UW Update 1/24/15

1.     UW Update 1/24/15

a.     Uneventful day. Got a lot of sleep to make up for my ongoing deficit. Did reading for education class. Slowly getting a better picture of how motivation is connected to learning and intelligence, and how intelligence is categorized.

b.     Went to Which Wich. Ate a delicious Italian sandwich and read a portion of the Odyssey for cow class. There’s this part near the end of the story where the sailors, having survived most recently the Sirens, a whirlpool-creating monster, and a hydra, land on an island where the Sun God Helios keeps his cattle. Odysseus warns his sailors not to eat the cattle, but the wind leaves them stranded on the island for a month, and their food supplies run out. While Odysseus is praying, the sailors decide that death by thunderbolt and shipwreck is better than slow starvation and kill the cattle, sacrificing parts to the gods in ritual ways. Still, Zeus, spurred on by Helios, sinks their ship, and all but Odysseus die. I thought this was a pretty crazy example of cattle’s importance in mythology, serving as the temptation that finally destroyed Odysseus’s crew. According to some of my other readings, a lot of moral ambiguity surrounded cattle sacrifice; in one culture, after killing a bull or cow in sacrificial ritual, a ritual “trial” was held; the sacrificial knife was eventually found guilty and plunged into the sea.

c.      Did more reading, and lots of brainstorming for CS essays, teaching puzzle prompt, and so forth.

d.     Went to badminton. At first I couldn’t get into a game and warmed up with someone much better than me, which was exhausting. But when I did manage to find people to play with, I played for several hours. It was really fun.

e.     Returned to dorm, showered, then went to the 8 and got a burger. Ate with Sam and Micah for a bit, but they got their food much earlier than me and so headed back to Haggett. Then I ran into Xin, Demi (Xin’s friend from Sehome that I had played ping-pong with) and Joey (another friend of Xin’s) and ate with them.

f.      Headed back to Haggett; wrote my CS short answer, then simply could not muster the mental effort to work on my CS personal statement. Instead did final reading for cow class while hanging out in the lounge. Abum was dancing (Eleanor commented on his excellent body isolation: ability to move one part of his body in rhythm without adjacent parts moving). Sasha was doing integrals, and one that stumped her happened to be indelibly stamped in my memory since it required a particularly contrived algebraic trick to solve, so I described the nature of the trick required and she solved it.

g.     Wrote notes on cow reading, wrote log, and went to bed.