So immediately after the four-day TCU experience (see below), I went off to Austin for the Honors Colloquium, where some 600 seniors such as myself were fed massive amounts of UT propaganda, some cool classes, and treated to the Swank� cookings of the Jester Center cafeteria, splashed with a gourmet luncheon served up by the School of Liberal Arts.
Here's the full report, blow-by-blow (it's a boxing term, you sick freak):
Day 1. Drive to Austin. Takes approximately 4 hours since I made a couple of stops while still in town up here and stopped again in Waco to satisfy the little voice telling me that a Spicy Chicken Sandwich is a very good idea. Arrive in Austin, successfully park the car and wander on into Jester, my (sad) new home for two whole nights. I hop on the elevator, head up to the tenth floor, now with a travel bag plus another bag full of freebies (UT notepad/pen, t-shirt), and toss everything down on the bed without bags on it.
My 'cohort' was the group of people who I hung out with most of the time. Consisted of about 20 people plus 3 teachers and 4 students as counselors. A clique quickly formed: myself, Ryan, two girls who were roomies named Natalie and Jane, a crazy guy named Stephen, and one counselor, a fourth-year student named Milan (but pronounced the idiot way: Millen). We all had lunches together and stuff like that.
Night 1 consisted of a massive presentation on biomedical engineering - the stuff you hear about on the news: cloning, stem cell research, 'growing' body parts, etc. Thoroughly boring, except for the strange part where 600 high school seniors giggled at the use of the word 'foreskin.'
Day 2. Breakfast in Jester was surprisingly tasty, thanks to a handful of glazed doughnuts. Had two classes in the morning, the first an astronomy lecture on the beginning of the universe. Basically, it's UT's opinion that the Big Bang theory is true, and the guy spent an hour and a half rationalizing it. Consider the following:
Scientists have estimated the universe to be approximately 13 billion years old. There is stuff out there that's 13 billion light years away, so it's taken the entire 13 billion years for the light that was there when the universe was first formed to reach us just now. So, when we look at that stuff through a telescope, we're essentially looking back in time, and the result for about the first 30,000 years is blinding to telescopes, comparable to looking at the sun through a pair of binoculars.
Class 2 was a panel (a lecture given by 4 profs instead of 1) about the effects of technology. A UT biology professor claims that by 2100, we'll have cured most forms of cancer and aging will be reversed. So, the death rate will massively decline while the birthrate will continue to increase, leading to massive overpopulation which leads to war over natural resources. gg world.
Lunch with the College of Liberal Arts. Quite bad gourmet junk. Ran across campus to Jester, bought a Hot Pocket and ran upstairs to plug in my microwave and eat it, and came into class 3 just on time.
Class 3 was a small class (couldn't have been more than 20) on aggressive journalism. Was interested to hear the experiences of a guy who looked like George Carlin plus a few extra pounds and how he managed to find something out of what he thought was a bad story. For example, he was assigned a story on Christmas Eve where he was to write the heart-warming story of the day about a bunch of doctors working for free on Xmas Eve and Day, giving free healthcare to the poor. As he walked through the door, he spotted a hypodermic needle out of the corner of his eye. That lead turned out to be a false one, but some instances such as that exposed corruption in the US armed forces and the Austin city council. gg.
Class 4 was boring. You'd think 'why athletes choke' would be an interesting subject, but when you have a guy who's more of a sports fan than a sports psychologist, you wind up with a 5-minute lesson expanded to fit an hour. Interesting experiment, though:
In many colleges, freshmen are required to participate in a 3-hour psychology lab: in English, be guinea pigs for the graduate students. A sports psychology study tried to find the source of choking (that is, performing poorly under increased pressure). So, they got a bunch of freshmen who liked golf, and they all hit putts. They would hit the putts from different distances so that they all performed equally (making 7 of 10 putts consistently). The first part of the experiment simply said 'OK, you've hit 7 of 10 putts for a while now, go do it again.' And they did, averaging 7 and a half of 10. The process, up to this point, took 1.5 hours. They added pressure to the guinea pigs by saying 'OK, do it again, but this time if you sink 7 of 10, I'll double your credit and you're free to go.' They all hit either 4 or 5 of 10, even though they had *extra* incentive to succeed. Cool stuff.
Work is now done, so part 2 of the Jester experience comes soon.