Resolution

The exams have been taken, the presents bought and opened, the new year has been rung in and I have still not kept up on this darn blog. It seems like I never have anything interesting to share with the world until I'm too busy to write about it (wise words also spoken by my sister). So here's a recap and you can decide whether or not it's interesting.

This past semester I took another full load of classes. Preparing for the worst, I forewarned my friends and family how little time I would have in the coming weeks. Fortunately, it was no where near the time-sucking, credit-heavy, something-always-due semester that was winter 2010. There was some frustration with the GRCC bookstore and their lack of organization. This cleared up after I decided to buy the book for my online poetry class from Amazon. It came a mere 3 days after ordering versus the 4 weeks I had waited to receive it from GRCC (what they kept referring to as "backorder."). Turns out I didn't use the book a whole lot. Ah well.

I also took the next level of French. Third semester. One of our assignments was an in-class debate (which I'm not really good at in English) and I was terrified. When it came time, the class was split in half. The debate: Friends on Facebook: Many of Few? As luck would have it, I was assigned "beaucoup d'amis" and had to come up with logical reasons to have hundreds if not thousands of friends on facebook. In French. Fortunately, it was the whole class and when you faltered, your classmates were there to finish your stumbling sentence structure and improper verb conjugation. I even got to do that a couple times myself. *smile*

I also had a Creative Writing class. While I enjoy writing creatively, the only class I had ever taken was at City High School. It wasn't exactly what I would call "nurturing." However, this class was amazing. Almost every class, a student was assigned to bring in a poem or short story and read it to the class. At the first mention of this, the whole class gasped in horror (including myself).

"You want us to read our work in front of the whole class?!"

I instantly thought of all those television scenes where the dorky, unpopular girl gets up and reads her poem about the cute boy that she has a crush on only to be ousted before she can run to the bathroom and sob. Wasn't that an episode of My So-Called Life?

But it was nothing like that. The students were all incredibly productive in their criticisms and also very honest with their praises. I had such a great experience, I'm taking the next level of the class.

Ah, but wait. This semester wasn't all gum drops and roses. No no no. For those of you that didn't hear me wince every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:30, the fly in the semester ointment was my Social Problems class. It wasn't a "required" class per se, but it fulfilled my social science credit and it sounded intriguing. While the social issues are of interest to me, the manner in which they were presented by the instructor was not. Her lectures were incomplete, her assignments superfluous (taking 6-7 hours to do and only marking 10 points, also due every class period), and tests impossible. Here, I've kept one of the questions in my memory bank for you to take a stab at:

Someone who is Androgynous has ______ female traits and _____ male traits.

a. Many, Few

b. Many, Many

c. Few, Many

d. Few, Few

Think about it for a minute and then continue.

When I answered this question, I used simple logic. Knowing the answer wasn't a or c, I deduced it down to b or d. I didn't remember the text making a distinction between many or few, I just knew androgyny was an equal number of male and female traits. So I chose d, thinking that having "many" male and female traits would lean more towards drag queen than androgyny. I decided to look it up in the text after the test and found nothing that suggested either extreme. When we went over the test during the following class period, I found my answer to be incorrect. When I asked her where this information was, she told me that it was an "application" of the definition. When I argued further, she told me that she had graded on a curve and that was to take care of the "unfair questions."

Shortly thereafter, I realized that grades don't transfer and I only had 6 more credits at GRCC. I've never "thrown" a class before, but I found I got the same grade on tests whether or not I studied for them. I also stopped doing the useless and time consuming assignments in order to keep my sanity. I still ended up with a B+. Go figure.

Next post: The hectic schedule of a dual-enrolled student.