Today was my third day of school, first two days was just meeting teachers, going over class schedules and syllabus, and telling us how to do and find our homework. Now the real fun begins. I'm taking Courses in English, Math, Biology (with a lab component), and a computer course. I already have alot of homework, and I'm scheduling time into my busy schedule to get it done, it's not too bad....yet. I haven't actually gotten homework in english or my computer class, and they will probably be pretty time consuming.
My computer course is just stuff like how to use Powerpoint effectively, and make databases and how computers work, nothing too heavy. But making a good powerpoint can be time consuming.
My English class looks to be interesting. Our professor is a youngish guy (probably mid thirties), and one of the first questions he asked the class is "what if my assignment offends me religiously?" The class said "come to you!" and he said "no, I don't care if you're offended. You're an adult now, you don't stand in the hall so you don't hear something you don't like, you defend your position." He said he was raised a pentacostal and that made him very close minded growing up, so now he tries to challenge his students to think for themselves. No wonder the society discourages university education so much.
My Math class is kind of bringing out my competitive streak. I'm not very competitive by nature but being in a class with a bunch of people mostly younger than me (I'm twenty six) and being told that we are going to be doing some rigourous mental excercise and be graded on it really makes me want to show these punks what's up. I really want to be in the top of my class (in every class, but math class especially). Right now it's just math 150 which is a pre-calculus course on analytic geometry and some college algebra stuff.
My biology class with lab is interesting. I live in southern kentucky, and one quarter of my biology book is just evolution, and every chapter has a section on evolution and how it applies to whatever the topic of the chapter is. I was kind of wondering how my professor (this nice also youngish mid thirties lady) was going to handle it. Especially since alot of the people in the class are not biology majors by any stretch of the imagination. A number of people in the class are just there because they have to pick a science elective and biology has less math than physics or chemistry. I figured there would be alot of push back on the evolution topic. So she seems to be handling by saying "we are going to skip the evolution part of the chapter, we will come back to that later in the semester." And looking at the schedule, we are going over a chapter every class, except when we get to the evolution quarter of the book. Then it slows down to a chapter a week, and we only do the first two of the five chapters. Not because "plant evolution" or "microbial evolution" are so contraversial, but because (I am guessing) she knows there is alot of push back on the topic, and so we spend alot of time discussing just the basics of it. Which disapoints me a little, but I understand and I still have access to the chapters and coursework, so I can do it on my own anyway for the fun of it.
And my bio Lab seems like it will be fun as well messing with microscopes and doing studies, and writing papers.
I am really enjoying it so far and I know I will be crazy busy for the next four to five years while I work on getting either my electrical engineering degree or my biochemistry degree (haven't decided for certain, leaning towards engineering), but I like having the intellectual work to do. And I get to meet new people and be challenged.
I never would have done this had I still been on the inside. I would've been obediently washing windows while waiting for the end of the world. This is so much more rewarding. I'll check back in to let you guys know how it's going later in the semester.