By Tuesday of this week, I was already exhausted. Every day so far, I've had something to do during every hour until ten o'clock at night. Besides all the regular work that goes into classes, this is the first time that I've really had to play the add/drop game. I went to an archaeology class, a French class, and a literature class, trying to figure out which one I really wanted to take. The lit class--Inventing Childhood--is for my creative writing major, and looked really interesting. Of course, during registration last semester, I didn't get in, so I put myself on the waitlist and started looking at backup plans.
I went to both Archaeology and French on Monday. Archaeology I need to take at some point, because I need a few more social science credits. I got most of the ones I have from history AP exams, which means that the last ones have to come from a department that isn't History. In other words, I have to take things like anthropology and psychology.
Then there was the French class. I wanted to take it just to keep up with my French. Among other things, I know I've completely lost the fake French accent that I developed for the AP exam. This class started off with everyone being locked out of the classroom. The professor called Safety and Security and spoke to them in English, providing a running commentary for another professor in French. Things just got better from there. The professor was awesome, talked basically all in French, and--possibly best of all--I could understand her. When I walked out of the class, I really, really wanted to take it.
I went to the literature class Tuesday and was reminded why I want to take it. We're going to read Alice in Wonderland! We're going to read fairy tales! We're going to analyze how children are treated in literature! As someone with a perhaps unhealthy obsession with the Animorphs series, this is almost the ideal sort of literature class for me.
So you can probably guess which class I ended up picking. Here's what I'm taking this semester:
Biochemistry - Jason Belitsky (lecture), Rebecca Whelan (lab)
This class looks terrifying. It's my first 300-level science course, so I guess that's to be expected. Nevertheless, I'd say this is definitely the class that I'm most worried about.
Fiction Workshop - Bernard Matambo
I'm excited for this one! All along, I've held the belief that I want to major in Creative Writing largely so that I have an excuse to take time out of my schedule to write. This class is going to require that I take a lot of time out of my schedule to write, but that's exciting. There's also a lot of reading associated with it.
Inventing Childhood - Natasha Tessone
As I mentioned before, this class focuses on how children are treated in literature. We're reading things like Oliver Twist. It looks like it could be really interesting. Unfortunately, I have to print out most of the readings. Paired with how much I have to print for my fiction class, my printing budget is going to go really fast this semester.
Mechanics and Relativity - Chris Martin (lecture), Jason Stalnaker (lab)
Also known as physics. I took both the AP Physics B and the AP Physics C exams in high school, so hopefully this won't be too hard. We'll see, though. I'm pretty sure I've forgotten a lot.
