Warning! Nerd alert!

It is with great joy that I announce my English professor will let us write about “a topic of our choosing” for our first substantial paper.  And why, you may ask, does the prospect of writing a six-page paper excite me?  Well, I might answer, it’s because once again I will be writing an English paper that will slowly but surely turn into a theological paper, thus making my dorky self quite happy.

We’ve been talking about Puritans and their religious views, which really is not good for Christianity as a whole, because the Puritans tend to be very confused, to ignore Biblical texts, and to make me angry.  Thus, in my paper I will be arguing just that, that the Puritanical beliefs do not have their basis in Scripture. 

Also, as you may have deduced from my writing style, I am once again alone in the German Seminar Room and am trying to psych myself up for some more late night reading.  J

Ramblings from the German Seminar Room

Last week was crazy.  I had a sociology research paper to tackle, which was an adventure in and of itself (I barely know how to write if I’m not analyzing metaphors or arguing for Biblical themes in books), way too many books of the Aeneid to read, and two chapters of bio.  However, I came out alive and unscathed, and I’m pleasantly surprised by the apparent calmness of this week.  Of course, I worry I’m forgetting something (like that bio presentation due next Monday or Wednesday . . . hmmm), but it certainly appears that the workflow will ebb and flow.

I believe it’s time for an update on my classes.  First of all, we’re entering the fifth week of classes.  Where did time go?  I feel as if I’ve been here forever, but not in a bad way.  Here are three reasons why time going by quickly is a good thing:

     1)   The weekends arrive that much sooner.

     2)   It means you’re really busy (which I am. Yay!)

     3)   By the time you process that you haven’t seen your family in two months, you’re back home for spring break.

But I digress.  Back to classes, in order of least favorite to most favorite.

4.  Biotechnology and social impact (Code for insanely annoying technical terms and liberal-leaning opinions):

Technically it’s my ‘easiest’ class, because the homework is minimal, but it is also science and therefore rather foreign to me, considering my last science class was chemistry on-line approximately three years ago.  Everything makes perfect sense in class with Prof. Robertson, an adorable little-old-lady with an awesome collection of stylish boots, but then I leave and am overwhelmed by nightmares of transcription, translation, reproduction, hybridization, and all the other processes that occur on the microscopic level.  So far it’s been a lecture class which, while straightforward, means it’s not always particularly interesting.

3.  English American Lit (currently known as “Apparently Puritans are the only Americans worth reading”):

I will give the Puritans credit – they wrote a lot about God, which was good.  My favorite kind of English paper involves bringing religion into novels in slightly tenuous ways, but the Puritans do that for me.  Sadly, they seem to miss the main point of Jesus most of the time, which means I often find myself, while studying alone, yelling at Puritans for misrepresenting Christianity to all the atheists in my class (of which there are many).  Instead of answering the professor’s prompt (oops), I happily argued that the Puritans were picking their favorite parts of both the Old and New Testaments and ignoring the rest.

Anyway, the class is pretty good.  The professor is passionate without being crazy (it’s a nice change), but man, does he go in-depth over the most ridiculous little things.  I think the constant over-analysis of EVERYTHING is what has finally disillusioned me as to the English major.  Eventually you have to ask yourself . . . “perhaps Mary Rowlandson didn’t MEAN anything with the change of pronouns.  Perhaps she just couldn’t WRITE properly.”  But no, we analyze everything, and this class more so than others.  It’s a bit excessive, even for me.

2. Humanities 102: Intro to GreekImeanRoman World

Speaking of crazy, Professor Mease.  Wow.  We’re in the Humanities class pertaining to the Roman world, yet she’s disappointed when we can’t answer her questions on the Greeks, and every other tangent involves Greeks I’ve never heard of and who I hope won’t make a surprise appearance on the midterm.

I complain about her teaching methods (a lot), and sometimes I wonder if I’m learning anything, but when I’m reading so much awesome, classic literature, I feel that it’s worth all the suffering.  I’m nearly done with “The Aeneid,” an epic poem I always meant to tackle, and I enjoy it quite a bit.  Even if she doesn’t teach me much, I’ll have significantly broadened my horizons. 

Also, the Romans should pick one name for their characters and stick with that.  Please.

1.  Intro to Sociology (aka “Dad is always right”)

I. LOVE. SOCIOLOGY. 

It’s the reading I start with every night.  ----  I actually love participating in class.  --- Our world is not at all what I thought it was. --- I can analyze everyone even more!  --- the readings address all my questions about humanity (minus the religious element) --- the novels I’ve already written deal with the stuff I’m now officially learning --- I can’t wait for linguistics

English

"And then Aaron and the magicians had a, a . . . a magic-off."

- Professor Andrews explaining the Biblical story where Aaron challenges the Egyptian magicians to turn their staffs into snakes.  :)

Writing (or is it editing?) 101

      I just finished the rough draft of a sociology paper, and I can tell you right now, I’m sure it’s crap.  I have zero confidence in what I wrote, yet I also know I HAD to get these ideas, however undeveloped and off-point they might be, onto paper.  I needed to immerse myself in the style of a “sociological report” which involves writing in first person (something I avoid at all costs when writing academic papers) and drawing conclusions from data I collected first hand (wait, this is suddenly sounding very scientific . . . ).  Basically, I had to give this paper a whirl.   

      And then I realized something.  I write by editing.  For creative works, I’m all about writing – getting those ideas out on paper and then letting them sit there for a healthy amount of time before attacking them with a red pen.  Not so with essays. 

      I’ve known this for awhile, that I need to edit to refine my writing, but it wasn’t until now that I realized how much I rely on editing to complete my writing.  Sometimes I’ll print out a paper, cover it in red ink, and then wonder why I wrote the draft in the first place if I decided to completely change it.  But if I’d never written the bad stuff, I couldn’t have uncovered the good. 

     

      I know this may not make sense to all of you, and trust me, I envy you students who can write a pretty spectacular paper on the first try.  Sometimes this happens to me, and then I panic that I’ve lost my editing skills when I’m not making enough changes.  At the same time I envy you, however, I do want to say that I adore editing, perhaps even more than I love writing.  Honestly, it’s not always the paper itself I look forward to; it’s those feelings of power, improvement, and excitement that rush through me when I pick up that wonderful red pen and attack my own work.

      Sorry, I let my nerdiness come out there.  :P  But still . . . it’s exciting to think I can take a paper I don’t like, written in a style I’ve never used before, about a research assignment that doesn’t thrill me, and turn it into something worth handing to my professor.  It’s a different approach, a different skill.

    

      So while you’re pulling an all-nighter writing that brilliant paper, I’ll be sleeping . . . and waking up a little earlier than usual so I can look over that paper one last time.

Some points of interest . . . (perhaps)

1.  I’m twenty.  I thought turning twenty would be no big deal; you know, you can’t see R-rated films, vote or buy alcohol, so it’s not too exciting, right?  Wrong.   The moment I realized I’m entering my third decade, I freaked out a bit.  This is a big decade, and (God-willing), this will be the busiest, craziest, most exciting decade yet.  It’s also the decade where I’m forced to grow up and enter the real world – for instance, I’ll be applying for internships this summer, and the odds are I won’t be living at home and enjoying Mom’s wonderful meals every night.  Also, I’m not a teenager anymore.  Scary!  Twenty just sounds too adult sometimes.  :P

      2.  Lest I grow up too fast, my first act as a twenty-year old was to eat Oreos for breakfast.  Win.

      3.  On Sunday I wore a sweatshirt, my purple hat, jeans, and tennis shoes outside (note the lack of a winter coat).  This is exciting and noteworthy because it’s the beginning of February in middle-of-nowhere Iowa. 

      4. I've realized I’m obsessed with commas/comma phrases.  I adore them, but they do, unfortunately, tend to cut my sentences into fragments, usually of varying lengths, and they perhaps make it hard for readers, but hopefully not my professors, to discern the purpose of the sentence.  Yeah, it can get that bad.  :P

      

      5. People walk way too slowly here.  It’s really annoying.  For a week it was approximately -10 degrees, which is FREEZING, and people were just strolling along.  I, as per usual, was walking with a purpose, and the only reason I was outside was because I had to go from one building to another, not to soak in the lovely weather.  

For my mother . . .

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
	Tennis	Tennis @ 7:45	SLEEP
10-10:50 Humanities		10-10:50 Humanities		10-10:50 Humanities
11-11:50 Sociology	12:45-2:05 English	11-11:50	12:45-2:05 English	11-11:50 Sociology
2:15-4:05 (aka an eternity) Bioengineering	Homework	2:15-4:05 Bio	Tennis 2:30-4:30	Lunch Prayer
Homework	Community Worship	You guessed it . . .		Consider doing homework
Still doing homework . . .	More homework	Bible Study		Something that doesn’t involve homework J

Classes

I realized today I haven’t given a good update on my classes, and my number one fan loves the newsy updates.  I’ve decided that after I finish my homework for each class I’ll write a bit about, and I’ll try not to go fishing for too much sympathy.

But seriously, I just finished reading an account of Virginia written by a British guy in old English.  By old, I mean that ‘y’ sometimes means ‘I’ and that ‘v’ and ‘u’ are reversed.  At first the reading was incredibly slow going, but remarkably once I let my mind absorb the language I was able to process things pretty quickly.

My English class is pretty good.  We meet twice a week for ninety minutes, and it’s my only class on Tuesdays.  It’s a discussion based class, and the professor does a good job of conducting discussions and encouraging participation.  There are about twenty students in the class, but it always feels like he’s addressing you specifically.  He is clearly very knowledgeable, and he has a lot to share.  As with all my other classes, we write two papers, take two tests, and have a participation grade, but he also added another component: response papers.  I actually like writing weekly or bi-weekly short papers because they give him a chance to read my writing and hopefully provide useful feedback for the longer, more important papers.

On to Humanities 102 now.  We read a lot in this class.  I make my way through thirty pages of Cicero and twenty pages of Aristotle, and then we discuss two paragraphs from the works, which can be frustrating at times.  On the other hand, our professor clearly expects us to do some self-educating, which I don’t believe is unreasonable.

Our professor is a character.  Wow.  She’s a theater professor, and she definitely brings that dramatic flair to the classroom.  She also speaks insanely fast, jumps from point to point, and loves to refer to historians/other dead people that we’ve never even heard of.  The fifty minutes absolutely fly by because she’s so into the material and you’re using every ounce of mental strength to keep up with everything she says. 

Other interesting facts: it’s my first class of the day at 10:00, MWF.  There are only four other students in the class.  I have to read twenty pages of Cicero for Wednesday and eighty pages of Lucretius for Friday.  I want to kill Cicero - Good thing he’s already dead.  We have a three page ‘note’ due Wednesday which has been challenging but fun.  I’m worried it’s one of those papers where I’ll feel good about it, and then she’ll hand it back and inform me I got the theory all wrong . . . good thing it’s ungraded.  J

Biology.  Hmm.  The first chapter was a breeze – ‘what is DNA?’ – and then suddenly we’re launched into how minute details concerning the double helix and the replication process.  I find it incredibly interesting, and with my flashcards I’m well on my way to knowing all the terms.  The class meets twice a week for almost two hours, which is, frankly, a VERY long time.  However, she does a good job of moving through the topics and, unlike my other classes, she actually covers everything we read.

Sociology is wonderful.  I love all the readings, the professor is high-energy and absolutely loves her job, and the theory is a nice mix of philosophy and social justice.  The actual theories of sociology are somewhat hard to grasp, but reading about experiments and investigations is quite interesting.  Human character has long fascinated (bothered?) me, and the class seems to be really speaking to me right now. 

ALSO, yesterday Grinnell had its first snow day in sixteen years, I believe.  Wednesday is one of my worst days, so suddenly I had four extra hours, which I productively used to . . . watch Seinfeld and nap.  I also experienced my first Iowan blizzard on Tuesday night, when I had to walk across campus at nine at night, and I could barely open my eyes to see where I was going.  Needless to say, I’m more than slightly crazy for coming here, but the academics and the people make it well worth it.  J