Some Housekeeping

Literally. This is the nitty-gritty stuff. I live in a single in Porter Hall. If you check out the Residential Life bit of the Belwah site, you'll see that this is one of the ever-rustic '64 Halls. I lived in the same room last year and love the community. It's quiet. It's spacious. It's conveniently located between the food and my classes. Here's a picture (below) of a certain Ruby Jennings '10 "studying communism" (read: trying to sneak a nap on my bed) during one of my more studious nights last week. I can't blame her. I spend a lot of time sitting by the window myself. I kept listing toward my REM-cycle right after these SOI shifts. And while I love logging the Z's, it doesn't get the Chaucer read.

Aside from the token "hey, check out my dorm room" shot, I want to get some dork stuff out of the way while this blog is young. I'll really resent this kind of entry later in the semester, so it's all getting out of the way right now. I'm somewhere between a Creative Writing and a French major and four months from starting my studies in Rennes, France. So, what does my course load look like? Well, prospies, it looks a little something like this:

Physics 130: Astronomy in the News

This class combines text book readings, current events, and basic physics with an occasional hour out on the roof of Chamberlin to do star-gazing labs. The way distribution requirements work around here, you have lots of options in maneuvering-- for me, it was a matter of navigating the Natural Sciences. As a lit-loving bookworm, I never have to take a Calculus course here and my friends who are Physics majors don't have to take a lit course to learn how to write well or get their Arts & Humanities covered. This may sound a bit "from the mouth of an Admissions Counselor," but I swear, this is all my own enthusiasm for the system. Last fall, I took the nerve signalling course Shanna mentioned in her blog. The amount of writing done in that course keeps it quite disitinct the other lab sciences I had my pick of in the course catalog.

English 195: British Literary Survey

We hop around the Norton Anthology reading and discussing and analyzing and reading and discussing... frankly, I think the visiting professor teaching this course is great, but I am ecstatic to be done with Middle English!

Anthropology 120: The Human Animal

Three hours of this course are straight lecture. The fourth hour, the class splits in two for lab time. I took an anthro course called "Society and Culture" last semester and loved it. However, the jury is still out on this course. I prefer discussion-based classes, so this isn't my favorite way to learn, but the prof on this one is still a great lecturer in her own right. I can't knock that. It's a solid course in biological anthropology. It meets at 8AM Tuesday. I have a midterm on Wednesday. On second thought, ask me about this course again at the end of next week.

French 240: The Character of French Literature

Scott Lyngaas, one of two French professors at Beloit, is leading our class through classics like "Le Malade Imaginaire" and "Candide" up through modern lit such as Daniel Modiano's "Dora Bruder." Aside from being a big fan of Scott from my French 215 course last fall, this is easily one of my favorite courses this semester.

It's a wierd bag of courses, but that seems to be the norm the semester before a semester spent off-campus. Next semester all my courses will be taught in French and after that, I am going to have to pile on the English if I decide to continue to work towards fulfilling that major. I still want to try out a class in the Sociology Department. I would love to take a Philosophy course with my FYI advisor Matt Tedesco. There are so many classes I'm afraid I won't have time to take that have the reputation of making Beloit what it is. In any case, I promise to avoid this kind of wordy-geek-stuff in the future.

Hope your weekend is swell.
Hope none of my friends find this and read that last sentence.
Hope for ripe bananas in Commons at Breakfast.

This Computer is Set to Type in Hindi

...and it is driving me up the wall! In any language, we're already into the fourth week of the academic year here at Beloit. It seems hard to believe, but today marks the end of the first quarter of the Fall Semester.

Although, at a second glance, things around here do seem to be in full swing:

• After a bit of time away, I'm once again working regular hours here in Admissions.
• Every other day it seems I am writing a "big" paper or studying for some exams that will make or break my GPA.
• Cross Country is whipping into gear-- come to think of it, morning practices have had me up at 6AM for weeks!
• And if that's not enough, today there was enough dirt on my dorm room carpet to inspire a schlep across Porter 3rd to put the communal vaccuum to task. If that's not a sure sign I'm living the Beloit Life, I don't know what is. It's funny, but I realized today that aside from my running shoes and my flip-flops, I'm entering autumn unshod. I have tracked a remarkable amount of dirt up to the third floor for someone who doesn't own shoes. Puzzling.

So, maybe we are a month deep out here after all. And while it has taken the better part of September to get my summer brain back into "school" mode, I think I'm there.