Okay, now that I can see and think straight, here’s my first week up at Bufflao…
Okay, as I was “dog” tired last night, here is a *REAL* LJ update for all of you LJ fans out there, for those of you who are getting this in your email, it’s an email update…
My Classes:
All of my classes are *VERY* cool so far, we’ve had a limited amount of homework, but there is a massive amount of reading and studying to be done, I’m really enjoying it.
All of my teachers have email address, and they all use them – they are big into power point presentations (my psych teacher has interactive ones for every class, with built in videos to emphasize her points). Buffalo is *VERY* wired – for sound, audio, visual and internet.
Many of my classes don’t have finals or papers due (apparently the teachers don’t like to grade them, as much as the students don’t like to write them…go figure) so they base your final grade on a series of quizzes (and some teachers give you bonus points for actually showing up to class, which isn’t mandatory for all classes).
Another neat fact is that the teachers upload their notes to a website that is custom made for each student, so we don’t have to have them slow down their teaching, all we do is write down some facts on top of the notes they wrote for us.
All of my classes are very very good so far (my World Civ teacher greated us with a buddhist blessing, and will be teaching us about ancient chinese healing methods, and english 102 is basically students discussing whether a writer has a good argument or not, and us writing papers – which is very cool because not only does the teacher call on me whenever i have my hand up, but the entire class is able to do it appropriatley, and respectfully which didn’t happen last year in High School).
The Buffalo Area:
The Buffalo area is pretty neat (and it has a lot of fun things to do, if you know where to look). I’m on North Campus, which is techincally in Amherst. From my campus, I take a free coach bus 5 minutes over to the south campus and here is where it gets interesting.
Buffalo downtown is like a little tiny village, and it’s pretty nice (although there are a few not so pretty areas). But to get anywhere downtown you take the 1 single line transit (subway) to get there. It is a straight shot down mainstreet, and from there, you can get to the theatre district, all of the coffee houses, the old bookstores and more, you can litteraly use this road to get anywehre in the downtown area.
Every thursday night there are free concerts in the park, and “The Spot” is a very cool coffee house to go to, alot of students from UB go there.
And the reason why everything in downtown buffalo is open late…
::Drum roll please:: is that after 8:00 NOTHING is open on campus – dinner service stops at 7:30, the commons (our mini-strip-mall) is dead by 6:00 and the student union is techincally open until 1am, but all you can do there after 10:00 is help the janitors clean (which is good for those who have been punished with community service), or you can go to the library and read someones doctoral thesis on the mateing habits of the guam fruit fly, but quite frankly, it’s more fun to go and do something.
Thing’s to do:
– Coffee houses – and boy do we have alot of them, and for a cup of coffee, you can stay as long as you like
– Canada -Is less than 15 minutes away and the Americam dollar value is VERY strong there, so basically go there, drive 20 minutes into town, and do any major shopping (electronics and clothes, basically…), it saves alot of cash and they run trips up there quite frequently.
– Old book shoppe’s are very cool to go and browse through, you never know what you’ll find. And where else can you find shop spelt “shoppe.”
– Parks & Such (which are not terribly fun in 7 feet of snow…) hold free concerts up here when the weather is nice
– Theater events, local drama troups and comedy acts are also fun to go to, and they’re up here quite frequently
Friends:
Yes, I’ve made some 🙂 and I’m running into some friens from ye olde high school.
Dorm Life:
Is, well, interesting. Assides from the fact that somehow we managed to get locked out of the bathroom at 3 am everythings going pretty well It would definetly be an interseting study for an anthropologist The thing is, is that we have a few students who are having probably one of the longest “pissing contests” in the history of human kind.
One of them has a 700.00 subwoofer, the other has a 600.00 subwoofer, and they are trying to see which one can out do the other, which basically means the 600.00 person is playing “house” music, the 700.00 one is playing rap – the end result is that all of us are either
a – shutting ourselves in the kitchen and ask before opening the door “friend or foe” and then getting weird looks from the RA who is on the floor a total of once a week, from what we can see. Although this doesn’t really help as we can feel the floor vibrate. We may put up a sign reading “secret hideout” if we find the time.
b – going to the library, which is “okay” but as we have all found out, no one actually uses the library often, its quite bizzare. A few of the grad students who were talking with us told us how they went there to take out a book a maximum of three times in their college career (again, everything, including books is done online; even online borrowing – to do a research paper, just log into the Library s wesbite) – this is leading me to think that the library is really the bat cave, and now I just must find the right book to pull to get to the secret lab…more on this later, it definetly requires further investigation
c – Go to “the spot” which is the really “kewl” coffee house
d – Blast Yanni back at them… “Ha, take that…new age will get you!! muhahahahaha!!!”
Food:
As I’m quickly finding out, I should have gotten the smallest meal plan possible and just used dining dollars, the food here is, well, hmmmm… techincally and legally considered edible, although those with common sense would know otherwise – what they fed us at orientation is NOT what they really serve here. ::sniffles:: it was definetly false advertising, but have no fear for we have a few ways to get around this dillemma…
1 – the “elli” is our convience store which is open until 1 am, basically we can buy basic food here, although its only from brands that have some deal w/ the university so this leads us to option 2…
2 – Use dining dollars for lunch @ the on campus pizzeria and eat massive amounts of “make your own belgium” waffles for breakfsat and for dinner, cook something you baught at the elli with your dining dollars.
3 – take the shuttle to south campus, walk half a block and *tada* major food store
Overall:
I’m loving it, the place is great, the classes are great, the entire area is truly a “college town” and no one dumbs themself down for classes, the proffesors are *INTO* teaching, and really enjoy it when we can get a good class discussion going on – my teacher who has over 800 students knows my name, it’s pretty impressive. The campus is gorgeous, and downtown buffalo is alot of fun, it’s a place where you can just go do something, and not have to spend a whole lot to have a good time, and it’s really close by.
Anyways, more updates later, it is now 11:36 and I need sleeeeep.
Love you all,
TTYL,
~ Zeus