Semester’s Done!

I hand­ed in my final paper for the tech writ­ing class. Yay!

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the pro­fes­sor said he won’t be teach­ing for the rest of the sum­mer semes­ter, so he won’t be on cam­pus. He should have our grades to the reg­is­trar by Mon­day, but he does­n’t know if we can get them or not, and he won’t post them or get them to us oth­er­wise. We can pick up the rest of our papers come the fall semes­ter. Grrrr!

But any­way, I did fin­ish my first class in my major. From the way the guy was grad­ing, I don’t think I can get bet­ter than a B. I’m not deal­ing with that well. I pret­ty much demand high As of myself, even with­out any­body knock­ing me around to “moti­vate” me any­more. It’s a habit.

We were giv­en a choice of four top­ics on which to write a two-page infor­mal report. The 4th was “As a stu­dent, you would like to see a change or two in your schools’ poli­cies or pro­ce­dures…” Well, I’d already been mulling that over—it was just a mat­ter of pick­ing which of many areas to write about! So I did a hypo­thet­i­cal let­ter to the school about bet­ter sup­port for non-tra­di­tion­al stu­dents. Now I’m think­ing about actu­al­ly mail­ing it. Hey, I wrote it, so why not?

My advi­sor sug­gest­ed that I take the next course, Foun­da­tions of Tech­ni­cal Writ­ing, next semes­ter. It isn’t required, but he sug­gest­ed it, and he is the head of the depart­ment. There are lots of things that look much more inter­est­ing. One of them is a “spe­cial top­ic” class, mean­ing it might not be taught again ever, or at least not any time soon—medical writ­ing. It requires the approval of the depart­ment head to get into it. There aren’t any pre­req­ui­sites oth­er than that and the course I just fin­ished. I’m won­der­ing if it would be way fool­ish to try tak­ing two TW class­es in one semes­ter, but I’d real­ly like to get the med­ical writ­ing course in. None of the oth­er cours­es in the cur­ricu­lum cov­er that top­ic at all.

I could take all the rest of the core cur­ricu­lum class­es I need online at Geor­gia Perime­ter or Ken­ne­saw State—if I could get approval from thir­ty-eleven dif­fer­ent peo­ple at each school. Why do they have to make it so dan­ged complicated?

sam­bear, shad­owkatt and I went to din­ner at Mac­a­roni Grill to cel­e­brate the end of the class. I did­n’t real­ize that Katie had­n’t eat­en there before. It was yum­my, as usu­al. But LOUD! Ter­ra­zo floors make for lots of echo­ing. They did­n’t have any oper­at­ic singers regal­ing any­one this time, at least-did they stop that?

Then we went to Bor­ders. I spent lots of time look­ing at his­to­ry books, and end­ed up buy­ing sev­er­al—A Peo­ple’s His­to­ry of the US, Lies My Teacher Told Me, and the new Don’t Know Much About His­to­ry (we had the orig­i­nal ver­sion in print and on audio­tape). I also got War­rior Women: An Archae­ol­o­gist’s Search for His­to­ry’s Hid­den Hero­ines.

I con­sid­ered, but decid­ed to wait on The Book of the Cour­te­sans: A Cat­a­logue of Their Virtues. I may see if the library has a copy. I did read the bit I found there about Veron­i­ca Franco.

I did pick up The Artist’s Way. Now I just have to sit down and actu­al­ly work through it. I won­der how I’d find a “clus­ter” nearby?

Sam picked up ADD-Friend­ly Ways to Orga­nize Your Life. It seems to include some use­ful sug­ges­tions. He got a cou­ple more vol­umes of Sand­man, too.

Katie is already deep into her pick, Francesca Lia Block­’s I Was a Teenage Fairy.

Yes, we went a lit­tle nuts at Bor­ders. I don’t go nuts often, so it feels rather odd 🙂

I have a fever again. Foo. So does the cat. I don’t think they’re relat­ed, though. I should go to bed!