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photo by DKJ

The Great Museum Romp of 2009

and associated bonus points

Through the combined generosity of the ERC Parents Fund and the Museum of Man, MMW-1 students this year may visit San Diego's most MMW-relevant museum for free. (Normal student admission is $7.50.)

In addition, you can get 15 bonus points. (Ten if you wait till December.) (Click here for an explanation of points in determining MMW grades. Click here for the museum web site.)

What You Need To Do:

  1. Visit your professor's office hours (or the office hours of one of the other MMW-1 professors) IN PERSON and procure a list of treasure hunt questions that can be answered only by visiting the museum. (The TAs don't have the question sheets and they will NOT be distributed in lecture, so you need to muster your courage and enter a professor's office.)

    Instructors' Office Hours
    T.D. Carter: M & W 11-1*
    N.J. Friedlander: M 1:30-2:30, W 2-3.*
    D.K. Jordan: W 3:00-4:30, F 12:30-1:50**

    * ERC 123A, ERC Admin Complex Lower Level
    ** Rm 282 Soc. Sci. Bldg

    Each student's list will have a different series of unrelated questions and will require you to visit many different parts of the museum. The questions tend toward silly —silly enough that you can't find the answers on the Internet— but the exhibits they lead you to are very interesting.
  2. Visit the museum any time in the next few weeks. It's more fun to go in a group, but you can go on your own.
  3. At the entry, tell them you are a UCSD MMW-1 student and show them your student ID card. They already have a list of all the names, so they will check you off and give you a ticket. (Keep track of the ticket. You will need it when you claim your bonus points.) Your ticket is good for multiple entrances through the day on which it is issued, so feel free to break for lunch if that is how the time works out.
  4. As you visit the exhibits, answer the treasure hunt questions. It is easiest to write directly on the sheet.
  5. At office hours, either of your professor of one of the TAs in your track, turn in your sheet of answered questions (with your name on it!). Staple your ticket to the back. (Do not staple it over your name!) (Remember: you can pick up questions only from any one of the three MMW-1 instructors, but you should turn them in to the instructor or a TA in your own track so as to make sure they get into the right set of records.)

Deadline:

If this is completed and handed in before the end of November, you will receive 15 bonus points. If it is handed in after that but before 10 am, Monday, December 7, 2009, you will receive 10 bonus points. It will not be accepted later than that.

Points To Note:

  1. The Museum of Man is located in Balboa Park (beside the zoo, near downtown), about 15 miles from the campus. Your car-owning suite mate or visiting relative can take you there in about half a hour. Parking is free. You can reach the park by public transit in about an hour if you plan it right. If you have a free campus bus-pass that takes you downtown, you can walk from downtown. Get off at Broadway, walk north on 6th Avenue, and turn right on Laurel Street (also named El Prado within the Park) over the bridge. It is a about a mile, and is usually faster on foot than by bus. The museum is open daily 10 to 4:30 and expects visitors to be out by a little after 5. It is closed on Thanksgiving.
  2. Museum exhibits are often more fragile than they look. Except in the Children's Discovery Room, nothing should be touched!
  3. Photography is allowed in the museum. If you photograph objects in exhibit cases, remember that you may need to activate your "macro" function, and be careful of reflections on the glass cases. You will generally have better results if you do not use a flash.
  4. Allow enough time. Not only are there lots of interesting (i.e., MMW-relevant) things in the museum, but also Balboa Park itself is full of other interesting things, including many other museums and even a puppet theatre. (Look for statues by Niki de Saint Phalle, the artist who made UCSD's Sun God.)
  5. The cheapest place to have lunch in the park is the hamburger stand behind the Natural History Museum at the far end of the park. Slightly more expensive snacks can be had outside the Japanese garden or at the coffee shop at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center. More elegant fare is available at the art museum's delightful courtyard restaurant or at the restaurant in the House of Hospitality.
  6. You will enjoy this more if you go as soon as possible. As the deadline draws near, anything with points attached to it comes to seem like a burden. This trip should be a romp, not a burden. Be the first in your suite, calling circle, or My Face volume!

    FURTHERMORE, if you go by November 13 you can see the exhibit "Gods and Gold," based on the museum's pre-Columbian collections. In addition to some very interesting stone, gold, and ceramic materials, it prominently features trephined skulls from ancient Peru. (Look it up. Discuss it over dinner. Gross out your friends.)
  7. Remember that these are bonus points. When final grades are determined, EQ will be calculated without regard to bonus points. Your bonus points will then be added to your score before it is compared to EQ. You don't need bonus points to do well in this course. (On the other hand, they can't hurt!)

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