Life at Stanford

The cake masters (Peter & Trevor)

The cake turned out tasting pretty good! Only problem was that those boys had NO idea what they were doing and thus the entire middle of the square pan cake was total mush. Somehow, a dormful of college kids didn't really mind that their cake was in it's liquid state.

Trevor making the frosting/ being bad

Peter turning cake making into an art.

Birthday crown (from Aunt Pam!)

Birthday balloons

(I still haven't figured out who put them there!!)

This was on the outside of my door at 7am when I had to go to morning hills. You can see the small hole i crawled through on the right. Didn't even wake me roommate up. Ninja. America (my roommate) and Trevor were responsible.

I asked Trevor to get me a penguin for my birthday; he delivered. My plan for halloween is to somehow sew/make a Mrs. penguin costume to match.

Well, here it is. It's about 8:20 and in fifteen minutes I'll be biking to breakfast with a friend and then we'll be departing for our first ever college lecture. Not going to lie I'm scared to death! I'm pretty sure i'll never find the building and end up walking around aimlessly for awhile. Hopefully not. Anyways, here's my preliminary course list, in case you're interested.

AFRICAST 300: Contemporary Issues in African Studies

Guest scholars present analyses of major African themes and topics. Brief response papers required. May be repeated for credit.

CHEM 31A: Chemical Principles I

For students with moderate or no background in chemistry. Stoichiometry; periodicity; electronic structure and bonding; gases; enthalpy; phase behavior. Emphasis is on skills to address structural and quantitative chemical questions; lab provides practice. Recitation.

EDUC 193S: Peer Counseling on Comprehensive Sexual Health

Information on sexually transmitted infections and diseases, and birth control methods. Topics related to sexual health such as communication, societal attitudes and pressures, pregnancy, abortion, and the range of sexual expression. Role-play and peer-education outreach projects. Required for those wishing to counsel at the Sexual Health Peer Resource Center (SHPRC).

IHUM 71: Sustainability and Collapse

Contemporary environmental crises such as climate illustrate how all human societies depend in intricate ways on their interactions with natural resources, habitats and other species. Some human societies survive for thousands of years, whereas others collapse after a few decades or centuries. Exploring such cases of survival and collapse requires drawing on the resources of the sciences as well as the humanities, since they usually involve complex interactions of natural resources and limits with social organization and cultural ideas and values. "Sustainability and Collapse" will explore these interactions and the complex issues 21st-century societies face. We will ask where our current concepts of environmental sustainability, crisis and disaster come from, how they are used in particular social, cultural and political contexts, how they affect human behavior, and in what ways they shape social choices and policies in dealing with the many problems that confront the global community.\n\n"Sustainability and Collapse" will explore what people in different historical, geographical and cultural settings envision as successful ways of living with nature, how such ways of life come under pressure, how they deal with crisis, and how cultural ideas and practices shape these processes. The class will focus particularly on the interface between scientific information and concepts with the stories and images that literary texts, films and popular culture use in addressing questions of environmental crisis and survival. What do we mean by "nature," and how do we envision its functioning? What stories do we tell about how societies have either ignored or attempted to improve the workings of nature? What textual and visual images inform our ideas about what it means to live sustainably? Do they accord or conflict with scientific insights into human uses of nature? In what ways have such stories and images informed the way in which we, individually and collectively, have thought about and interacted with landscapes and other species? Do different cultures mean different things when they refer to nature, survival and crisis?

WR 1DH: Writing & Rhetoric 1: The Virtue of Vice and the Vice of Virtue: The Rhetoric of Criminality

Rhetorical and contextual analysis of readings; research; and argument. Focus is on development of a substantive research-based argument using multiple sources. Individual conferences with instructor. Students investigate language and images that construct criminals, analyzing how these representations shape personal and cultural beliefs. Analysis of the costs and benefits of retributive, restorative, and transformative justice systems. See http://ual.stanford.edu/AP/univ_req/PWR/Req.html.