Waiting

I'm still ninth on the waiting list for chem and sixth for bio. It's not looking particularly hopeful. A few of those will probably flunk fall quarter chem or bio and be pulled off the list, but still I'd better come up with a plan B. Anybody need a mobile phone coder for ten to twelve weeks?

What irks me a bit is knowing that within two weeks of the start of classes, at least that many people will have dropped out of these highly desirable classes. I'm amazed at how many people drop classes here! But by that time it will be far too late for anyone new to join. (Sitting in on lecture is one thing, but seats in lab are precisely numbered; I can't stay and watch.) I wish I could somehow petition to get some kind of better status for any student who will actually take the class.

I've heard that the huge influx of students is, in part, from four-year schools whose budget cuts meant fewer classes. I had wondered how I could possibly have gotten in to all my first-quarter classes -- when I must have had lower priority than I did this time -- if there was this much competition. After all, anyone taking chem 1B had to have needed chem 1A first, right? Answer: yes they did, and a large number of them took it elsewhere.

Busy day at the clinic

I showed up to the vet clinic around 2:30 to drop off some extra goodies from a recent party. Cookies, sodas, some fudge, fruit jellies... I won't eat them, so I need them out of the house.

Three people were clustered around an anesthetized dog, masked, doing dental work. One more was carrying stuff through the hallway. Another loaded laundry. Workmen swarmed the place, doing construction on what will eventually be the treatment room. The owner of the clinic squeezed into the room, still gowned from surgery, but with his gloves off and holding a clipboard. There was no place to so much as set down any food.

"Oh, thank you!" L said, seeing my hands full. "None of us have had lunch."

I poked a ginger cookie around A's mask while she took a breather. No lunch for anybody by 2:30 in the afternoon, eh? It gets just as intense there as it does in the software world. No surprise, really.

I found myself thinking that at least with the animals, there's a point to it all. In the software world, nine out of ten all-nighters are on code that will be thrown away before it ever goes anywhere. That dog getting his teeth cleaned probably has a nine out of ten chance of NOT getting thrown away.