I realize, looking back over the blog, that I say very little if anything about the ostensible purpose of this whole trip, which was taking classes. This was certainly the most interesting set of experiences I’ve had with classes and professors in a semester, even though I was short a course of my usual load. Let’s walk through a day in the life of Willy O’Hanley, Ithaca College student.

My first class most days was Data Structures, taught by Dr. John Barr, probably the coolest man in the world. He was born on an air force base in Bermuda and was an Army officer. My friend Adeesha told me a story about meeting him at the gym one day, running about forty miles an hour on one of the treadmills. Adeesha thought he was doing some short sprint thing until he looked at the treadmill display. He had gone nine miles. Dr. Barr is in the habit of throwing markers at people when they’re out of ink. Once, in class, someone had left a chair out in the open and he tripped over it. He threw it out the door into a stairwell and just kept lecturing. Also, sweet beard.

Next up is Human Computer Interaction with Dr. Sharon Stansfield, who has a concealed carry permit and never tells us whether or not she’s packing on any given day. She drives an old Mustang, I’m guessing recklessly fast. One of her favourite things to do on assignments was to have us insert pictures of her pets: Rebel the cat, Missy the ferret, and Sassy the dog. No one ever questioned it, though, because everything she told us to do came with the threat of being shot through the knee in the event of non-compliance. Also, interestingly, she is a vegan but brought us non-vegan cookies on the day of our final.

The day usually ended with Calculus 3, with Dr. James Conklin, who was a truly solid guy. His exams were probably the most fun of all of them, thanks to his tendency to include questions like: “Evaluate the second partial derivative of this function with respect to x, evaluate it at the point (1,1), and list that many things you’d rather be doing right now.”

I was also taking a course by correspondence at UPEI, which I highly recommend doing. It’s like taking a class you never have to go to. All around, a great semester.