I was not expecting this.
I am loving school right now.
I was all dreading coming back after my wonderful wonderful lazy break... and expecting to just have to grit my teeth and bear it for another four months... but what a pleasant surprise.
All three of my new classes are amazing. Not only is the course material itself amazing, and not only are the profs all amazing, but for once, the DISCUSSIONS and the STUDENTS are amazing. My new classes are on the gendered and racialized structures of terrorism, psychology and politics, and protest movements and democracy... and we have really spirited conversations that expand and change the way I think about politics and the world in pretty much every class. And they are full of intelligent, beautiful, outspoken, activist, feminist WOMEN. And I am sitting here going... where the hell were all of you for the last three years of my degree when I thought all York political science majors were either ignorant chauvinistic Marxist assholes who dominated the conversations and shot down everyone else's ideas, or ditzy morons who were obviously only there because their parents want them to go to law school and just wanted everyone to shut up so the class would end early?
Even my two shitty classes that are year long that I had last term, stats and labour law, have their good sides. Stats is so miserable that a bunch of us have banded together in solidarity of how much we hate the class, and we just hang out in the back and giggle and make fun of the prof and do all our assignments together and chill. And my labour law class is boring, but I'm finding that I'm really good at dissecting case law and making connections between things and that I can definetely see applying those skills and knowledge and doing it for a living.
So. I'm excited to go to my classes. I am brimming with ideas for papers and projects that I am excited to do instead of dreading. I actually look forward to doing my readings (well, except for stats and labour law).
This is an unexpected pleasant surprise. This is what school is supposed to be like. This is why I'm doing this. And this is the first time I've been motivated to say this, but I'm going to miss this.
I was all dreading coming back after my wonderful wonderful lazy break... and expecting to just have to grit my teeth and bear it for another four months... but what a pleasant surprise.
All three of my new classes are amazing. Not only is the course material itself amazing, and not only are the profs all amazing, but for once, the DISCUSSIONS and the STUDENTS are amazing. My new classes are on the gendered and racialized structures of terrorism, psychology and politics, and protest movements and democracy... and we have really spirited conversations that expand and change the way I think about politics and the world in pretty much every class. And they are full of intelligent, beautiful, outspoken, activist, feminist WOMEN. And I am sitting here going... where the hell were all of you for the last three years of my degree when I thought all York political science majors were either ignorant chauvinistic Marxist assholes who dominated the conversations and shot down everyone else's ideas, or ditzy morons who were obviously only there because their parents want them to go to law school and just wanted everyone to shut up so the class would end early?
Even my two shitty classes that are year long that I had last term, stats and labour law, have their good sides. Stats is so miserable that a bunch of us have banded together in solidarity of how much we hate the class, and we just hang out in the back and giggle and make fun of the prof and do all our assignments together and chill. And my labour law class is boring, but I'm finding that I'm really good at dissecting case law and making connections between things and that I can definetely see applying those skills and knowledge and doing it for a living.
So. I'm excited to go to my classes. I am brimming with ideas for papers and projects that I am excited to do instead of dreading. I actually look forward to doing my readings (well, except for stats and labour law).
This is an unexpected pleasant surprise. This is what school is supposed to be like. This is why I'm doing this. And this is the first time I've been motivated to say this, but I'm going to miss this.