aRedMoon

Very imaginative title, eh? But that’s what this post is, I guess, as I kinda just feel like talking about my classes…

Right now, I’m taking five English courses, and one Spanish one. Which equates to eighteen credits. A full load, and I’ll tell ya – I’m having a blast.

My Mondays start out with The Short Story, an English literature class that focuses on – guess what? – the short story format. We’ve read a bunch of Anton Chekhov, Raymond Carver, and we’re in the middle of our horror unit, where we’re reading a variety of horror stories. We have a few more authors that we’ll focus on later in the course. It’s a discussion based course… meaning that we read a few stories every night, and then there are class discussions about them. It’s relatively disorganized, I feel, but it works for me. I tend to do Spanish homework during it >_>

Our big assignments have been writing stories in the “style”. I posted my Carver story up here (a few posts down) but I wasn’t really pleased with my Chekhov one. I should just post it anyways, it’s interesting if nothing else. :3 I have two more stories to write as the semester wanes on… a horror one (O_o) and then one in the style of Joyce Oates. Sounds like fun, eh?

After that class, my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays continue with Phonetics & Pronunciation, Spanish 325. It is just as it sounds – a Spanish class based in linguistics. Which makes it pretty much amazing. :) Though it’s a LOT of busy work… we’re basically transcribing how real pronunciation works, with words all melding together and stuff…

On Fridays, that’s the end. However, Mondays and Wednesdays, I have a 75 minute class Introduction to Theory and Criticism or something like that. It’s part of the “core” English program. To be honest, I don’t really know what the class is about. We’ve looked at a variety of critical viewpoints and written some short assignments… not really sure what the overall point of the class is, though. It’s okay though. We have read some interesting books, which is good! We read a Walt Disney biography, which was helluva interesting, and just recently we went through a memoir, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Both very good & interesting books. But like I said, I fail to see the overall arching themes in the class.

My Tuesdays and Thursdays have similar structures. They both start with my English linguistics class, Topics in the Structure of English which this semester is focusing on Semantics & Pragmatics. It’s pretty cool, though a lot of the material has been going about ten feet above my head. It’s okay though, I get it at a basic level… after we’ve discussed it in detail. :P I also really like my prof. I took her for a class last semester, and she’s really smart and knows what she’s talking about.

After that, I always have a ~3 hour break. On Tuesdays, it’s 2 hours and 45 minutes, and Thursdays it’s 3 hours and 15 minutes long. After these breaks are my two workshop courses. Remember, I’m undecided between doing a Creative Writing emphasis or a Linguistic one.

Tuesdays, I have Intermediate Story Writing. It’s a workshop class… for writing stories. Yar. I’ve had two go through workshop now, and now it’s a matter of fixing them up. The first one, you should be familiar with, it’s the Airplane House one. ~_~ The second is a ghost story, which I need to really work on before doing anything with it…

And on Thursdays, I have Intermediate Poetry Writing. I know, poetry. Urgh. But that’s been the source of all the poetry I’ve been posting up, so I guess it’s not bad. Just not my favorite thing to write…

All in all, my semester has been going pretty good. It’s 18 credits, and there sure can seem to be a lot of work at times, especially when profs seem to get together and decide that EVERYTHING will be due the same week… I had one of those weeks two weeks ago. I was ready to ~die~ during that, but made it out okay afterwards.

But this is all leading up to next semester… when I shall be in SPAIN!!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D