Date Night

When I entered the dining commons this morning, I was surprised to find an atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion. The program had set up a game of assassin, in which participants would eliminate their targets by sneaking up to them and lightly tapping them on the back of their neck with a spoon. Most of the students were really into the game, and they didn't want to be out, which led to the aforementioned atmosphere. I was not playing, but some of my friends are.

The first thing we did in class was the student lectures. One of my classmates from Georgia was the first to present, and she covered systems of linear equations. She did quite well, especially as the first student. While we had the student lectures, Dawson assigned three students to be troublemakers to see how the presenter would deal with them.

After we finished with the presentation, Dawson switched over to a lecture of his own--this time with no troublemakers. We discussed number theory in class, after a puzzler related to the Monty Hall problem. We first covered number sets, such as integers, prime numbers, and composite numbers, and we had a worksheet involving the Sieve of Eratosthenes, which is used to find prime numbers.

When we came back from lunch, it was Shanti's turn to present. There were some odd technical difficulties, but they didn't ruin the lesson. The troublemakers were being quite funny with the way they conducted themselves to "sabotage" the lesson as Dawson assigned. One classmate was assigned to be obnoxious when answering questions asked to the class, and she played that role quite well.

After Shanti's presentation, we continued with number theory. I have hardly looked at number theory, so most of today's lesson is uncharted territory for me. We looked at modular arithmetic, which contains a healthy amount of symbols and notation that I am unfamiliar with. I suppose I'll grow more comfortable with number theory as I get more practice.

As the clock approached 3, we got ready for study hall. We are assigned a new project based on mathematicians, and I chose John Bernoulli. We were then to work on either our new project or our old one.

I went back to my dorm to drop off my things when class ended. I had my arete class right after, and new classes are in rotation. My arete class is called "Step," where the students learn to dance in a specific style. I have no prior experience with dancing, so this arete is rather difficult for me, though I am hoping that I'll learn it soon. 

After arete ended, my proctor group had a little time to get ready. My group had a date with another proctor group, and we spent the night mingling. Some of my floormates met some girls that they are interested in, and I am quite amused.