Anyways. Today is/was the first day of the quarter. I got up very successfully at 5:45 and went on a job across campus to visit all of my classes as the sun came up. The environmental studies building is officially the coolest building on campus. It looks like a piece of crap from the outside, but inside it is pretty stinking cool. It feels like...Zaboomafoo's treehouse meets USS Enterprise.
I had a banana and oatmeal for breakfast. Showered. and read the first six chapters of Isaiah all on schedule. Chapter six is loaded. After that I went over all of the reading for 311 again, reading the case a total of five times before class I think. I was going to be ready to get called on, let me tell you. In class none of that seemed to matter. I felt as inadequately prepared as I have ever been. Luckily it didn't matter. He didn't get to and Socratizing of the class today.
Back to where we were...at twelve I had English 307. Medieval literature. This professor. Is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. Go look at Ian McKellan on the cover of Richard III, then put him in the most ridiculous...(tweed?) suit you've ever seen, with a fit that made him look actually more like Al Pacino than Gandalf. He's an American. But he talks with an almost British Accent. Like you'd expect...a man born in the late 18th century in America to sound like. Definitely not English but...something is there...And the mustache?
He seems pretty cool though. I'm gonna botch this point here, but it seems like a lot of English teachers...assume a certain...(old fashioned?) way of reading texts has already been learned...except...so many of them do that no student really knows what that is....well. That made NO sense, but this guy. This guy is old fashioned. and Old. I think I will like him. He did a little mini spiel about how many English professors in "American universities at least," seem to have developed a guilty conscience over doing nothing with their lives except look at novels and poetry for decades, and feel the need to justify their field with social utility or cultural relevance...or...whatever. Thus...tarnishing the real "disinterested interest" (I should have paid more attention in 313) or...w/e. Art for arts sake is good. and doesn't need to be justified. Doesn't need...a...poignant social theme...not every dead author has to have been secretly gay Pam Hardman.
Anyway. That made. Very little sense.
But w/e. It was a good first class period. No Jake or Mikki yet though.
311 (the hardest non-hard science class at Western according to former students...according to the professor) was also enjoyable this first day of class. I got to see the guy I judge (having not actually interacted with him) to be a pretentious half-idiot got shut up real quick by the adorable professor Paul Chen. He said "Goodness" about 18 times during the class period. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to here people say Goodness instead of taking the Lord's name in vain. Bobby says Dr. Chen is a great Christian guy too. He wore green pants with suspenders. a white shirt blue jacket and tie. A shorter Asian fellow. He speaks quickly.
He described the course as a (very) little taste of what law school is. 3/4's of the class raised their hands when he asked who's considering law school. I went ahead and raised mine too. He said, in so many words, it's a factory that pumps out cold heartless bastards. The kind of people who, from what I gathered, take no words for granted and tend to argue more over language than what is actually signified by the language. I thought I was this way interacting with a lot of people in my past. Then I met Jake and I thought I might not actually be that bad. Jake, you are warm and full of heart though. Don't mind that part. He said during his three years at law school he never once heard the word justice in the classroom. Literally. He didn't say that was an inherently bad thing. You're not learning about what's right or wrong, or studying a subject really at all according to him. You're learning a new way of thinking. The cold heartless bastard way of thinking. He mentioned Scott Turow's book. I felt stupidly proud that I'd read it.
Anyways. All those hands going up in that one class, packed to the brim...sobering considering only 12 students from Western enrolled at UW law last fall. and that's the highest I've seen the three years I've been keeping track.
There is no question I will read more pages, words, and syllables this quarter and spend more time doing it than I ever have in the past.
This is how I described my family in a recent text message "...Sara is being awesome. Kara is also being awesome in her own less-like-me way (but really...plenty like me). Mom is recovering from uterus-removal surgery. She has been up and about and seems fine. Dad's sense of humor is aging like wine so far."
Here are some pictures. From over the last month.
Currently listening: Sanctus Real "Pieces of a Real Heart," Random worship music...Fee, Shane & Shane, Todd Agnew, Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, PETRA!!, Philips Craig & Dean, Kristian Stanfill, Matt Redman.
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