Another Semester, Another Break

Well, the summer semester was just all kinds of painful. I love, love, love summer school under normal circumstances because the classes are smaller, and generally more flexible, and it keeps me out of a frigidly-air conditioned office all day. But wow, this one hurt. I like intersessions, which are six weeks of intensive learning, rather than the agony of a regular semi-weekly or weekly class for 3 1/2 months; I can absorb better the information because its constant reference keeps it in the mind, and I can do 6 courses instead of three, meaning I'd get to finish much faster if I wanted to. The U of A does this way, spring and summer intersessions; SFU does not, and it really sucks. But enough grumping about that I guess.

I managed another A in Processes of Development and Underdevelopment. That was a very interesting course because a large part of it was group presentations, and lots of time spent with guests, so at first, I was confused about what I was supposed to be learning, but I think I found my way eventually. I had a lot of fun with that class...it as almost like meeting with friends and acquaintances rather than going to class.

Still no word on the results from Medical Anthropology, as my final paper is in the mail, so I'll likely see it on Monday or Tuesday (I hope) and be able to see what will shake loose in that class. So far I'm in position for a solid B so I'm hoping the paper at least maintains that. That class was difficult because the prof tried hard to get us interacting, but at 9:30 am on a Monday morning, would you want to get into a rousing discussion about say, Euthanasia? Yeah. I tried to jump in a be talkative, so I can only hope that was recognized.

Worst of all, the Political Sociology class: I try hard not to say disparaging things about classes, cautious that people may read this blog, but that class was just awful. I disagreed with the Prof's theory right from the very start, because I don't buy that property and property relations are at the root of everything in the world: it's such a reductionist argument, at one point, he even alluded to Love being based on property at its roots. He argued that there is no such thing as Art in pre-political and proto-political societies, and he had such genuinely controversial ideas about Aboriginal people that really set me off. Plus, his lecture style was repetitive; we recapped classes for an hour before getting into the subject, and it took him sometimes around 20-30 minutes to explain a concept, when it was something easy to explain or was explained well enough the first time. I had a B+ in that class, but the final paper was worth 50%, and it was meant to be 20 pages...no one I talked to managed 20 pages, and I just barely eeked out 15 pages, so I have to hope that I still managed a B on that paper to stay in the B range.

So now, I'm on 5 weeks of break...glorious, wonderful, fabulous...bored. I did managed to do up my Save the Date cards today, and I'm half way through addressing them, so that little task will most likely be over by Monday. Now, I just sit back and wait to see if anyone else besides Rod, my mother and I care about our wedding :)