My first few weeks have been great! Not much bad news, lots of good news! Get ready for a long entry.

First of all, I met with my academic adviser a couple weeks ago and it was a great meeting. She was very encouraging… I need someone like that because I’m looking at a pretty good load in the years to come. I’m (for now) decided as a double major in math and physics with a minor in French. I am also going to try to get on the honors program.

The overlap between the three is really remarkable… between math and physics, the only thing that really does is replace my electives senior year with math classes (which is probably what I would have done anyways). To be on honors, you have to have 18 credits that count towards the honors credits.

There are numerous options. Any honors classes you take count towards the 18 and she recommended that I take honors calculus next semester, and honors history next year. Those both add up to 11 of the 18 honors credits already.

Besides honors classes, another option is to take 4 semesters of a foreign language. If a student does this, it counts 3 credits towards honors. That is very convenient for me since I’m minoring in French and puts me up to 14 of 18 honors credits.

Another option is to take graduate courses as an undergraduate. Senior year, there are a couple math classes that are continuations of classes that I have to take that sound very interesting. So, if I take two 500 level classes senior year, that puts me above 18. There are more options besides these, but they look best for me.

Besides getting those 18 credits, I have to maintain a 3.3 GPA, which isn’t too bad. If I want to go to graduate school, I’m going to have to get a little higher than that. I also can’t have any grades that count towards graduation below a B.

I’ve been really enjoying all of my classes except my Chemistry lab. It’s so horrible. I have an 84 in there because I found out a couple weeks ago I forgot to do this online quiz… it’s pretty much a completion grad… there’s one each week, but I forgot to do it a couple weeks ago. I would have a 91 in there if it weren’t for that. So, I just have to work a little hard, and I’ll be able to get it up to an A.

Other than that, I think I have As in all of my other classes. I’ve been kickin’ butt in Calculus, so I’m not worried about switching to honors next semester. I got the high score (105.5%) on my first test, and I’ve gotten high As on my homework, and perfect scores on all the quizzes.

French has been going a LOT better than I expected. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it at first, but I really enjoy Professor Oukada. He’s a very laid back kind of guy. He told us that if we get grades back that are in the 80s % range, not to worry about getting the A, because if we work hard and participate, he will give us an A. He told me I was a great writer, and I’ve been an active student in there. I’m probably going to go to Strasbourg in summer of 2009 with IUPUI for a three week program.

Other things that have happened are some mentoring and volunteer opportunities have popped up. I’m going to be a TA for freshmen chemistry workshops next semester, and a tutor in the MAC (math assistance center). As a TA, I will kind of be teaching a group of around 10 kids once a week. It’s for a 600 dollar scholarship per semester, and I’ve already talked to Dr. Zhu about doing it, so it’s looking pretty optimistic. As a tutor, it will be like a job. I’ll get payed around $15 an hour and work probably around 5 hours a week helping students with math troubles.

I also volunteered on Thursday morning for an IPS first-step-on-campus program. I was a tour guide for about 50 students (there was another lady with me, but she wasn’t loud enough), and just there to answer any questions they had about IUPUI. It was really fun, and very eye-opening for me. It was my first time in a real leader/mentor position. I have to have 10 volunteer hours per year for my scholarship.

Part of the scholarship was that I had to attend that bridge program this summer. I mentioned it a couple entries back. I plan on being a mentor for it next summer, which is voluntary, but I think they give the mentors a little bit of money at the end.

Aside from school, everything else has been going great. This week, I’m coming up on 8 months with Olivia. I know that’s relatively short to a lot of people, but I’m proud of it. The months have been flying by very quickly, and I hope for many more in the future.