School Stuff

I had one class Fri­day, and three yes­ter­day. Tomor­row I’ll have four, which is going to be one hell of a day. The first course starts at 10 am. I get out at 2:15, run home to get the girl to dance by 4:30, and dri­ve back like a crazy woman for the 6–8:45 class. sam­bear is going to pick up the girl, thankfully.

If I can find any­body who can/will dri­ve the girl to dance on Wednes­days, my life will be ever so much sim­pler! Right now, we may work it out so that she goes to school with me and works on her own assign­ments in a near­by room. All my cours­es are in the same build­ing as my depart­men­t’s office. I’m pret­ty sure we can find a safe, qui­et place for her. 

Anyway—I’m only at school 3 days a week, which is a very hap­py thing.

I’m tak­ing US His­to­ry II (since 1865). We nev­er found out who won the world wars in my high school course, hav­ing run out of time. That may have had some­thing to do with the teacher start­ing with the fall of Rome. Maybe. Lots of read­ing for that one. I hate the class­room style, which is one of those with the long tables and attached chairs like McDon­ald’s used to have. There’s no way to back the chairs up enough to be com­fort­able. For me, at least.

The next course is Gram­mar for Pro­fes­sion­als, taught by my mar­velous advi­sor. I dread­ed this course, but it’s a damned sight more inter­est­ing than I antic­i­pat­ed. I actu­al­ly dis­cussed the first read­ing assign­ment with shadok­watt and curiousmay9 this past week­end. And they were inter­est­ed, too. (Yes, we’re a very geeky family.)

Com­par­a­tive Cul­ture might suck, or it might be great. It’s taught by the head of the social & inter­na­tion­al stud­ies depart­ment and the direc­tor of inter­na­tion­al stud­ies. The sec­ond guy han­dles all the study abroad stuff. I asked him, on a whim, if any­one ever takes their kids along on those trips. He said it had­n’t hap­pened, but when he heard that shad­owkatt is 14 he said it might work out. Interesting.

Any­way, the course requires a group project. We all know how very much I adore those, don’t we?

It also requires that we do an inter­view with some­one from some coun­try that isn’t the US. It can’t be one of the 5 coun­tries the pro­fes­sors will be covering—and they haven’t told us which those will be, yet.

In fact, they don’t have the sched­ule and assign­ments done at all. Not reas­sur­ing. This is why it might suck, despite cov­er­ing inter­est­ing material.

The last class is Small Group Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Now, hon­est­ly, com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills are an inter­est, which is why I’ve read books by ozar­que and oth­er authors. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the text for this book just looks so dry it’s scary. A Sys­tems Approach to Small Group Inter­ac­tion. Ugh. This is the only TCOM course I’m tak­ing, and unfor­tu­nate­ly, the text makes me think this is anoth­er case where the sub­ject will be beat­en to not just a dead horse, but a smear where the dead horse used to be, with much self-con­scious­ly eru­dite language.

One of the most inter­est­ing cours­es I’ve tak­en in the past is list­ed on my tran­script as “Inter­per­son­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.” It was taught by the soci­ol­o­gy depart­ment at Mer­cer Uni­ver­si­ty in Atlanta and took place entire­ly on 2 Sat­ur­days. My sis­ter and moth­er were also in the class, but we made sure we were in dif­fer­ent groups.

The course relied heav­i­ly on Trans­ac­tion­al Analy­sis, which I’ve found use­ful since. It was also my first encounter with con­sen­sus decision-making.

I tried to get the old course con­sid­ered as a replace­ment for the small group com­mu­ni­ca­tions course, but no go. The small group course is required for my major, so I’ll suck it up.

EVERY course that I need in the TCOM depart­ment is only being taught at night this time around. That is dis­tress­ing. They’re only teach­ing the intro cours­es that oth­er depart­ments or peo­ple explor­ing the major would need dur­ing tra­di­tion­al course hours. Since the girl has dance class­es four nights a week, I antic­i­pate more and more trou­ble jug­gling school with parenting.

And text­books this semes­ter? Even with get­ting as many as I could used, they cost $320.99. That is absolute­ly INSANE!