Why I'm Like a Politician...

I know I said in my last post that I wasn't going to talk about college stuff anymore, but I'm going to have to break a promise for the purpose of expediency. I guess I know how politicians feel now...

Today was the first day of classes, so there's much to talk about. My first class, American History to 1865, was at 10 AM. I thought it was an Honors section, which is supposed to be smaller (around 15-30 people), but when I got into the room it was packed with over a hundred people. There was barely any space to sit. But as we got into it, there was a reason why this class was packed - the professor was great. He touched upon issues in his opening lecture (just telling us where we were going with the course) that I had debated in previous debate meets. He talked about how freedom only exists with limits, as he said: "you aren't free if others are free to prey on you." He talked about the inherent contradiction of enforcing democracy on other peoples, and segued off of that into an interesting question about Iraq. Why, he asked, are we willing to send troops over to Iraq and sacrifice lives, but not sacrifice money? Why are we not taxing the present population, the population that essentially "voted" for this war (if you believe the process of democracy worked)? Instead we're taxing it to the future, which is a problem. If you view it as a mistake, we're making the future pay for it.

Off of that he talked about a very interesting topic. He said history is the study of the individual, and one individual he loves is a lawyer from Baltimore, who wrote a book about how human history is the story of escaping God's biblical curse ("you shall live off the sweat of your brow"). It's a very interesting theory. When you think about it, that's where the class system comes from (in fact, any economic system at all), and even more basic, that's where forming collective societies come from. We band together in order to make it easier to aviod the curse.

Anyway, that was great, but they wrote a bunch of discussion sections up on the board, and the one on my schedule wasn't there. So I'll go to it on Friday, and see if perhaps I was in the wrong classroom. But I went to where it said on my schedule, it was the proper class title, but I don't know about the Honors part. If it isn't Honors, I'm still happy.

The next class was my creative writing class, in the basement of the Honors building. It was an Honors Seminar, and proved right off the bat to be a little odd. That stems from the teacher, who's a little off kilter. We spent the class going around the room, saying one truth and one lie about ourself - getting to know each other, and getting to make up stories. The rest of the class had to guess. That's what I think the class will be like - my break class, essentially. A fun class that I like, that gives me credits, and won't be that much work.

I high tailed it over to lunch, ate quickly, and started back across campus to the Math building (a 15 minute walk). I got there around on time, so that worked out. But that was about the only thing that worked out about that class. The professor was this small, bald, hunched over man, with a voice that you could barely hear. He scratched around in chalk on the board, and wasn't particularly clear. This was an Honors section that I switched into because I figured Honors sections were usually better. But I immediately went home after the class (an absurdly long one, 1 hr and 50 mins) and switched out. I switched into a huge class, but with a professor that, from what I've read, is very energetic, lively, and entertaining, a la Mr. W-C. That math class really made me miss Mr. W-C. But this new class will make me a bit late to Gemstone on Tuesdays (I figure that's not that bad, since Gemstone is a layed back class first semester), and make it hard to get lunch that day. I figure I'll plan for that ahead of time, maybe get two sandwiches at lunch the day before and store one in the fridge, and take it on the run. But anything to get out of that class. I want to do well in Calc, and I know I can't in the other class.

I needed to chill afterwards - I haven't learned since January, remember. So I played some Madden and FIFA World Cup with the roomies. That helped. Now it's off to dinner and some reading.