So, today was my “first” day at Brown for the pre-college program. Well, “first” because it is my first full day in which I actually did things. Yes, I did get here yesterday, and yes, I did do exactly what you do when you arrive at a new place. I went to the bookstore, the library, the dining hall (but totally not for 140 minutes because they had a soda machine and I wanted to watch the entirety of Overly Sarcastic Productions’ “History of the Roman Empire” video), and finally back again to the dorm to meet my neighbors. We also did an interesting icebreaker that felt like a combination of telephone and 2 truths and a lie, but it was more fun to take about selenium and J.S. Bach with the two kids in the room directly to my right.
Also, one of them is freakishly good at piano.
Or maybe I’m just bad.
But yes, today was my “first” day of pre-college as class started today. What’s great is that it absolutely felt like a first day. We did introductions with our two professors and went straight into a group project about naming every similarity you have with the other three members of your group. I asked one of the professors how “pedantic” and “dumb” (totally my words) we could make them and ended up writing down 89 similarities in the allotted 8 minutes. Yes, most of them were as stupid as “can all use the thumb on our left hands.” Yes, I am sad I didn’t get to read the full list to the class.
On a more serious note, today also featured a presentation about the history of the juvenile justice system. A decent amount of that was based on the current system’s focus on developmental brain science to educate and properly address issues, but I was truck by the lack of mention of Erikson or Piaget‘s models of cognitive development. It probably will show up in the assigned reading though, somewhere in the 43 pages of scientific paper I have to read through. I’m just glad that the topic’s something I’m deeply interested in, otherwise I might lose my mind. If this keeps up, there’s no way I’m going to be able to read Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.