WOOHOO BIOLOGY!

[cjsmith]

I GOT INTO THE BIOLOGY CLASS!

Exclamation points!!! Smiley faces :-) :-) :-)!

I have not yet asked about taking the final exam early. That final is on Thursday, so I'd best be arriving in Japan while the rest of the class is taking the test.

Presuming the final will work out, I am faced with a choice:

- Drop English Writing, taught by a woman whose organizational skills and ability to remain on topic long enough to answer a student's question* both horrify me; OR
- Drop Spanish, taught by a teacher I like, but late in the evenings.

I've got e-mail out to the Spanish teacher asking to switch to her afternoon section. If that is possible, there's no contest. I have attended exactly one English writing class and already I dread it.


___________
* "How do you spell iambic pentameter?" This is not a long topic, folks.

Comments

[rampling.livejournal.com]

Yaaaay for getting in classes you want!!!!!! :D

I tend to agree with your gut feeling about avoiding that addled English Writing teacher.

[layer.livejournal.com]

awesome.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

She's something. A tycoon and a typhoon are not the same thing. She had another one like that during class, but I've mercifully forgotten it. Maybe there's some brain characteristic that makes people do that kind of thing, but for an English composition teacher, it's... awkward.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I am SO HAPPY. I hope I will be ten times happier when I've asked about the biology final!

[leback.livejournal.com]

If the writing class is that bad, perhaps it's better to drop it whether or not you stick with the Spanish class? IIRC, you're taking that one just for its educational value, not because you need it on your transcript, and if the teacher's that bad, it seems improbable that you'll learn enough to make up for the time and spoons it'll take away from biology and chemistry (or from, you know, having a life outside of school). Or do you need to maintain a full-time course load for some other reason?

[hnybny.livejournal.com]

I've been hoping you'd make it in, YAY!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

A full-time course load is a definite advantage, and I may even need some writing courses on the transcript. That said, I suspect you're right: this one is bad enough to drop even if I do need it on the transcript. There's always summer quarter.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank you for all the crossed fingers and good thoughts! I feel incredibly fortunate.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I'm so impressed by your ability to play this waiting game! Sounds like you're in on the plan now!

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

congrats!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Aw, no need to be impressed. Ability goes way up when the number of better choices goes away. :)

I am SO HAPPY!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank you! WOOHOOOOOOOOOO!

[brooksmoses]

Yeah, that'd be my thought, especially with regards to it taking spoons away from bio and chem. Also, if she's that bad about what you've seen, I suspect there are conclusions we can draw about what her grading consistency is probably like to go with it.

Yay for getting into bio, by the way!

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'd definitely drop the writing class. If you can correct the teacher already, that's not a good sign.

Spanish is pretty useful in the medical (and probably veternary) field anyway.

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

Woot!
Drop English. Now!!!!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I thought the same. She may have a lot to teach me about symbolism, meaning, and art, but those are not things I'm there to learn. I'm there to learn effective clear composition.

Even better than Spanish would be Latin, but the school doesn't offer Latin. Having Spanish to sit alongside my French would be a good start.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ouch: that may be very true. Yes, I'd best get out of this class.

I sure hope I can switch Spanish.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It may even be worth dropping English even if I can't stay in either bio or Spanish. A full-time course load is worth a lot, but this course may be beyond my level of cope.

[platypus]

Yay! I meant to comment earlier to express some sort of hope that a few students would drop the class after a meeting or two. Apparently someone did!

The English course sounds pretty useless. A bad instructor can make those hours just miserable.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Yeah, miserable is about right. The comments on ratemyprofessor indicate she's a bit dotty but an easy A. For me, though, this A might simply be too hard to obtain. :-)

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

Yaaaaaaay!!!! ::kermit dance::

Organization seems like an important part of composition. I agree with everybody else.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*grin* Well, I did do my Spanish homework already so that I could go to English tomorrow morning, but... yeah. Maybe waiting to see what else shakes out is stupid.

(tradeoff = full course load if any one of the three remaining teachers won't move the final, versus NO MORE ADDLED PERSON)

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

That's excellent news about Bio! Things seem to be working out wonderfully. I hope you are bale to switch to the Spanish section you need, because the English class sounds awful. I realized quite awhile ago I just couldn't deal with professors like that! Unfortunately, I realized it after I was out of school. :)

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

whoa - didn't think you'd make that! good on you :)

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

Hurrah!

Nuke the English. And I hope you can do a questionnaire on _why_. Good fortune getting into the better-timed Spanish.

It sounds like the English teacher is not even on the same level as my 6th grade teacher was. (I still remember her asking us to figure out if we could pillage a village...)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I guess there's an advantage to starting over in middle age! I don't know myself nearly as well as I wish I did, but I know a whale of a lot more than I did the first time around.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it either. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I do wish I could do a questionnaire. She's probably a fine human being with her heart in the right place, but her brain simply isn't connected in the ways that make a teacher I want to have. I wonder if she'd do better teaching art. It's fine to be unclear and illogical when teaching art; in fact as best I can tell from art student friends, that sort of thing is a requirement, so that the students have to go through it. For writing, though, I think clarity should be required.

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

Before you dump writing, have you figured out the requirements for joining the honors society so you don't have to go through this registration hell next quarter?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Nothing I've currently got would qualify :-(

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

Can you get in for the first quarter without taking an honors course?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*Getting* in (if I understand correctly) is just a matter of showing a good GPA. I don't yet know the requirements for how long you need to have that good GPA; one course in one quarter won't do, but two quarters might be enough. *Staying* in requires taking the useless courses.

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

Indeed. They make you go to school when you are so... young. :)

I am amazed when I talk to younger students now and hear them describe the things they have to deal with and put up with and I want to tell them to just put their foot down and make sure it gets changed... and then realize that I put up with the same things back in the day because it just seemed like you should. :)

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

Yay biology!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Life is looking up!