Since several other bloggers (I'm looking at you, Griff, Zoë, and Chinwe) are blogging about add/drop and scheduling woes, I figured I would chime in with my experience this semester.
This semester, I've venturing into the realm of being a part-time student. Since all of my graduation requirements have been completed, I opted into part-time status this semester in order to focus on my honors thesis.*
Part-time status is something you can opt into if you're nearly done (or, in my case, completely done) with requirements for graduation yet still want to stick around on campus for whatever reason. My reasons for being part-time this semester were to save my family some money and to have the time to focus all my academic energy into my honors thesis.
The only academic part of my semester is honors. No classes, no ExCos, no nothin'. Theoretically, this should make my honors process much less stressful to endure.
So far, my part-time experiment has been a bit of a fail. Because I don't have classes, it's really easy to avoid thinking about academic things. I can go to my job, coordinate meetings and events for Active Minds, and go to all sorts of fun events and concerts. And, so far, that's what I've been doing.
Also, Netflix instant streaming is terrible. And wonderful. But mostly terrible.
Hopefully this week I'll be able to get back into the swing of things, make significant progress on my thesis (my advisor has me on the pace of at least a page per day), and still enjoy my last semester at Oberlin.
Quote time!
"I am convinced that, thanks to the persevering enunciation of certain generous ideas with which the closing century has resounded, the 20th century will behold a little more fraternity, and less miseries of all kinds, and that we shall perhaps soon have reached an important stage in the slow evolution of labour towards happiness and of man towards humanity. It is under the auspices of this hope that I declare the Exhibition of 1900 opened." - French President Émile Loubet, 15 April 1900.†
*What's that? This is the billionth time I've mentioned my thesis and I have yet to actually blog about it in detail? Yes, yes. I am aware. I promise a more in-depth discussion of honors is coming sometime in the future.
† Original French: "Je suis convaincu que grâce à l'affirmation persévérante de certaines pensées généreuses dont le siècle finissant a retenti, le vingtième siècle verra luire un peu plus de fraternité sur moins de misères de tout ordre, et que, bientôt peut-être, nous aurons franchi un stade important dans le lent évolution du travail vers le bonheur, et de l'homme vers l'humanité."
