It Will Never End

I forgot to correct my spelling in the title for last time I wrote. "Foramena" is supposed to be spelled "Foramina." A foramen is basically some kind of hole that goes through a bone. Not to be confused with a canal, a fissure, or a fossa.

I have been really busy this past week, but I decided that I might as well take some time to send an update to all of my fans. :P When I say it like that, it makes me sound like a celebrity. Bwahaha.

All of my classes seem to be going rather well. I love them all, even though some of them are extremely demanding on my sanity. For example, I still have yet to completely understand how to solve problems that involve electric fields, mass, electric potential, and/or kinetic energy of particles in my Physics 106 class. If any of you would be so kind as to enlighten me, I would be quite grateful. (However, I think the biggest thing I need to do is study more.)

My Family History class is amazing. I feel the Spirit more in that class than in any of my religion classes before. Including Institute. My teacher says that it is because the Spirit of Elijah is also there. I totally believe it. Something interesting he said yesterday that inspired me not to give up (since it seems as though all of the temple work for all of my great-great-great-something grandparents has been done on all sides.) He said that just 500 years back, we each have something around 1,000,000 "grandparents." AND all of their siblings. Which makes something around 10,000,000 ancestors (give or take) 500 years back. It's just incredible to me that so many people can have existed before and still somehow be connected to me.

The Marriage Prep class that Emma and I are taking together is turning out to seem more worth the credits than it seemed closer to the beginning of the semester. Our teacher is very intelligent and spiritually aware. He has great ideas and is able to connect things that the apostles and prophets have said that make perfect sense when he ties them into "Ideal Marriage." I look forward to finding out what he has to say about the Dating Scene. Bahaha.

As for my Chemistry class, (which Emma happens to be TAing--but for a different professor), so far everything is really basic.. and if I have a pressing question I can always just lower my book, look across the room at Emma and ask her my pressing question. Usually she'll know the answer. Most of the time, though, I can figure it out on my own using the book and my notes and whatnot. Which is good. (I should hope I can seeing as I've already taken two college-level chemistry courses...)

Introduction to Clinical Laboratory Techniques is an incredibly fun class for me. I've already been able to test my own blood for hematocrit and hemoglobin levels. (Mine are average-ish.) I have also been able to actually use a microscope and look at the teeny tiny eensy weensy white blood cells and red blood cells and platelets and differentiate between them all. It took me at least twenty tries to actually make the slide, though. It's really hard to get blood to go down to only one-cell-thick layers. I finally got it and I was so happy with myself that in my celebration I forgot which side had the actual blood on it. And I wiped it all off. So twenty more tries later and I had another one. Needless to say, I am now very careful to remember which side of the slide actually has the blood on it before I go to wipe off the precipitate.

Unfortunately, I have been spending too much time explaining my classes this morning. I need to go make another attempt at figuring out how exactly to approach my Physics homework. Thanks for listening!

Turkish Saddles and Lots of Foramena

I know it's been a while since I've written anything. I've been pretty busy with classes and getting settled.

I've really enjoyed my first week of classes. I met a lot of new people who I really get along with. All of my roommates are very cool intelligent girls. I'm glad that we all relate well enough to be able to compromise and discuss things without upsetting anyone.

I have a lot of work ahead of me. I learned in my anatomy lab on Saturday that we will be learning around 1000 terms by the end of the semester. And we have to remember all of them... That will be a challenge in itself. It's almost like learning a whole new language.

My physics class is very interesting. I've always enjoyed learning about physics. (Well, for as long as I've been learning it... I didn't take any physics classes in high school...) I also really love all of the professors for physics. They're all nerds and really socially awkward, but that makes classes so much more interesting and fun. :D

Right now I'm in the library doing reading for Chemistry and my Medical Lab class. But I decided to take a break just to give y'all an update. So here it is!

Wish me luck and pray for me in my educational endeavors. I'm going to need it.

Love you all!

First Day

I don't really have a whole lot of time to put up pretty pictures or even say a whole lot, but I just wanted to give an update of my first day of classes.

I only had two classes on Monday. The first was Chemsitry at 1:00 p.m. The second was Family History at 2:00 p.m..

I woke up at the same time that Emma woke up (around 6:30) because I've decided that I really like getting up early. The problem was that after I finished all of my reading and "homework" for the day, I had nothing to do with 2 hours to spare before classes.

So I decided to just pick a random class and go to it. I looked up the class schedules online and came to the conclusion that I wanted to check out a Calculus class just to see what BYU Calc is like.

I found a room number in the JKB where the class was going to be held in ten minutes. I walked over to the JKB from the Benson building (for those of you who don't know how far they are from each other... it's not too far but they're on opposite ends of campus.)

I barely made it into the room by 11:00am. There were a LOT of guys in the room. Maybe 2 girls besides me. I figured hey, not a whole lot of girls must take Calculus. So I sat down and got my computer out... settled down.

The professor walked into the room and said, "Welcome..."


"...to Book of Mormon for Returned Missionaries."



No wonder there were only a few girls in the class. Lots of cute RMs though. :P Needless to say, I stayed. It seemed like it was a pretty good class, too. Especially if you're already pretty familiar with the Book of Mormon like RMs are. And the class isn't forbidden to non-RMs... but non-RM classes are forbidden for RMs to take. Maybe because of their advantage. Who knows.


Well after that I went over to Michael and Sare's condo to help them out with some stuff, and then I went to my Chemistry class. It seems pretty easy so far, but most first classes do.

The next class I went to was Family History and I LOVED it. The professor, Brother Alford, is very funny and very spiritual. I'm sure that class will be worth the extra two credits it cost me. In fact, during his introduction to the course he explained that BYU made it so that the two credits for REL C 261 are made so that you don't have to spend as much time on the class as the university "usual."

After Family History I went back to the apartment and studied for a while and did some Chemistry homework. Then we went to our FHE activity with the whole ward at the Bishop's home in Alpine, Utah. The activity was tons of fun and our new ward seems really awesome.

I look forward to the rest of the semester.

(And now I'm off to MMBIO 120: Introduction to Clinical Laboratory Techniques...)