Day one of class

First day of class
2 Jun 11

I started my statistics class the other day, one of nine
pre-requisites for the master’s degree in nursing at the U of M. I am excited. The course-work will be relevant, useful and intuitive. Since senior year in high school I have tried to take a statistics course but the sections were always full at registration. This course will contribute to my formation as a contributor to the world’s knowledge and understanding.

My classmates seem to be of high quality, too. In one of the clicker-based polls we got 100 percent, impressing the professor. There is not a lot of hallah hallah in there either (mercifully). I think people in math classes tend to be goal-driven and oriented toward problem solving. And the ones who need the class as a pre-requisite are motivated as well.

And I have already started fantasizing about the woman who sits next to me. S is her name. I wrote down some observations on the first day: cannot tell age. could be 23 to 28. tan skin. trim figure. sandals, jeans, tank top. drinking from a water bottle in the typical habit of a high school or college chick. brown hair. possible smoker? the skin on her face is somewhat rough-looking, an attribute I associate with smoking, rightly or wrongly. if she is honest, she has four or more piercings, according to a class poll. maybe one is through her nipple. could not confirm.

I talked to her the next day before class outside the building – she eating a granola bar and me eating a banana – and found out she is taking the class as a pre-requisite for a social work degree. She bikes to class, just like me, and lives in the Wedge neighborhood. I began picturing our future life together: we will live on a homestead in Montana, in a green valley beneath a pale blue mountain. The winters will be harsh and long but we will survive thanks to our diligent work and planning. I will take care of the cattle and horses and concentrate on my writing in the shed. She will take to the hard toil of gardening in the poor soil to provide us nutrition, and to her artistic pursuits. Some of her products will sell online for a decent price. Wealthy people, seeking montane purity and refuge, will come to visit during the summer in a lodge we set up a mile from the house. We will have our fights, of course, maybe even sleeping in separate beds, but overall we will be happy, healthy and strong. There will be no children, rather only a desire to make the world a better place. As we age we will eventually have to leave the valley and move to a city. We will sell the ranch to a nature conservancy and no one else. And one day one of us will look into the face of the other for the last time and commit him, without any regrets, to his root-pierced grave. I should ask if she has a boyfriend.

But that is neither here nor there. What I also like about this class is the practicality. I already understand much of the subject matter qualitatively and have used some of the methods before, but the work will give me a more quantitative understanding. And the most useful part may be having practice in Minitab and Excel. And I will walk away from the course knowing that the double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial is the gold standard in moving much of the evidence forward, especially in clinical science. That is something everyone should know.