Today was my first Modeling and Control (ModCon) lab. It wasn't a hard lab, but there was lots that could go wrong, and it seemed like everything did. There were also lots of students who hadn't worked with circuits before, which complicated things. (One of my friends from high school would have scolded me for helping other people before doing my own work.)
I not only had Electricity and Magnetism in high school but also a circuits class (EC, for Electric Circuits), and today reminded me of the EC labs. As I thought more about it, though, I realized that the ModCon lab today had very little in common with EC labs, other than the material and the circuit debugging. Eventually I realized that it wasn't so much that ModCon was reminding me of EC -- it was making me miss EC.
Anyone who spent much time with me during spring semester of my senior year will know that EC was my most frustrating class. Modern Physics 2 was my hardest, but EC was the one that took by far the most time. I had trouble with the labs and was a bit behind, then missed something like eight hours of lab while on a college visit. For weeks I was the first person into the lab on Monday afternoons, and I started going in on Tuesday mornings as well. The work outside of lab wasn't as frustrating, but there was plenty of it. I complained about EC more than any of my other courses.
I never thought I would hear myself say that I miss EC. It would have seemed absurd, but I'm also not as surprised as I should be.
Reasons ModCon makes me miss EC:
1. I don't know where anything is. I could find everything in the EC lab. I'll probably figure out where things are in the ModCon room soon enough.
2. No music. In EC, someone usually played music off his laptop. Cello music makes banging one's head against the brick wall of circuitry so much less painful.
3. There are thirty people in the lab, not six. Actually, EC started the semester with ten, but within two weeks we lost two of those, and we ended with six people. I like small classes, and I especially like small labs. I knew everyone in EC pretty well, which brings me to...
4. Those thirty people simply aren't the EC people. Even when it was eight, EC was a pretty tight group. Our teacher was often late to our 8:00 thrice-weekly classes, so we joked around in the classroom while waiting for him. Most of us got to lab a little bit early, and EC labs were from 2:40 to 5:20. We talked and joked with each other for three hours straight once a week. I was the only girl, which did occasionally factor into the jokes. There was one person in the class whom we always blamed when something went wrong. That same person was the one with whom I usually left lab at 5:20 on Mondays. We knew who in the class was best at what, who was behind, and who was ahead, much better than the teacher ever did. I never would have expected it, but the EC class became part of my people.
Just to be fair, though...
Ways in which ModCon is better than EC:
1. The teachers. There are multiple teachers, and they are all helpful and have normal social skills. My EC teacher was incredibly intelligent, but talking to him was rarely easy. Getting help on a circuit was even harder.
2. It's shorter. The long EC labs were good for getting to know the others in the class, but there are sometimes that after two hours I just wanted to walk away; I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere. ModCon labs are a full hour shorter than EC labs.
3. No photo-sensor-reliant motion detector on a stormy day. I'm pretty sure EC is the only class that could possibly be that ridiculous.
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