First Class Today!

This morning my class met for the first time. This is the one, the Big Reason I came over to Austria. It's called "Process Analysis and Evaluation". If you're still awake from reading that, its sub-title is "Environmental Engineering and Management". I loved it.

There are 11 students in the class, and the professor teaches from Powerpoint slides projected on a screen. This is my favorite way to learn, I think. We all sit around a big table and he talks about each slide and we can take notes on the printouts we have. He started out by telling the class (auf Deutsch) that since we had an American visitor, the class would be taught in English. I felt a bit guilty, because a girl sitting near me groaned and muttered something to the guy next to her. But I'm glad the professor is doing it, because my German is adequate only for ordering at a restaurant and shopping at the grocery store. However, there is no way I could learn anything from someone speaking technical German. Fortunately the slides are in English, too. Maybe I'm spoiled.

Today we talked about material flows in the environment, like how water moves from the air to the ground to the rivers to the oceans and back to the air again. We talked about similar cycles with carbon, and copper, and aluminum. Nerdy stuff, yes. It's just the basics now, but I'm looking forward to the rest of the course.

One thing that was different from what I expected was that the rest of the lectures for the class were scheduled by group consensus. When I registered for this class online, it showed that the class would meet from 8am to 5pm for the rest of this week and then be over. Kind of like an Intensive Course, I figured. Turns out that the professor had other engagements this week and we had to decide when we would meet again. It won't be until 25April now. This is actually good, because I want to e-mail a professor at Iowa State and get some recommendations on books related to this area of study. Maybe I can come to class more prepared.

One more odd thing: At the end of the lecture all the students began rapping their knuckles on the table. I joined them, because I had seen this once before. As far as I can tell, it's a sign of respect for the professor, a kind of applause. I think it's cool.

It feels good to have a drive and sense of purpose. For the last month and a half I think I was drifting pretty aimlessly. Too disoriented from my new surroundings to focus on my research work. Now I feel revitalized. I want this feeling to last.