Education is the kindling of a flame

not the filling of a vessel. -Socrates.

Blogger just asked me to make a new blog. Like, not a new post, a new blog. I barely keep up on one, as it is. But thanks for the offer, blogging gods.


You know what's really exciting? The classes I signed up for next semester. Yes, it's official, I am a full time student again. I was actually supposed to take this semester off, but I've somehow managed to instead end up with 17 credits. This can't end poorly, right? Right. Especially since I'm taking the summer off. And all my classes are going to be awesome.

Not only do my classes all sound awesome, but the teachers for each of my classes have really really fantastic scores on ratemyprofessor. Except my chem teachers. They have scores that range from average to pretty good. But I have a friend who's taking classes with them, and he says they're awesome, so that's hopeful.

I'll be taking analytical chem and its lab and sign language, as mentioned before. Additionally, though, I'll take intro to philosophy, intro to sociology and psychopharmacology.

Analytical chem goes toward my major, intro to philosophy will cover a couple of the gen ed credits I need, ASL is because I love foreign languages, and intro to sociology is to help persuade me to not ditch analytical chem. And psychopharmacology should go towards my minor. The psych department does this thing where they're really open about what classes you can take to get your degree. With most programs, you have to take x y and z classes, but with psych, you can choose whatever classes you want to take, depending on what you want to do with your degree. If you want to do research, then you take classes that you think will help you learn about that-- probably you'll want stats and a bunch of research methods classes. If you want to do clinical work, you'll probably end up taking clinical theory, and abnormal psych, theories of personalities, etc. The point is that you choose which classes you want to take, and so many of them have to be upper level classes, and there's two that you must take-- intro, and stats.

Psychopharmacology sounds like such a cool class. Really perfect for me-- drugs were always my favorite part of health class, and for a couple years when people asked me what I wanted to do for a living, I told them I wanted to be a forensic toxicologist. I still have not ruled out that possibility, just now when people ask, I don't try to pretend like I know everything about the area I'm going into and I give them a more general answer. The thing with this class, though, is that it's not on the list of classes I can take for my psych minor. But I don't know why the psych department would offer a class that doesn't count toward their minors, so I think it should probably still work out for me. I'll talk to one of the advisers there and see what the say. And if it won't go toward my minor, then I'll just be taking it for fun.

It's a pretty sweet schedule. And pretty early. I go MTWR. MW, I start off with psychopharmacology at 8 am, then intro to philosophy 15 minutes after, and sign language 15 minutes after that. On Wednesdays I also have analytical chem lab 45 minutes after sign language-- enough time for a lunch break!

That, for a while, left only analytical chem on TR at 8 am. And Metro is about an hour commute away. So I had a two hour commute for a one hour class. Which would involve me leaving at 7 am. I could already see the problems I would have convincing myself it would be worth it go to, and since analytical chem is not really a class I want to find myself ditching, I decided to add a second class on TR that starts 15 min after chem is over, and that would be my intro sociology class.

On Mon I get home by 1, on TR I get home by noon, and on Wed I'm home by 6. Not a bad schedule, if you ask me. I think it will go much smoother than last time I tried to take 17 credits because 1- my class times don't change drastically from day to day (it was hard having day classes on MW and night class T and then all afternoon and night R), 2- I'm really really interested in all of my classes; none of them are classes I'm grudgingly taking, and 3- Foreign languages come pretty easy to me, and I'm already semi decent at sign language, and since this is sign language 1, a lot of things we'll be going over I already have a head start on-- alphabet, numbers, colors, family members-- so it won't be like doing 17 credits of work every week. Maybe it'll be closer to 15?

Yay for classes and being excited to take them!