Reflections #1

It's midterm time, & in this class, part of our midterm requirement is to meet with our professors. This will be a good opportunity for them to evaluate me personally, and for me to ask them questions, enlighten my understanding, and recommit to the ideals of this course.

In our course, we have covered both historical eras of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. These are both quite interesting eras of history because of the changes, the explosions of new ideas, and the beauty that we can still enjoy (and study) today!

One of the first books that Dr. Burton suggested to everyone to get was "Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time". I went a bit further & got the "The Illustrated Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time" The illustrated part was something that I liked (pictures!) - as I have learned some time ago that I will browse through a book, looking at pictures & reading far more than I would otherwise do.

While I was looking around Amazon, looking for books of the time, I came across - and bought - "Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love", which I have found to be quite interesting. It is her letters to her father (his letters to her were destroyed at her death), and truly give the reader a feel for the era of time, as well as her love for her famous father.

During this time in our class, I discovered that in order to keep track of each day's research, assigned reading, and class notes, I needed to create a Word.doc for each day that included the outline of the day, the info from each of the assigned web sites, my own exploring, and the class notes.  Much of this necessity is because the netbook I carry to school is a gutless wonder that has trouble doing anything more than a simple Word document!