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