Dear Auntie Em and Uncle Henry
How are you? Hope all is well in Kansas. So this first week of college is done. I can’t believe this; thirteen years of private education, nerve wrecking, last minute cramming, countless hours spent writing papers, taking SATs, APs and IBs are finally starting to pay off. So far, Haverford seems to have everything that I was looking for in a college; it’s small, it has a strong sense of community and it’s close to a big city - so I can escape whenever I feel I’m suffocating. Most importantly though, I’m allowed to take courses that keep my mind off my mind. Although I love physics and I will probably major in it, there are only so many formulas and numbers I can see without going clinically insane. So besides my physics and maths courses I’m also taking two courses in things completely new to me: “Intro to Micro-Economics” and “My Blog, Myself”.
“Intro to Micro” is something that I was interested in taking, especially considering I might want go to grad school to get an MBA; might as well get started no? I visited the class during this first week and liked it so I decided to stay. The teacher is from Russia. He’s an extremely charismatic person, a quality probably enhanced by his accent which I absolutely adore. If anyone will be able to give me a glimpse into an economist’s psyche and teach me their lingo, he probably will.
As a freshman at Haverford, I’m required to take a course to develop my writing skills. Enrollment is limited to fifteen students in these classes, so a wide a variety of classes are available. They range from “Intro to Literary Analysis” to “Einstein’s life”. The one I opted to enroll in is called “My blog, Myself”. It’s not exactly an English class per se; it’s taught by a Psychology professor and doesn’t really involve reading any Calvino, Hemingway or Austen. Yes, it really isn’t the traditional didactic experience that you were probably used to in your college days. I still haven’t really figured out what this class is really about; our syllabus is a work in progress and is created as we go forward in the course. Anyways let me explain a couple of things about blogs, our main reading material in this class.
Blog is short for Web-Log, a growing phenomenon in today’s cyberspace. The concept of a blog isn’t clearly defined yet because I don’t think that anyone has yet been able to abstractly define it. Who writes blogs and why do they? What do blogs consist of? Are they really worth studying? These are all questions I asked myself before enrolling, questions that you might be asking yourselves and that I think this course is trying to answer.
From what I understand so far, blogs are written by a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons. Be it the plastic highschool princess keeping us updated about all the drama in her life or the Iraqi national discussing the horrors of the war, the reasons for which various individuals decide to start a blog are endless - I started one because it counted as homework... Some people use it as a diary of some sorts, inputting personal information, reflections, recounting their lives to themselves and who ever might be interested. Others use blogs as an outlet for their creative verve. The purposes of the blogs are as varied as the authors. As the purpose of the blog varies, so does its form and content. The average blog, the diary-like one, is basically a series of posts with the language register varying accordingly to the authors eloquence and ability in expressing himself through words. They can also be creative writing pieces, pictures or a combination of both. The interest that a blog can generate is a very subjective matter. Is the author skilled enough to truly convey his message? Can we relate to it? Are we interested? Whether or not blogs are worth studying depends on how you answer these questions in my opinion.
I don’t know if I’ve provided some insightful comments at all but hopefully you might be able to see why I was interested in this class. I’ll let you know if I ever find the answers to the previous questions.
Un bacio and lots of Haverlove to both you,
Charles
“Intro to Micro” is something that I was interested in taking, especially considering I might want go to grad school to get an MBA; might as well get started no? I visited the class during this first week and liked it so I decided to stay. The teacher is from Russia. He’s an extremely charismatic person, a quality probably enhanced by his accent which I absolutely adore. If anyone will be able to give me a glimpse into an economist’s psyche and teach me their lingo, he probably will.
As a freshman at Haverford, I’m required to take a course to develop my writing skills. Enrollment is limited to fifteen students in these classes, so a wide a variety of classes are available. They range from “Intro to Literary Analysis” to “Einstein’s life”. The one I opted to enroll in is called “My blog, Myself”. It’s not exactly an English class per se; it’s taught by a Psychology professor and doesn’t really involve reading any Calvino, Hemingway or Austen. Yes, it really isn’t the traditional didactic experience that you were probably used to in your college days. I still haven’t really figured out what this class is really about; our syllabus is a work in progress and is created as we go forward in the course. Anyways let me explain a couple of things about blogs, our main reading material in this class.
Blog is short for Web-Log, a growing phenomenon in today’s cyberspace. The concept of a blog isn’t clearly defined yet because I don’t think that anyone has yet been able to abstractly define it. Who writes blogs and why do they? What do blogs consist of? Are they really worth studying? These are all questions I asked myself before enrolling, questions that you might be asking yourselves and that I think this course is trying to answer.
From what I understand so far, blogs are written by a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons. Be it the plastic highschool princess keeping us updated about all the drama in her life or the Iraqi national discussing the horrors of the war, the reasons for which various individuals decide to start a blog are endless - I started one because it counted as homework... Some people use it as a diary of some sorts, inputting personal information, reflections, recounting their lives to themselves and who ever might be interested. Others use blogs as an outlet for their creative verve. The purposes of the blogs are as varied as the authors. As the purpose of the blog varies, so does its form and content. The average blog, the diary-like one, is basically a series of posts with the language register varying accordingly to the authors eloquence and ability in expressing himself through words. They can also be creative writing pieces, pictures or a combination of both. The interest that a blog can generate is a very subjective matter. Is the author skilled enough to truly convey his message? Can we relate to it? Are we interested? Whether or not blogs are worth studying depends on how you answer these questions in my opinion.
I don’t know if I’ve provided some insightful comments at all but hopefully you might be able to see why I was interested in this class. I’ll let you know if I ever find the answers to the previous questions.
Un bacio and lots of Haverlove to both you,
Charles