Loving my major!

I have heard people talking about wanting to switch their majors recently due to course request right upon us and it brought me to think how much I like my major thus far. I know it is still only the first semester of my first year but I have really enjoyed (most) of my classes and I am very fascinated with my Intro to Meteorology even though it is at 8 a.m.! I have been interested in meteorology for a very long time. I was the kid that would always have her head stuck in a book about weather. I loved looking at all the amazing pictures and just learning the basics of it. Nowadays it is definitely more in depth but that just makes it more interesting. Whenever people ask me what I want to study or what my major is and I answer meteorology they always seem to ow and ah and tell me how they would have done that if they had a second chance. I find that pretty cool that people find what I find fascinating interesting. In a sense it makes me feel like I made the right choice just from a little conversation like that. They then proceed to ask me how I became interested and I tell them it was from watching thunderstorms come across the river with my dad. We would go outside on the porch and just gaze at all of the amazing lightning and I will never forget that. It was so fascinating. I was really fascinated when Hurricane Isabel came through my area. I sat on the porch and watched it as it passed while everyone else was nuzzled away inside. Funny side story about when the power went out during that hurricane: There was a Virginia Tech football game the night the storm came through and we didn't have any power  so we had to find a way to watch the game. We had a generator going at the time but it only ran a few things such as the fridge. We ended up cutting out the power to the fridge and routing it to the TV. Go Hokies! Anyways... I have had a great experience with Virginia Tech and I have enjoyed all of the resources they have provided me for the best learning experience I could have. I had the awesome privilege of meeting one of the people that I only dreamed of meeting. His name is Jim Cantore and he made a visit to my Meteorology class when he was here filming in the Wind tunnel here. This is the link to him here filming there! Hopefully it will open. I couldn't get the picture of him and I but maybe it will make it into another blog!

http://www.weather.com/video/sponsored-video/jim-cantore-vs-cat-5-winds-39063?fb_action_ids=584757471583331&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582

College Academics

The school year thus far has definitely been different than I would have imagined. The classrooms are mostly lecture halls and you never do worksheets as you did in high school. Pretty much what happens is you take notes and then you study a few weeks worth of notes then take a test. I find that really difficult because I like doing exercises that help me understand the material that I have just learned. As much as I hate to say it, homework is actually somewhat helpful. I used to loathe homework in high school but now it is a welcome thing. I enjoy getting to know the material more so by the time the test comes around I can actually pass it. I hate that feeling when your teacher gives you the test you feel that you are fully prepared for and you actually know barely anything on it so you end up just staring at it hoping that lightning strikes. On my first real exam in my Human Geography class, this happened. I now know how my teacher does his tests. He is one for details and the smaller concepts. Usually most teachers put the larger concepts on their test and that is usually what I study. This test had things on it that he had talked about for maybe a minute then moved on. I looked at the test and almost cried. I felt like I remembered him talking about things on the test but I couldn't remember the exact details. Needless to say, I did not do too swell on that exam. The exams in high school really just cover the basics and you just need to memorize your notes and the main concepts. I really do miss that. After only a month and a half of being a college student, I now realize how much I took for granted in high school academics. I thought things were hard there (Which in some cases they were) but you always seemed to know what was going on and what was going to be on the test and you knew how to prepare. In my governors school classes, we had midterms and finals to help us prepare for college classes since we were getting college credit. The only difference was that we actually did exercises to help prepare for these tests so what I thought college was going to be like and what it is actually like are totally different! I like it though. Especially the gaps between classes and not having to go for seven straight hours of nothing but work.