I mentioned the class I dropped during the first week of this year’s schoolin’s, but I haven’t said anything about my other classes. Let’s do something about that. I’m taking a class that is about the history of Vampires.

I wouldn’t say I’m a big reader of vampire fiction. I’ve read Dracula, and I’ve read Salem’s Lot, and I’ve read the Tomb of Dracula comics, but that is probably about it. Still, it seems like an interesting enough topic. So here I am.

So far, I very much enjoy the class. The professor actually lectures! That may not seem like an exceptional thing, but far too many professors I have encountered try to have a dialogue with the class. They stop every five minutes to ask a question, or even just get them to finish a sentence. I get that they’re trying to draw things out of the students so that they have to actually think or whatever, but it always slows everything down. We get significantly more class when they don’t stop class every five minutes. I pay attention to the lectures, so the interminable nuisance. It’s nice to have something better for a change.

Still, though. There’s a lot of reading in this, and all of my classes. I made a real effort to keep up with all the readings this year, and with only three classes I thought I could do it, but I failed. I am already behind. To be truthful, it’s kinda disheartening. There’s plenty of ways, good and bad, that school makes me feel stupid, but none gets to me more than the repeated insistence that the more I read the quicker I should be able to read. I read a lot, but I am and always have been very slow at it. I shouldn’t take it so hard, after all, I skipped whole books I was supposed to read last year without hurting my grades, but it’s sad to me because I really did try and I really did fail.

Anyway, in the meantime, I’ve been failing to keep on top of Secret Government Robots again. This time, it is for a better reason: Kip and I are working on a pretty neat project (details will come in the future). I’m pretty excited about that, so pretty much any time I’ve had that was not already claimed by school, or work, or sleep, I’ve been spending on that. If I’ve now given up on trying to keep up on school readings, maybe I’ll have time to do that instead.

Okay, so I’m back in school again. I haven’t had all my new classes, but yesterday I had one that I signed up for without knowing exactly what it was. Then I fled. I mean, it looked like a really interesting class, mostly about adapting stories from one medium to another I guess, but it looked really hard. I could probably have enjoyed it if it were the only class I was taking in a year, but as it stands, I chickened out and ran away. I did enjoy the one day of the class I took. Were I rich enough to sit in on classes without having to worry about the whole workload, I’d be all over it, but I ain’t. Even the professor seemed really cool, so much so that I actually feel bad about dropping his class, but I didn’t go back to school to challenge myself. I want easy classes and plenty of ’em.

I replaced it with a class about the history of pirates that, is probably not going to be super-duper-easy, but it will probably be easier than that class.

Haiku!

Dead kittens are fun.
You need not ever feed them
and you can kick them.

In other news, I had a dream last night. It was like this: It was your general post-apocalyptic zombie-style setup, but instead of zombies, it was a world where statues had come to life and started attacking people. Since, I assume, there are fewer statues on Earth than there would be human corpses, getting attacked wasn’t too frequent, but when they came they were tough to fight because statues are harder to smash than zombie skulls. As is frequent with dreams, I don’t remember too much, but there was an ostrich statue among the horde.

Also, there was this other side-plot about a girl who lived in a high-tech pod thing. She had no idea what the pod was about, and seemed pretty unaware of the statuepocalypse in general. She was discovered by some survivor boy and they were hanging out. He tried to call someone on a cell-phone and it seemed like that person got hit by a space laser. The girl was intrigued and actually tried calling herself on the phone (a stupid idea), but before the space laser came down to kill them, some big thing in space (spaceship? moon? I don’t know?) moved itself in front of it to take the hit. I never found out what the deal was with this and how it connected to the comparatively more sensible statue attack plot.

Anyway, that’s it for now.

I have found my way through another year of school and some people gave me some letters:

Cartoons and Comics: A-
Close Reading: B
Creative Process: A
History of Catholicism: B+
Intro to Human Geography: A
King Arthur: A
Pulp Fiction: A-

I have to admit, these are better than I was expecting. This year, more than last year, I basically felt tired and overworked the whole time. I expected my marks to suffer more than they actually seem to have done. Oh well, here’s what I learned: next year I am taking fewer classes at a time.

Last Year’s Marks

Today was, I’m pretty sure, the first day since my return to school when I have missed class due to feeling ill (instead of just oversleeping or just wanting to skip class). I could feel it coming on at work last night, but on the walk to class today I could tell I wasn’t going to be up to it, so I turned back around. Unfortunately it happened on the day of the week when I have three classes, instead of the day I have just one. Oh well. It’s like that old saying: “sometimes you miss school because you are sick.” What a classic old saying that is. So true.

Haiku!

Splaz kembordar fut.
Wezlengy, jurtra? Dersal.
Velteng wutnuvvy.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it on the site before or not, but my plan was to take summer classes. I’m not doing that now. Not this year anyway. Instead I think I’m going to take the summer as a relaxation time, and when I go back to school in September, take fewer courses at once. I feel like I will get more out of it that way.

Well, I haven’t been saying much but the bare basics on here lately, so here goes:

I’m not extremely skilled at balancing school and work.

I’ve been pretty busy with school and work lately. Whereas last year I had a class in which I’d already read most of the material, I don’t have that this year. With three reading-intensive courses, I’m already behind on my reading and, realistically, I’ll have to start deciding which materials I’m going to skip reading altogether. I am enjoying these reading-heavy courses, but they’re a lot of work for someone who hasn’t the time to read.

Work, meanwhile, has been occasionally difficult. I drive a company car, which is immensely helpful, but since Winter set in, I’ve experienced all manner of problems. Flat tires, drained batteries, door malfunctions, and the steering column had to be replaced. I’m confident that the advantages of not having to own my own car still outweigh the disadvantages, but the scales are shifting. Because of the latest issues, the car has been in the shop this week, which means I lose a week’s worth of money, but I also gained some free nights in which I was able to accomplish some other things (like reading some things for school…)

Haiku!

Rainbows in the sky
burning all the world below
and laughing. Laughing.

Speaking of money, I got around to trying to find a roommate again at the end of December, but didn’t have much luck. Up until now I’ve been considerably better off financially than last year, but that is likely to change in coming months. Let’s see what happens!