The Next Schedule

Monday, Wednesday, Friday

English
Since I am no longer enrolled in an algebra class [for the first time in a year], I am enjoying a more relaxed school schedule this semester.  I am almost through my first week and have been to all my classes.  On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I am scheduled for my Junior English  class at 8:00 and a Microeconomics class directly following it at 9:10.  

At the last minute, the University switched English teachers on me.  I found out the night before classes started.  I had been scheduled to take the teacher I most wanted!  I had read all her reviews and had even checked out her personal website.  I was excited to be taking her.  And then the big switch!  Oh, but I was ILL about it the night before, and I “stomped” up the hill the next morning all out of sorts and prepared for the worst.  It was rather disconcerting to find myself actually liking the new prof.  The professor assigned to my class turned out to be Dr. W.  She had been teaching at the University of Arizona, and her specialty is linguistics.  She’s the type of teacher who just beams at the class.  She almost always has a smile on her face.  She is 53 years old and seems to be quite jolly.  

Unlike my Music Appreciation teacher, Dr. W invited us to bring coffee to class.  She also said she just doesn’t think it’s  very wise to be writing on all these controversial topics like abortion or homosexuality  because writing in anger just isn’t a good thing.  I can whole-heartedly support that position as I very much dislike writing about controversial issues.  The second day of class, she said she’s going to make a change to the syllabus…a change that she didn’t think we’d mind.  She said she will not be giving us pop quizzes after all or make us keep a Reader’s Response Journal.  Since we’re Juniors, she said, we’re old enough to know why we’re here, and she doesn’t think she needs to add those things to make our load any heavier.  Praise God!  The lady gets better by the day!  

We will have some shorter writing assignments in the first part of the semester like writing summaries, critiques, etc., on certain articles.  Articles that “are not too dry,” she said.  She is going to go through our book and weed everything out that she wouldn’t enjoy reading herself, and at the end of the semester, we can give her feedback and tell her which articles we did not enjoy reading.  The rest of the semester we will spend on the process of writing a research paper.  She is going to walk us through it, step by painful step.  And there will be no final.  Ahh…  I am so happy to change my attitude about the professor, for a good professor is hard to find!

Microeconomics
My Microeconomics teacher, unfortunately, is not quite what I was hoping to find.  Mr. B seems to be a very likable guy, but he’s not the warm and friendly type.  He doesn’t give us good notes on the board and he doesn’t seem to be basing his stuff on the textbook either.  When I sat down the first day, I silently challenged him to please awaken a dormant love for economics within me.  But so far, I haven’t felt any love flowing.  He doesn’t mind calling on people, that’s for sure, and he sure didn’t hesitate to call on me.  I was still writing the problem down on my paper when he called on me, and I hadn’t processed it a bit.  So I just popped out with, “Well, you reduced the y quantity to 80; therefore the x quantity has to be less than….  Whatever it was.”  Well, it was close enough, I guess, that I got myself off the hook, even though I was clueless about it.  Well, he asked another poor little girl about the next problem.  Her answer was, “Well, it’s exactly what she [meaning me] said….”  Ha ha.  She was clueless too.  

Mr B is the only one of my professors this semester who does not have an attendance policy.  “When you buy a sweater at Dillards,” he said as his reason for not requiring attendance, “they don’t call you up on the phone to make sure you’re wearing it.”  He figures as long as you’ve paid for the class, it’s up to you whether or not you attend.  He goes off on a tangent sometimes, like discussing fried bologna sandwiches.  According to one of my classmates, you can buy a fried bologna sandwich in a restaurant in a little town near White House, TN.  Mr. B is going to go there to see.    I’ve never even had a fried bologna sandwich, but Mr. B says Western used to serve them a long time ago.  This is the class that will present me with the most difficulty, I think.  I’ll have to work to stay on top of the material. I fear this one could be the one that I’ll blow my GPA on.  

After this class, I go back to work and work for as long as I can stand it.  I’m at work by 10:30 a.m.  Not too bad, I think.

Tuesday, Thursday

Music Appreciation
Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3:45, I have a Music Appreciation class.  This is the professor that Sharon took a year ago.  Remember my “parking lot stalker” of last semester?  It turns out that this professor and the stalker are one and the same (oops).  He is also the one I ran into twice who thought I was Sharon and spoke to me as if I were.  The second time, I didn’t let him talk very much before I informed him that I had signed up for his class in the fall.  He did a double take and said, “But you already took my class.”  I said the usual, “No.  That was my sister Sharon.”  He was amazed.  
When I entered the class for the first time, he saw me and made his way to the back table where I was sitting and introduced himself.  “I’m Mr. G,” he said.  “Tell me your name again.”  So I did.  “And your sister’s name?”  Sharon.  “I thought so,” he said, “but I wasn’t sure.”  

Along with about 65 other students in Music, I saw Tony from my Math 100 class and Thomas from my Art 100 class.  And while it is good to see familiar faces, my heart sank when I saw Thomas.  If there is ONE person I wouldn’t want to ever take a class with again, it is Thomas.  He is the type who skips class or leaves halfway through; when he was in class, he and his buddies would talk and whisper and play games on their cell phones and even went so far as to make a cell phone call during class once.  The teacher never saw them, but it made it SO annoying for those of us who sat in their vicinity.  One girl even got up and moved to the front row.  Thankfully, I think Mr. G is a little more hawk-eyed than my Art teacher was, and I don’t think that will be happening.  Also, in Mr. G’s class, we have assigned seating, so he couldn’t pick his partners in crime this time.  

Financial Accounting
My Accounting class meets only on Tuesdays from 6:00 to 8:45.  The book that I need for the class is one I bought on eBay.  The seller had a mental lapse and forgot to send it to me.  So for now, I’m bookless and grouchy about it.  I hope it comes tomorrow.  Anyway, I think once I get the book and can start the homework, I’ll be fine.  I’ve already made two friends in that class.  

Because Accounting only meets once a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays are my lightest days, schedule-wise.  

The best thing about this semester is that NONE of my professors did the painful introduction thing where you have to turn to a classmate and find out an unusual factoid about them, then introduce them to the class.  I dislike awkward situations.