Second week of COSMOS went by really fast. I get to go home for the weekend today. Hopefully I will get to skate with some of my friends over the weekend. Only bad part of today was that some guy got upset at me for skating outside of the cafeteria. I don't know exactly who he was, but he had a UC Davis shirt so I assumed he was a professor and decided to actually listen. I asked him if it was the noise that upset him but he said that didn't matter. None of the cafeteria people seemed to ever get upset, and some even seemed interested in my skating. To me it seemed like he just didn't like that I was having fun and he wasn't. It would be different if I were grinding the ledges, but I was just jumping off of them, so I wasn't doing any damage to the campus. If he actually was a professor, it is odd that an intelligent person would be so closed minded. I actually even had gone out of my way to not skate near where he was sitting on the ledge, even though that is the best part for skating. He said I might hit someone, but the chances someone would hit someone else on a bike while just riding are higher than me hitting someone while skating. I always get out of peoples way when skating and try my best to be courteous, but some people just get the wrong idea about skating. Several people rode through the cafeteria area on bikes, which is actually against the rules, but he didn't say anything to them. Another thing I noticed here is how god awful most people are at biking. I have been cut off and almost ran into too many times to count. The bikers here look like they are about to fall over while just riding in a straight line. I guess I have really high expectations of how competent people should be on a bike as many of my friends are excellent BMX riders. To me anyone who can't at least get off the ground on a bike is awful. Obviously rode bikers won't do this, but I can keep up if I try with pretty much all the bikers here, and anyone remotely good at rode biking should be going at least twice as fast as I can skate. One thing I don't like that much about COSMOS is how restrictive it is. The RA's are only 2-4 years and I don't like how being 17 we have to have group meetings and be watched over all the time. I expected COSMOS to be more of a college environment where you show up to class when needed, and the rest of the time do whatever you'd like. The helmet rule is the stupidest thing in my opinion. The fact that the RA's for the most part don't where helmets shows that what COSMOS cares about is not getting in trouble with the police from someone under 18 not wearing a helmet more than they actually care about safety. Just because the RA's can legally not where helmets doesn't make it any less unsafe or stupid considering they are all awful at biking by my standards. Even if it is illegal, it is dumb we can get in trouble from COSMOS for it, considering if the police if they actually think it is a problem will just give us a ticket. The chances of me hitting my head while skating I can promise is lower than the chance of one of the less "coordinated" students tripping over their own shoe laces and hitting their head. What most people don't realize, is after a certain point with skating you learn how avoid falls very well. Pretty much what I mean is, after one is comfortable on their board, if it seems like a trick is going wrong, he can just kick his board out from under him. So when a good skateboarder falls, it is because he thought he would actually land that tricks and was fairly close, and as a result, the fall is likely to not be very bad. Unless he hits a pebble or crack that is. Those are a skaters worst enemy. The actual learning part of COSMOS has been fantastic, however. On Thursday we got to see a company that was working on building flying cars. The other days we got to do some hands on work, rather than just calculations, which I really enjoyed.
First week at cosmos is coming to an end. It has been a lot of fun so far. Teachers are all great, and I have learned many new things. Thursday was fantastic because we were able to go look at a United Airlines warehouse where they work on fixing parts for the jets. The engines cost 20 million dollars if I remember correctly. Sort of am figuring out how to code in MatLab. I think the last time I ever tried to code was when I was in the seventh grade, and it did not go so very well. I managed to make a game in java, but it was pretty bad. Now I can code Calculus equations, which seems much more impressive to me. |