another stall: classes I'm taking, thinking about learning
College courses, like so many other things, have become an intrinsically and impossibly tricky complicated part of my life. I feel weird about the realization that I judge courses as 'good' or 'bad' before the end of the first hour. I feel weird that I'm a math major, but I haven't taken a single math class all year. I feel weird that I really really enjoy hearing what my science-major friends are working on (dan's weird polymer, katie's immunodeficient mice, etc etc), but that I've conspicuously avoided actually taking any science in college up until my last semester (which is a cop-out class I'll elaborate on more below). I feel weird that, in only taking one class for either of my majors (math and history) this semester, I'm looking forward to my schedule much more than any sched I've had in a long time; I'm taking two english classes, too, which is another department I've never really given a shot before. I guess a lot of these second-guessings amount to concerns about the content/meaning of my education: what the hell ARE the liberal arts, and have I adequately studied them? What did I just take out thousands of dollars in debt to do? Did I come out of this experience with things that I couldn't have gotten elsewhere? and so on. Senior Doubt, the psycho- to Senioritis' -somatic.
Anyway, right now it looks like I'll be taking four classes in addition to my math thesis and history Senior Comprehensive (whatever that is--they never really told me clearly and certainly haven't gotten in touch since the semester began). It's a lot, but I draw comfort both from the utter craziness with which others surround themselves (I'm looking at you, steph) and from the serenity/simplicity other friends have achieved by refusing to fall victim to the overachiever epidemic at this institution. It allows me to feel like I'm somewhere in the middle, which MUST have some kind of validity, right? It's like a compromise. And now, on to the classes:
-Paleontology: I'm super-excited about it, but I'm also well aware that it's a cop-out science class. It doesn't even have a lab, for chrissake. Also, objectively, I feel like I know a lot of what we're covering already on some level. The class is more about geology, climatology, and the biosphere than about dinosaurs, but I enter the room happily brandishing a full reading of John McPhee's Annals of the Former World and an affinity for 'trivia' (random facts) that allowed me to retain some of it. On the plus side, the professor is this young guy with enviable intellectual curiosity who bothered to learn the names of all 50 students between last Wednesday and last Friday. His first two lectures are based around The Geology of the Hometowns of People Taking this Class, information he only found out last week, which lectures utilize some of the best Powerpoints I've seen in a college class (which, again, he could only have made since that first class). This probably means he's 1. committed to what would otherwise seem a cop-out science class and 2. completely crazy. I like it. And I know I'd feel horribly guilty if I ever missed class.
-Africa since 1800: the last class required for my history major. It's a little bit of a cop-out too, since I basically had a choice of a survey/lecture and a seminar and took the survey. I have no defense for this.
-Asian American Literature/Cultural Criticism: my first Asian American studies course. The reading list looks amazing, I've heard great things about the prof, and I feel like it's almost a necessary part of my own sort of identity-definition journey. To some extent, the fluidity and in-betweenness of being hapa gives me a chance to look at things like Asian American race theory both as an insider (to whom some aspects may apply/have a personal connection to me) and as an outsider (if I wanted, I could pass for white-but-slightly-exotic or so; at least, that's what I hear from enough white people that I think it has some credibility). At any rate, interesting, valuable, maybe even necessary. I'm glad I'm taking it.
-Writing the World: creative writing, nonfiction. I can't even explain how exciting this is. The writing I've done in this space veered sharply away from The World once I got back from abroad (and I'm not sure that's where it was very often in the first place), and I'd like to see it become something interesting to people, rather than just interesting to people who want to know how I'm feeling about a bunch of stuff. I don't think I'll publish my coursework verbatim here, but I may play with ideas here, or I may revise stuff from class and post it. We'll see how the class goes, and then by extension how I feel about writing in general. Hopefully I'll be so motivated to write about stuff every day that I'll just post most of it here in addition to whatever gets turned in to the class. Ha.
Anyway, right now it looks like I'll be taking four classes in addition to my math thesis and history Senior Comprehensive (whatever that is--they never really told me clearly and certainly haven't gotten in touch since the semester began). It's a lot, but I draw comfort both from the utter craziness with which others surround themselves (I'm looking at you, steph) and from the serenity/simplicity other friends have achieved by refusing to fall victim to the overachiever epidemic at this institution. It allows me to feel like I'm somewhere in the middle, which MUST have some kind of validity, right? It's like a compromise. And now, on to the classes:
-Paleontology: I'm super-excited about it, but I'm also well aware that it's a cop-out science class. It doesn't even have a lab, for chrissake. Also, objectively, I feel like I know a lot of what we're covering already on some level. The class is more about geology, climatology, and the biosphere than about dinosaurs, but I enter the room happily brandishing a full reading of John McPhee's Annals of the Former World and an affinity for 'trivia' (random facts) that allowed me to retain some of it. On the plus side, the professor is this young guy with enviable intellectual curiosity who bothered to learn the names of all 50 students between last Wednesday and last Friday. His first two lectures are based around The Geology of the Hometowns of People Taking this Class, information he only found out last week, which lectures utilize some of the best Powerpoints I've seen in a college class (which, again, he could only have made since that first class). This probably means he's 1. committed to what would otherwise seem a cop-out science class and 2. completely crazy. I like it. And I know I'd feel horribly guilty if I ever missed class.
-Africa since 1800: the last class required for my history major. It's a little bit of a cop-out too, since I basically had a choice of a survey/lecture and a seminar and took the survey. I have no defense for this.
-Asian American Literature/Cultural Criticism: my first Asian American studies course. The reading list looks amazing, I've heard great things about the prof, and I feel like it's almost a necessary part of my own sort of identity-definition journey. To some extent, the fluidity and in-betweenness of being hapa gives me a chance to look at things like Asian American race theory both as an insider (to whom some aspects may apply/have a personal connection to me) and as an outsider (if I wanted, I could pass for white-but-slightly-exotic or so; at least, that's what I hear from enough white people that I think it has some credibility). At any rate, interesting, valuable, maybe even necessary. I'm glad I'm taking it.
-Writing the World: creative writing, nonfiction. I can't even explain how exciting this is. The writing I've done in this space veered sharply away from The World once I got back from abroad (and I'm not sure that's where it was very often in the first place), and I'd like to see it become something interesting to people, rather than just interesting to people who want to know how I'm feeling about a bunch of stuff. I don't think I'll publish my coursework verbatim here, but I may play with ideas here, or I may revise stuff from class and post it. We'll see how the class goes, and then by extension how I feel about writing in general. Hopefully I'll be so motivated to write about stuff every day that I'll just post most of it here in addition to whatever gets turned in to the class. Ha.
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3:46 PM
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