"Semestre Tres Belle" or "Are We Growing Backwards With Time?"

This semester might just rock after all.

My Political Science class, which I dreaded as a "bill becomes a law" bore-fest where I would have to sit through all the 3-branch-flash-cards that my parents have been teaching me at the dinner table since I was two. But actually, our teacher not only implied but actually stated that he's going to assume that we took civics or government or poli sci in high school, or that if we are in his class we must know something about politics, so he's going to teach the class as if we know the basics. He says he wants to get into the nitty gritty stuff, all of the atypical situations. He said rather that going over what government's real job is, and what politics actually means, we're going to talk about what STOPS government from doing its job, what we think its job should or should not be, and rather than what politics IS, what politics DOES. I'm stoked.

Also, in my English class, we are reading My Antonia and As I Lay Dying. These are, hands down, two of the best books ever written. No argument. I actually said out loud to the Gods of Good Books that I really hoped we would read Faulkner in this class [in fact I would probably drop it if we weren't and find a class that was] and then wished that it would be As I Lay Dying. I love the book so much, but the last time I read it was for my Faulkner class that I hated and could not be motivated for, and the times I read it before that are now far away. I am so excited to read it already, and My Antonia changed my life in high school. Oh hooray.

My math class isn't even that bad. I feel much less intimidated the second time around, and my teacher is very a sweet, very young man from China and I sort of love him a ton. He's here for two years to teach math, and doesn't speak much English, but he's clearly very smart and very determined to do well, and just exudes an aura of kindness. I said "thank you" in Chinese to him [the only phrase I know besides "your cat is on fire", which I decided was a bad idea] and his eyes lit up. I'm going to have to ask James more things to say. I like living vicariously through James's experiences with China. I haven't been there, but I sure know a lot about it!

French also might not give me brain cancer. Our teacher is nice, and on the first day I was actually speaking pretty well and I think I have more of it stashed in my brain than I thought. Our teacher is also not a native speaker, and only took French for two semesters, but then spent 2 years [I think?] in France and learned that way. This I much prefer, and he has a very creative way of teaching. I actually understand almost everything he said yesterday, and it was all in French, so I guess that's a good sign.

The only class I have yet to go to is my final Blount seminar, which of course I'm not worried about. I could sneeze in class, color a picture, and write a poem and pass that class. It's with one of my favorite teachers, it's a class with complete creative freedom, and it's Blount. I hope I'm not jinxing it with all of this, but a Blount class simply can not dissapoint.

[knock on wood]

But that class isn't until 11 and I left my cell phone at home, so now I don't have anything to do until then. Well, post to blog: CHECK.

<3gen

p.s. Cooper almost has his perfect desk finished! It's so glorious!