Back to the daily grin(d)...
I've been back to school for precisely three-and-a-half days now. I've attended each of my classes once and have successfully changed sections of creative writing to better accommodate my work schedule. Three-and-a-half days (including Saturday and part of today, Sunday) and I already can tell beyond the faintest shadow of a sliver of a doubt that this is going to be the hardest semester of college yet, and that includes the year I spent at community college.
I'm taking five classes, one of which is merely a quarter-credit badminton class because I need the GE is provides and because I wanted to take a class with my older brother before he graduates and this was really the only option. After all, it would be a shame to attend the same school as your elder brother for two years and never once take a class together. Besides, the only way to get anything less than an 'A' in badminton is to not show up, which shouldn't be an issue for me. My other classes, however, don't look to be anywhere near as benevolent.
First up on Tuesday/Thursdays is 'Essentials of Christian Theology,' which is an entirely misleading name as it's primary focus is on the subject of forgiveness, theological problems raised by that concept, and how it relates to the Christ story and Christianity on a whole. This class opened up with a fascinating short story entitled 'An Act of Mercy,' a selection from Vladimir Jankelevitch's Forgiveness and finally an essay by Søren Kierkegaard. The result of all this was firstly that I realized why I am a film major and not a philosophy major, secondly a sever increase in the amount of respect I have for my brother who is, in fact, a philosophy major, and finally the understanding that by the time we have to read Dostoevsky during the latter part of the class i'm probably going to welcome it simply because it's fiction. And that was just my first class.
Badminton comes after Theology on Tuesday/Thursdays, but day 1 was simply show up, get chewed out a bit by the coach who teaches it for all those times we shouldn't miss class later in the semester, and go home. We'll see how that develops next week. First class on Monday/Wednesday/Fridays is Advanced Directing.
Advanced Directing is something of a comfort class for me. Other than my brother in badminton, it's the only class where I already know some of the people, or rather, in this case, all of them. It's the group as were in the Beginning Directing class last semester, only slightly smaller as three or four people didn't continue. But, unlike Beginning Directing, this is going to be a class with a heavy workload. The first day's assignments were 59 pages of Declan Donnellan's The Actor the Target, plus two Anton Chekhov plays. We also were each assigned a research paper (mine on Ingmar Bergman's theatre work) due by midterm, and also cautioned that we should start thinking about our one-act play that we have to direct, which will be our final project. Last semester I was looking forwards to the one-act, and even on Friday morning the prospect was cheerful, but after two more classes that day I was left wondering if i'd even have the time to direct a limerick this May.
After directing I went to sit in on Creative Writing: Fiction and Poetry Section A. I had made it into section B but that screwed up my schedule, so I was short-listed for A and figured it'd be best to show up for the first day of class so as not to miss anything if I did, in fact, make it in. So that was a little awkward, being in the class but not quite in it. However, I was quite encouraged by the teacher, as she seems more sensible than my last creative writing prof, and said some wonderful things about how good writing isn't actually as subjective as people think and that there is some standard by which it can be judged objectively. Oh yeah, and my new name coming out of the class is Logan: Hypnotizer of Mongolians. But it went well, my piers aside I think it'll be a decent class, and I did manage to switch into the proper section, although it was late, because I have my next class immediately following Creative Writing (it's 5 minutes later) and directly down the hall from it.
This, my final class, is going to be the real killer. It's 19th to 21st Century Novels, quite literally, in fact. We begin with Mansfield Park and move on to Bleak House and wind our way through to such modern authors as Ian McEwan. It's not that I think the class will be terribly hard, I feel like my handle on the material is pretty good, it's just a ton of reading. Well over 100 pages each day, which adds up when thrown in with my other classes.
So yeah, that's my semester. Plus I have to make time to finish editing my film (which is showing on the 23rd) as well as time to go up with my directing class and see a number of plays in the cities, including: Syringia Tree, The Fishtank, Peer Gynt, and Hey, Girl.
I'm taking five classes, one of which is merely a quarter-credit badminton class because I need the GE is provides and because I wanted to take a class with my older brother before he graduates and this was really the only option. After all, it would be a shame to attend the same school as your elder brother for two years and never once take a class together. Besides, the only way to get anything less than an 'A' in badminton is to not show up, which shouldn't be an issue for me. My other classes, however, don't look to be anywhere near as benevolent.
First up on Tuesday/Thursdays is 'Essentials of Christian Theology,' which is an entirely misleading name as it's primary focus is on the subject of forgiveness, theological problems raised by that concept, and how it relates to the Christ story and Christianity on a whole. This class opened up with a fascinating short story entitled 'An Act of Mercy,' a selection from Vladimir Jankelevitch's Forgiveness and finally an essay by Søren Kierkegaard. The result of all this was firstly that I realized why I am a film major and not a philosophy major, secondly a sever increase in the amount of respect I have for my brother who is, in fact, a philosophy major, and finally the understanding that by the time we have to read Dostoevsky during the latter part of the class i'm probably going to welcome it simply because it's fiction. And that was just my first class.
Badminton comes after Theology on Tuesday/Thursdays, but day 1 was simply show up, get chewed out a bit by the coach who teaches it for all those times we shouldn't miss class later in the semester, and go home. We'll see how that develops next week. First class on Monday/Wednesday/Fridays is Advanced Directing.
Advanced Directing is something of a comfort class for me. Other than my brother in badminton, it's the only class where I already know some of the people, or rather, in this case, all of them. It's the group as were in the Beginning Directing class last semester, only slightly smaller as three or four people didn't continue. But, unlike Beginning Directing, this is going to be a class with a heavy workload. The first day's assignments were 59 pages of Declan Donnellan's The Actor the Target, plus two Anton Chekhov plays. We also were each assigned a research paper (mine on Ingmar Bergman's theatre work) due by midterm, and also cautioned that we should start thinking about our one-act play that we have to direct, which will be our final project. Last semester I was looking forwards to the one-act, and even on Friday morning the prospect was cheerful, but after two more classes that day I was left wondering if i'd even have the time to direct a limerick this May.
After directing I went to sit in on Creative Writing: Fiction and Poetry Section A. I had made it into section B but that screwed up my schedule, so I was short-listed for A and figured it'd be best to show up for the first day of class so as not to miss anything if I did, in fact, make it in. So that was a little awkward, being in the class but not quite in it. However, I was quite encouraged by the teacher, as she seems more sensible than my last creative writing prof, and said some wonderful things about how good writing isn't actually as subjective as people think and that there is some standard by which it can be judged objectively. Oh yeah, and my new name coming out of the class is Logan: Hypnotizer of Mongolians. But it went well, my piers aside I think it'll be a decent class, and I did manage to switch into the proper section, although it was late, because I have my next class immediately following Creative Writing (it's 5 minutes later) and directly down the hall from it.
This, my final class, is going to be the real killer. It's 19th to 21st Century Novels, quite literally, in fact. We begin with Mansfield Park and move on to Bleak House and wind our way through to such modern authors as Ian McEwan. It's not that I think the class will be terribly hard, I feel like my handle on the material is pretty good, it's just a ton of reading. Well over 100 pages each day, which adds up when thrown in with my other classes.
So yeah, that's my semester. Plus I have to make time to finish editing my film (which is showing on the 23rd) as well as time to go up with my directing class and see a number of plays in the cities, including: Syringia Tree, The Fishtank, Peer Gynt, and Hey, Girl.