So in early January, I wrote a blog post about my expectations for my spring semester classes, and considering my spring semester has now concluded, I thought I’d see how those expectations played out. Not interested? That’s fine. Just go look at the pictures from last Friday’s blog.
Class #1: 8:00-9:05am Modern Topics in Mathematics (M-W-F)
Initial expectation: this is going to be painful. And it was, just not in the way I thought. Since I hadn’t taken a math class since the first semester of my JUNIOR year in high school, I was concerned I would be woefully slow at picking up concepts. This was not the case. Instead, I was forced to sit through the easiest, most boring hour of math three days a week at 8 in the morning. It was so easy, in fact, that I was continually embarrassed to be there. At least it’s the only math class I have to take for the rest of my life, though.
Class #2: 11:45am-12:50pm Studies in Poetry (M-W-F)
Initial expectation: not much more fun than math. No joke, this is the worst class I have ever taken. And that INCLUDES the AP Government class I took my senior year of high school in which the teacher knew almost nothing about government. We were an entire month behind on the syllabus almost right from the get-go, through no fault of the students, and yet were expected to read/ comprehend the missed/skipped poems on our own in order to pass tests. In what world does that make sense? As I wrote on my end-of-term evaluation, the only thing I learned in this class was that the professor really likes to talk about himself. Sound harsh? I don’t care. WORST. CLASS. EVER. If it didn’t fulfill two core requirements, I would have dropped it immediately.
Class #3: 2:15-3:20pm Finance for Daily Decisions (M-W-F) (1/2 semester)
Initial expectation: not fun, but useful. All things considered, I rather enjoyed this class. The professor spoke in broken English and was hard to follow at times, but he was hilarious and entertaining and I learned some interesting things about finance I’d never really considered before. It was boring, yeah, and I spent the entire night before I left for Rome trying to finish a ridiculously complicated final assignment in a stress-induced frenzy, yeah, but it was a hell of a lot better than poetry. Plus, it was only half a semester, so the rest of the year has felt significantly less cramped.
Class #4: 9:40-11:15am Creative Nonfiction (T-TH)
Initial expectation: Professor will be adviser, who is pretty cool, but I’ll have to talk to people I don’t know, which is uncool. Actually, my professor was not my adviser, but my old expos prof from last year, who I loved. I also didn’t end up having to talk to anyone I didn’t know, which was even cooler. Short response: I loved this class. I mostly love the stuff I wrote for it, and I love this professor even more now. There’s really nothing bad for me to say about this class.
Class #5: 1:00-3:20pm The Artist Book (T-TH)
Initial expectation: it’s my fun class of the semester, and I’m decent at art, so whatevs. I really enjoyed this class. There were only four other people in it plus the professor, who was crazy in all the best ways. I made so many interesting things in this class and I can see myself continuing this craft when I get some extra moolah. Though this class was more stressful than I had initially anticipated, since we did a lot of projects in a short amount of time, it was worth all the frantic, late night book constructions.
So overall, this semester wasn’t as horrible as I had anticipated, as my Tuesday-Thursday classes kind of saved me, even if Poetry made me so furious I can’t even come up with words to describe the emotion. But it’s over now. Next semester should be insane, but we’ll talk about that in a few months. Summer, here I come!
