Rachel K. Worst Field Trip Ever

CaraVANS

I went on a geology class field trip to Mt. Rainier today. I earned myself some bonus points for my class grade by taking on the position of van driver for the trip. Driving a van, as it turns out, is pretty frightening. Driving a van full of Chinese freshmen who don't know the area or speak English or talk to me is really boring. The field trip was mostly unorganized and the van drivers had no real way of contacting each other. The walkie-talkies didn't work, nobody switched cell phone numbers, and we didn't have directions or maps on how to get BACK from the national park.

Rocks! Let us study them!

Without going into more detail, it was pretty awful. I drove a van for 8.5 hours and drove at uncomfortably fast speeds on the high way in the hopes of keeping up with the other van drivers who were speeding, but who knew the way home.

View of Mt. Rainier

Bonus points be damned. The trip was not worth the stress. HowEVER we did see beautiful mountain scenery, so I will put up some pictures of that and hope that it comes to be what I remember most about the trip... in time.

View of some kind of dam

A stream that turns into Narada Falls (which I don't have a decent picture of) 

The Reflecting Pools, which we fortunately got a great view of! 

Rachel K. Classes

First day of non-matriculated classes at UW and my first day of math class at SCCC! I am psyched! I haven't gone to school in over four years now. Moreover, I never took a math or science class the whole time I was in college, so this is all very new and exciting.

Red Square on the first day of classes at UW

There were SO MANY PEOPLE AT UW. Red Square was completely packed with people and vendors and sororities or fraternities. It was a mad house and it was completely overwhelming. I always thought RIT, my Alma Mater, was a big school, but UW is about 7 times larger. My Introduction to Geology 101 course was held in Kane Hall, which holds about 600 people and was at maximum capacity. I have never been in a lecture with this many people before, and it is really distracting with the amount of students who are on their laptops or phones looking at facebook.  The professor, Terry Swanson, is a guy from Alberta who loves geology and is very used to teaching freshmen. He even went as far as to say he doesn't mind it when students sleep in class. I feel old.

My next class, which I was fifteen minutes late for because I got completely lost, ended up being cancelled due to the professor's illness. Dr. Joseph Hannah is the professor, which I know because I met him when he signed my form last month. This class seems very interesting, but I can't read the syllabus until I am completely accepted into the class, and I am still a second class citizen non-matriculated student, so who knows when that will even be! All I know is that this class is smaller, and I'm hoping it will be less distracting (facebook wise.)

The bus ride between UW and SCCC is really pretty and goes through the nicer parts of Capitol Hill. The math class is in the SAM building (the science and math building) where the bathrooms have tiles with illustrations of bugs on them! The math professor, Andrea Levy, is a total pro and I can tell that she is a veteran teacher. I'm looking forward to learning from her. This is the only class so far where I feel like I am going to make any friends since more of the people in class are my age and are going into teaching. It was also 1/3 the price of either of the UW classes (blargh!)

That's the update so far on school. Here is hoping I remember how to do homework.