Classes, finally!

Today was my second day of classes.

Yesterday was amazing! First thing in the morning was Classical Mechanics with Prof. Likharev. Now I am not very fond of mechanics, but this course seems to be pretty good. I guess compared I get bored with the "boring" problems of mechanics. The professor started with a simple review of basic notions and definitions, but everything was from a different point of view than the usually taught. He is very lively.

After CM was Classical Electrodynamics. I got a little bored here, because the professor was following Jackson's approach and I had read some pages already. Still, I love electromagnetism and am looking forward to going through Jackson's book. The professor was also very friendly, worried about the date of the final exam (two days before Christmas!).

I took notes during class on a "draft" notebook I use for calculations. It was embarrassing to realize on the morning of the first day of classes that I had not bought any notebooks. After CE I went to the bookstore and was not disappointed by the already-expected long line. I tried the Seawolves Marketplace and got two 5-subject notebooks. Having minutes to spare, I had an apple outside the physics building.

Then it was time for strings! Around 12:50 PM I went to the classroom for the String Theory course. There was more people than I thought. Warren Siegel came early and stood by the door. I went inside of what was really an informal meeting room and tried sitting as far from the action as possible. I am auditing the class, so I want more "serious" persons to be closer to the action. Peter van Nieuwenhuizen came and introduced the class with a derivation of the Nambu-Goto string action. It was majestic! The best thing was that I could follow it because I have read some of this in Zwiebach's. Then it followed Polyakov's string action.

Just awesome!