usually at least one noteworthy thing) please vote in the poll at the bottom. So I'm gonna keep moving on this post... because I wanted to at least get through Saturday, and I'm just barely through Thursday.
Close Comment.

Then came Friday, my first day of ChemLab. It was certainly an interesting experience, and it was definitely an interesting day with it starting out in leadership at 8am (which is always interesting, if only because it's at 8am and nobody is quite awake yet). Anyway, the exciting part started after calc ended and I wandered over to the chemistry computer lab and found a mass of people there. It turns out that the virtual chem lab they were having us do for this week was having some serious issues, and people weren't able to access it or it wouldn't load on the computers for various reasons. So, for some people it took over three hours, while I was lucky and once I started it only took about an hour and a half. After I finished with that, I went home and to celebrate finishing the first week of fall semester had a Merlin Marathon (I mentioned more about the show in a previous post) and finished up what was left to watch on Netflix. Sadly though there's 4 seasons already done, and they're filming a 5th, but only the first 3 are on Netflix so it looks like I'll be waiting a while yet before I can keep watching.

After Friday of course came Saturday, which seems to have not been too noteworthy as there isn't anything on my calendar except for work. So I'm pretty sure what ended up happening is I woke sometime in the morning, realized I didn't have anything to do so I fiddled around on facebook a bit, then went back to sleep for a few hours. After I got up the second time I baked some cookies and ate some food, then it was time for a non-exciting day at work.

That finishes up that week, so I guess I'll end this forever long post.

'Til Next Time,
Jordan Nielson

Oh hey... It's fall already?

Preface: So... because I want to get at least something published tonight, and I could probably type on for another few paragraphs about the next few days I figure I'll make 3 different posts about the time since I last posted, the first being this one that covers from when my roommates moved in to Monday night ( a period of about 5 days).


Well... It's been about a month since I last posted on here, and there's been quite a bit happening, so I might have to cut this post into two parts depending on how I'm feeling and if I actually check the length before posting it. Anyway, it would seem that Fall is already upon us here at BYU and we've finished two weeks of classes already. But before that, I figure I should start way back when with my roommates already getting here at the beginning of the semester.

So, way back on like the 22nd of August, my first roommate moved in. I didn't know him before he got here, but he's pretty awesome. He plays guitar, likes to play some of the same computer games I do, and happens to be from Utah. He, like most freshman, actually went to New Student Orientation, although he liked it probably about as much as I would have if I had gone. Anyway, so the first couple days were kind of interesting, but we didn't yet have our other roommate here. So, a few days later when the roommate that I met summer term got back from home, the party really started. The one I met summer term also plays guitar, also likes some of the same computer games I do (albeit they like different ones), and is overall just a pretty cool guy. So, it looks like we're going to have a great semester cooped up here in north wyview.

Moving on... it ended up that we have 9am church, which is kind of a stretch for my roommates as they both like staying up rather late, and a bit challenging for me since I don't get home from work on Saturdays until a little bit after midnight. But it ended up that one of my roommates, who is from Utah, went to his home ward with his family, so it was just me and one other roommate. We ended up being a couple minutes late, which wasn't a big deal, and church was pretty good otherwise. Sadly (kind of) there were no good stories like the first Sunday of Summer, so we're just going to move on. After church, I went home and made some cookies, which were super tasty, and my roommates got their first taste of what it's like to live with me (at least since I got out here and started baking a bunch). Then that evening, some friends from home and I all got together and ate a super tasty dinner. It was in one of the girls' apartments in the new Heritage Halls buildings which was kind of nice, but it made me realize all the more how much I like being in Wyview. For example... I definitely prefer knowing most of my building fairly well instead of just knowing the 5 other people I room with. Another thing is I've gotten used to not having a dishwasher, so it isn't a very big issue that I don't have one. Anyway, so dinner was a blast and it was super awesome to see all those people from back home that I hadn't seen in 2 months (side note: it's the 13th of september and I haven't seen any of them since... sadness :( close side note). Moving on, that night we had our first ward prayer for these new wards, and ours is at 8pm in the 4 rooms that we usually use for Priesthood meeting on Sundays so it was exceedingly tight to get the entire ward in there for 20 minutes. That pretty much sums up my first Sunday in fall semester, so I guess it's time to talk about classes.

Monday morning came bright and early, especially since my classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays start at 8am. My first class is my Foundations of Global Leadership class, which I'm still not entirely sure what it is actually supposed to be about, I just kind of go with the flow on that one. It looks like it's going to be a blast though, as the first day we got to play a song as a class with Kazoos. After that I go to multi-variable calculus at 9am, which would probably be more interesting if I hadn't already taken most of the class material at Valencia during spring semester but I need to take it again since at Valencia we never got around to the fundamental vector integral theorems (like Green's and Stokes') so I kind of wish to learn about those. Finally comes chemistry (111 honors for those who care which one) at 10am. Chemistry looks like it should be a ton of fun, as the first day my professor found an excuse to use a flamethrower to blow up balloons filled with different gases which was pretty spectacular. After classes I took the shuttle home, and chilled out for a little bit. I did some math homework, and since I already know the material I went ahead and did all the homework that was due through Friday. Anyway, after I got tired of math I watched my favorite show on Netflix, which is called "The Adventures of Merlin" (if you want to find it on Netflix you can just search merlin). There's three seasons of it on Netflix, and during the break between semesters I discovered it and watched the first season and a couple episodes of the second one. So today I watched a couple episodes of that before it was time to head off to Home Evening - Entire ward style. As typical of BYU wards on the first monday that the ward exists, we have the entire ward gather together for a social thing on Monday evening called Home Evening where they assign apartments into home evening groups and generally have some sort of ice breaker for us to do while providing dinner for us. My home evening group ended up consisting of my apartment, another guys' apartment, and 2 girl apartments, for a total of six guys and seven girls. Sadly enough there will usually only be around 4 or 5 guys there as at least one of my two roommates are usually working monday nights when we have home evening.

Anyway,
'Til Next Time,
Jordan Nielson