There Went Three Days of My Life…

FINALLY, I can take a sigh of relief at having finished my monster stretch of grading that I had to do this week. In addition to the weekly 55 Meteo 003 labs from my two sections, there were 55 Meteo 003 quizzes, 25 Rad Tran problems, and last night and this morning was spent grading the first page of 55 Meteo 003 exams from a test I had to help proctor last night. The mighty red pen has practically become a fixture in my hand, I’m starting to feel strange without it, even for a few moments to type this. But literally, grading is ALL that I did from Monday morning until a half hour ago or so, apart from attending classes or sleeping for a few hours at night.
But at least I’ve gotten some entertaining answers along the way, like one girl spelling UV radiation as “ultra violate” (for a second I thought I was grading Josh’s paper… j/k!), a comment that “…the last time I checked, most of the U.S. is above sea level” (I managed to resist the extremely strong temptation to write something very sarcastic on that), and that pressure is defined as “when air and wind combine.” At the end of the test the students had the opportunity to rate the difficulty of the exam (easy but fair, too difficult, etc), and I was surprised that surprisingly few students had the guts to check the box, “[Prof.] Syrett is the Spawn of Satan (unfair test),” hehe. Too bad it won’t save most of them from getting really low grades on what was in all fairness an easy test.
So now that I’m done grading (for a couple days), what’s next on the docket, you ask? Well, nothing other than a Rad Tran exam tomorrow morning! And an exam Monday evening in Meteo 501 too. I told Dr Clothiaux that the only way I’m making it through this crazy stretch is just focusing on one task at a time, in the order that they’re due. I’m not lookin forward to the Rad Tran test in particular, most everyone is pretty sure we’re all gonna do quite poorly on it, just because of the amount and nature of the material being covered. We’ll see, whatever happens, happens.
I was excited to find out that the lower 48’s first winter storm warning of the season was issued yesterday! Eastern Montana, most of North Dakota, and the northwestern corner of Minnesota got hit by quite a bit of snow, more than a foot (and almost two feet) in some places. It was kinda making me a bit jealous, what with it being in the mid-70s here this week, unseasonably warm for October in State College. But I guess I can wait for snow until at least the leaves have fallen; they’re only just starting to turn colours now, I’d rate the leaves as about one-third changed so far. At any rate, the front will hit us tonight or tomorrow, bringing highs in the low 50s over the weekend, the coolest air so far this season here.
But what’s all the buzz about this week at Penn State? Well, if you follow college football at all you’d know it was the fact that #6 Ohio State is paying a visit to Happy Valley this Saturday night to play undefeated and #16 Penn State. It’s the most-anticipated and most-hyped game at Penn State in years (if not ever). Beaver Stadium’s attendance record is something over 110,700 (the stadium’s official capacity is 107,000), set back in 2002 when heavily-favoured and then-#1 Nebraska came to town for a night game and was demolished by the Nittany Lions 40-7, and most people are predicting that this game will break that attendance record. Seriously, students — a LOT of them — have been camping out outside Beaver Stadium and the Bryce Jordan Center since Monday so that they can get the best seats when the gates open up on Saturday afternoon. A “White-Out” has also been declared for Saturday night, meaning the entire student section of 20,000 will be clad in white, if not the whole rest of the stadium. The game is so big that ESPN College GameDay is gonna be here on campus on Saturday morning, and I’m planning on trying to get in the background of it on Saturday, along with a couple of other meteo grad students, including Frame and Victor, before starting the awesomest of tailgates (by the way, Penn State has been voted the #1 best college for tailgating in the entire country by an amazing landslide (something like 80%-20%) over LSU, the #2 school, according to a fan poll on Sports Illustrated’s website). 🙂 The game will be nationally televised on ESPN on Saturday evening, with kickoff at 7.45pm Eastern (6.45pm Central). If you have cable, I recommend that you tune in for at least a portion of it (especially early game), so you can get a flavor of the amazing atmosphere here at Penn State, and just how LOUD it’s gonna be!! The place is gonna be rockin’! I definitely am anticipating not having a voice on Sunday morning. 🙂
Maybe our government should take a cue from Japan, where their government is cutting 10% of jobs. Go privatization! In addition to coming out for renewed oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is coming up with other solutions for our nation’s energy crunch, including (finally!) a new nuclear plant down there. Hopefully more nuclear plants will start going up in the coming years too, because we could sure use its clean, safe, efficient, cheap power. Despite people’s best efforts, man cannot control the weather! I don’t know what’s so hard to understand about that… And new data suggests that Hurricane Katrina was only a Category 3 (possibly as weak as a Category 1) hurricane when it made landfall in Louisiana. Gulf Coast residents won’t like hearing that news, but it doesn’t matter a whole lot, considering that whatever the wind speed was, it still had a Category 4-5 storm surge in tow. And Peter Jackson isn’t stopping with ‘Lord of the Rings’ or ‘King Kong.’ His next project: ‘Halo: The Movie.’ Could be interesting, we’ll see.
And finally, this headline says it all: “Python Explodes After Eating Alligator.” Enough said. I’d say that’s a candidate for one of the funniest headlines of the year. 🙂
Well, time to get studying!