First class impressions, as though you all cared
In case you care, I'm going to post my first impressions of my four shiny new classes on the quarter.
PARC Tutorial, "Chicago's Ethnic Neighborhoods" A pleasant experience, really. Hopefully it will continue to be that way. It is, umm, ten of us, I think, nine of whom live in PARC, and a professor whose stated goal (as it is a "tutorial") is to speak for the first twenty or thirty minutes, and then to simply let us discuss the course. I like the concept. It is, however, 3 hours long, which is kind of a lengthy stretch, so we'll see how that all plays out. But it was a good first day, if you ask me. Linguistics 240: Introduction to World Languages We didn't have class today. Well, we sort of did. We took attendance -- err, maybe not; I don't remember -- and we got our syllabus. Why did we do nothing else? Our professor is in England. She sent a friend. Ah, well. Soon enough. Thursday P.M., I'll report back. German 233: Modern German History Our professor even quoted his own CTECs: "Rumold is loony." He's funny, and he has a really genuine interest in German history. He's not really a history professor per se, but he's interesting, he's a bit off-kilter and he seems pretty fun. Sounds good to me. Our first class was pretty good. We're already reading Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. I'm looking forward to it. Classics 390: Dialogue in Greek and Roman Philosophy Wow. I don't know if I can describe it. It's going to be a great class. I've never been in such a strange environment, but it was marvelous. We had a discussion about what distinguishes a conversation and a dialogue, and oh, my, did we ramble. The class is in a room not much larger than my dorm room, and it's just got a table and chairs in it for furnishings, and there is not much space in it. The professor is some sort of special doctoral candidate or something who only has to teach two very small classes a year. This is his second this year; there are, what, ten of us, I think. This is the sort of class, though, that I've always wanted to take, because it makes me feel genuinely intellectually challenged. Although we had some 'duh' moments -- for example, when one of the guys, whose name I forget, mentioned that he'd had an argument in Italy about how many states there were in the U.S. as derived from how many stars there were on the American flag, and then we couldn't decide how many stars there actually were -- it was a great discussion. I'm hoping the rest of the quarter is like this. Although I'm a little worried about the two papers, which is what they amount to; ten to twelve pages each, with fairly exhaustive bibliographies. One paper, officially the "major paper", has no specific topic but should relate somehow to the topic of the course; the other paper, which Gurd calls a "final exam" for whatever reason, is not taken in class, obviously, is effectively a paper and must relate to a question which appears in the syllabus. Odd. But ah, well. I'm enjoying myself, and rambling, sort of like Gurd.
And that, folks, was my two days. I worked at the Daily tonight, tinkering with the somewhat-redesigned nyou, and, well, that was it. I like being webmaster. It's fun. Even if it is absurdly time-consuming. Anyway, that's not really of significance right now. Toward bed, I am nearing. Soon, soon.
TTYL! Call me. Please. Someone. I love phone calls. And I have no obligations at ALL tomorrow.