A LONG Week

Wednesday wasn't too bad because I had my regular seminar to attend, which was actually awesome. It was all about overpopulation and overconsumption, and basically how the world is going to collapse. Read my blog about it for more details (http://biofrontiers.wordpress.com/). The only thing I did NOT include in my blog was how much that lecture got me thinking about Science vs. Religion. Paul and Anne Ehrlich who gave the seminar described how everyone should only have one child. I agree about the problem, but I don't believe the Lord would want it that way. Overconsumption is a much bigger problem, and the lack of contraception provided throughout the world. Some women probably do not want large families, yet they have no real ability to prevent it. If others want large families - why not?It's like the song in Pete's Dragon where Nora sings "There's Room For Everyone". We just have to start learning to make room for everyone and stop taking up so much space ourselves! I believe the Lord intends for us to be able to bring as many children into this world as we desire, and assuming this will vary from person to person, I think it will all balance out. The real problem is everyone (including me), specifically in more developed countries, being obsessed with having more of everything. We don't typically bother to think about the people that are getting less because we are taking more. It's definitely an issue worth thinking about, and hopefully do something about.

When you first start a Masters program you think "This will be great. I can finally start studying things that will actually apply to what I want to do in life!" WRONG! Of course, I knew that research is long, tedious, monotonous, boring most of the time, and frustrating. But, I did somehow believe the classwork leading to the research would be helpful. This last week I have been able to learn that Masters coursework can be just as dull as Undergraduate coursework.

It all started last Monday as I went to statistics to learn about more things that confuse me for three straight hours. I decided not to go to my next lecture since I could just listen to it online, and I had some other homework to attend to. Since missing that lecture once I decided I will never attend again since I actually absorb so much more when I'm not getting bored in lecture. At home I can pause, go back a slide, and do other things if it's really boring. After that day I felt like all I did every day for the rest of the week was more homework!

Anyway, I went to another seminar that day about how to eradicate the invasive cane toads in Australia. It was a pretty awesome seminar. Me and two others took the train to the city (Sydney) to go see it. We were all really glad we went because not only was it a great seminar, but there are some other upcoming ones we hope to see. The only downfall of this long adventure in the city was taking the train home by myself, and not having any time to do homework when I got home.

As I said I had a lot of homework reading, writing, and hair-pulling stuff to do this last weekend so there wasn't anything very special about it. I did get pretty much everything done in the end, but I don't really know what quality. It turns out to give an extended definition of learning (500 words) is actually very complex. I chose to define learning in animal behavior complete with operant and classical conditioning, reinforcement, etc.. I thought it would be easy since I knew a lot and it had many inner concepts, but as I tried to back my definitions with good sources it got REALLY hard. Additionally I had another blog due and I got my grade back on the previous one Friday night, which made me very nervous about the one I was in the process of writing. Getting 76% is passing, but if I get many more like that I will not be able to get the grade I need in the class. With the masters program you have to graduate with a grade level above 75% to be able to do a PhD, and not to mention I'll lose my scholarship if I go below 75%. This is a lot of pressure and although I could see why I did not get good marks, I did put a lot of work into that blog. I may need a designated proof reader to check for fluency, grammar, and other issues. Unfortunately Matt's not so reliable with that.

I'm glad it's the beginning of a new week, but that means I now have my statistics assignment to work on. It's pretty much a nightmare when I feel as if I'm losing any previous Statistics knowledge I had with this class. I was able to go see the movie OZ yesterday with Brock and Kaytlin for FHE at least. Sorry for the lack of pics this week, but I do have LOADS to do!