IKEA

After work this Friday, I went to IKEA in Brooklyn to enjoy some inexpensive food. I was first planning to eat meatballs or fish and chips but the line was extremely slow in the restaurant so my girlfriend and I decided to go downstairs to ea hot dogs instead.

The hot dogs are only 50 cents each, which is a bargain, especially in New York. We also enjoyed some frozen yogurt for $1. I also bought some cookies and caviar to bring home. I enjoyed a Swedish egg sandwich with caviar later that day, which I have not done in a year probably. It tasted absolutely fantastic.

I bought a microwave lid because I am tired of having to clean my microwave all the time. Accidentally, I brought the display product to the cashier, which was not allowed for purchase. I therefore had to go all the way back to get another one. Being IKEA, it probably took me ten minutes to walk there and back to the cashier.

I still have not gotten my iPhone battery replaced. The computer store called me and explained that they had “screwed up” my order. This was quite frustrating. I now have to wait for at least another week before I can have it replaced. I can still use my iPhone but it dies after about twenty minutes of use, which blows because I cannot check my email, GPS, or listen to music.

Another thing that blows (joking aside) is the subway. Trains are running more irregularly nowadays since after the MTA made the budget cuts last month. Also, it is stinking warm in the subway all day and night because of the hot and humid weather in New York. I am not kidding when saying it is over 100 degrees in the subway. Luckily, trains are air conditioned but they usually show up too late to save people from getting soaked in sweat.

Constitution of Sweden

For my next class in political science, I have to do some research on the Swedish legal system. This is not anything that I look forward to but at least it is not a very large assignment. I am to find out what the Swedish law is based on and how it was established. In all honesty, I have no idea but I would assume that it roots from laws made up by kings.

In any event, I had my second class in world civilization today. This is a pretty heavy class. By heavy, I mean that it includes a lot of material, facts, time periods, and names. The professor is making it as interesting as it could be and it definitely helps.

We will have our first class next week. The PowerPoint slides will not be posted so it will be exceedingly difficult to prepare for the test. Note taking has been based on slides and lectures but it is hard to write everything down.

We will have a review on the day of the test, which I find quite inconvenient. I would have hoped to have a review on the week before the test. Going over the test right before the test may just confuse students and it is definitely not easy to remember or learn things in a couple of minutes. With that said I hope to get a good score on the test but it is definitely something that I am worried about.

This quarter seems to involve very late classes. Last quarter most of my classes finished around 8 PM. The last few weeks have been worse and I am not home until around 10 PM most days. This is definitely tiring, especially since I am working full-time from 9 to 5.

Men and Women

I have political science on Wednesday’s. It is a pretty fun class. I had hoped it involved more discussions and fewer lectures though. The class feels a little unorganized. The professor has no real syllabus to follow it seems and he has not decided how to test us yet.

This creates issues because it makes it difficult, as a student, to prepare for future assignments. For example, I do not know if I should take notes constantly or focus more on communicating with the professor.

We watched a part of the movie, Lord of the Flies last class. This movie is usually watched by high school students, but we watched it to take note of how people may interact with one another in cases where a leader needs to step up.

We also had group exercises with the class split up into three teams. One with women only, one with men only, and one mixed. I ended up in the mixed group. We were to decide how decisions should be made if we were to set up a new government after crashing onto a deserted island with one hundred other survivors.

The group with men only had a much more authoritarian view of handling things. The women leaned more towards a democratic system where a few people would be in charge. My group decided to have a fully democratic system with the mass making decisions together. It was pretty interesting to learn about these results and how men and women may look at things from very different perspectives.

Operations

My first operations management class was interesting. My first impression of the professor was mixed. He seemed like a quite strict professor and he will use lecture material from a book that Berkeley College previously used.

The reason for that was that he thought the old book was better and although the new book is okay, it does not contain much of the calculations from the old one. With that said, this class seems to be focused highly on mathematical formulas.

This was something that worried me. I really did not want to take a math class in my last quarter. Luckily, the class also focuses on operations and techniques that do not involve math. Also, the formulas do not seem to be significantly difficult although they will require me to sit down and repeat the questions over and over again.

The class ended after two hours. Some professors like to spend the full three hours lecturing but this professor seemed to be happy cutting it down to two hours, which is pleasing, as the class requires full concentration at all times.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the classes turn out. There will be three classes of presentations and the professor will pick who goes when next class. This will be nerve-wracking since the first person chosen will pick his or her subject. Therefore, if I am picked last, I may not be able to pick the topic of my choice. Let us pray for the best.

iPhone

I work five days a week nowadays so last weekend was one of the shortest I have had in a long time. I used to have only one full day off in Sweden a week because I worked the night shift starting Sunday evening with the week ending on Friday morning so a two day weekend is not too bad.

I spent it going to Queens Mall to enjoy some shopping. I had not been there for about a year so it was a nice getaway for the day. Other than that, I had to clean my apartment, which took pretty much the whole day.

I will have my first class in operations management on Monday. I am hoping that it will not involve too much statistics and math and more management and human resources and that kind of stuff. I did not receive my book yet so I have not been able to get an insight in what we will learn so far.

In general, I feel pretty happy with my classes so far. I do realize that a few of them will involve a lot of work, specifically my world civilization and internship class. I hope to be able to continue maintaining my grade point average this last quarter and I will do everything I can to make it happen.

My iPhone’s battery is getting pretty bad. As soon as I open a somewhat large application, my phone dies after just a few minutes. I thought it would cost a fortune to replace the battery but a local electronics store in my neighborhood offered to replace the battery for me for no more than $37. I hope to have it done before next weekend because the repairer said it would take a couple of days to have it fixed.

The one thing that I find interesting is that the battery turned bad just in time for the release of the new iPhone 4. It does not seem as if I am alone either, as most batteries only last for about 16 months. I will wait to buy it though, as I do not want to commit myself to AT&T for another two years. There also seem to be some reception issues with the new phone that have caused a bunch of uproar in the media.

LinkedIn

I was recently informed about LinkedIn.com by one of my coworkers. I had heard about the website before but I never really looked into it, as I already have a Facebook account activated. However, the purpose of LinkedIn is different than that of Facebook and more formal and is something I would suggest anyone to consider signing up for.

The website works similarly to Facebook but focuses more on building resumes and networking professionally. I uploaded my resume for example and the website was able to automatically generate a list containing my background, experiences, and similar.

I now have an almost complete profile page that professional’s can access. This is not only for people looking for a job, but also for people like me who wants to stay in touch with employees and to get back in touch with old friends.

I also think this type of social media will play a crucial part in future job hunting, communication, and internal networking. It is exceedingly effective and will help people and companies to save time by not having to go over paper copies and such.

I do not mean to advertise for LinkedIn. I am sure there are other websites like this but I found this one to be the most widely used site. The reason to its popularity is most likely the site’s effective tools and simple design. So check out the site if you have some time over.

50,000 Years of History

Teaching 50,000 years of history in eleven weeks is probably one of the most difficult tasks for professors. Nevertheless, this is something that my world civilization professor will have to accomplish. Yesterday’s class being his first at Berkeley College does not help him either.

It is always nerve racking to have a brand new professor because unlike established and experienced professors, they tend to be more focused on satisfying the board than doing their best on teaching students.

Night classes are scheduled ones a week from 6 PM to 9 PM. However, most professors only teach for about two hours because students start to be inattentive after focusing for so long. Yesterday’s class lasted until 9.05 PM. I was home around 10.30 PM, which was tough. In other words, I had to sit through three hours of listening to the origin of man and how Homo sapiens survived the ice age.

I actually liked it. The professor was able to make it entertaining by throwing in some jokes here and there and he definitely knows a lot about history. He started by drawing a timeline on the whiteboard that stretched fifty thousand years. This really helped students to get a perspective on what we are dealing with.

Other things that I found interesting were the discovery or invention of agriculture, when fire most likely was discovered, and how humans evolved throughout history. I have not really studied this before except for a short period in high school. Relearning it in college definitely helps to refresh my mind.

I also found it interesting for the fact that this class focuses more on America than I am used to. For example, we talked about how Indians survived before the domestication of horses. I am looking forward to learn more in this class.

Political Science

I had my first class in Political Science yesterday. I feel very good about the professor, who seems to be exceedingly knowledgeable and most importantly, charismatic and entertaining. The first class lasted for about two and a half hours, which is pretty long for being the first class. However, the time went fast thanks to interesting topics.

We covered a lot of history of the American government yesterday. We learned, among other things, about the 3/5 rule and how the voting system was established. Learning about these things really helps students to get a perspective on the politics of America.

It is easy to form opinions while reading newspapers. Unfortunately, these opinions are far too often based subjective and untrue statements. To know the reasons and facts about events, will definitely help me to get an advantage in arguments and debates.

The 3/5 rule was quite fascinating. Naturally, states wanted as many of their habitants to count as possible so that they had more votes in congress. Those states that allowed slaves wanted to be able to count these people towards the size of the state. However, those states that did not allow slaves thought this was unfair.

The 3/5 rule was established based on this issue. Basically, one slave would be worth 3/5 of a person. Or, out of five slaves, only three would be counted towards the population. Learning about things like this is particularly interesting, especially as an international student.