Letters from War

HEAVENS,

Classes have now officially begun, and I have like 800 million thousand things to do - or so it seems. It doesn't help me either that I have been struggling with my health since getting settled into school. Stressed combined with what we think is something viral I've been getting really sudden and heavy waves of sickness, it's hard to explain the symptoms but I'll go from being fine - to basically sweating and being highly sick on my stomach. - and the trigger (get this) is when I eat a meal. I have been instructed to stay on a liquid diet for about 2-3 days then gradually start back to solid food with things like crackers and oatmeal - things that are really bland, and if I can stomach that eventually work my way back into solid food. I am NOT happy about that ... I like my food :o( - The plus is that I do feel 100x better as weird as that is since only having liquids .. it's been doing the trick.

Nothing too exciting and I can't write much because I have so much to do. However;

In seminar today, which is going to be my favorite class, I can already tell sitting in my other classes today. We began more indepth discussion on Amadeus, and will finish ACT I by Wednesday. It's not too bad, I'm not a big play person when reading, but I have gotten through the first reading assigment without too much difficulty!!

(side note : i was super tired and figured I'd take a quick nap before finishing ... NOT got too many phone calls some stuff going on at home anywho so now I'll finish since I'm awake enough to focus)

Dr. Kuykendall mentioned today how the people in Amadeus are historical, but the storyline itself is not actually historically accurate. I found that to be quite interesting. Perhaps we will learn why it was written so. Something new I also learned about was the Mozart effect. I had never heard of it before this morning but its an interesting concept. I was informed that it was a series of test and experiements where a control group of individuals were given words to memorize in silence, a set to memorsize with lyrical music, and then a set to memorize while listening to a peice by Mozart. The result (although techinically inconclusive) shed light on the possiblity that those who listened to Mozart retained more information. Its quite an interesting concept. Maybe I will look into it when I can't find anything interesting to do one day. We did a little bit of listening and attempting to explain (in written words) how a specific peice by Mozart, which is referred to in the play, make us feel / how we individually interpret it ect. It was very fun to hear and try to understand everyone's very differing views and emotions on one single peice of music. All in all it was a great way to start my first full day of classes.

I will have time tomorrow to write about the rest of the day. Until later...