Every semester, I end the first week by breaking down the first impressions of each class/professor. And take a glimpse at my workload.  Despite a very rainy week and a few lapses in timing (including a full parking structure at the light rail station, which made me walk a half-mile in the rain instead on Thursday) I made it to all of my classes.  Here’s to Spring 2010.

Global Career Development is going to be my most relaxing class.  We have a string of guest speakers from the university, NGOs, and international businesses.  The professor is an adorable little excitable Japanese lady and she seems like she’ll keep it from getting too boring.  On Thursday we took a survey on what abilities we had to offer. I also have a string of friends sitting at the same table, so I’ll have some company in our career development!

Contemporary U.S. History has been kind of a love/hate class so far. The professor likes to use media a lot which is cool, and he knows his stuff.  But he’s been trying to treat the course more like a seminar, but it’s a bit too big for that.  That doesn’t mean I won’t try to chime in though!

Principles of Global Economics is taught by the same excited Japanese professor. The course, as its title might suggest, concentrates on economics (not my point of interest) but it has actually been interesting so far. Lots of talk about global issues and country examples, and I’ve got a whole row of friends, including Alli, to keep me company for the first three hour class of each week.

German is a little daunting.  It’s accelerated, which is why we’ve learned 287+ words and phrases in two days, and it promises to keep up the pace.  We have two essays, two oral exams, a final, and a lot of vocab throughout.  The professor is pretty laid back, but speaks German about 85% of the time.  Utilizing my old German from high school has been a lot of help, but I find myself filling wholes with a mix of English and Mandarin, making for a very bizarre vernacular.

Special Education Integration promises to be pretty boring. The professor was clearly a junior high teacher, but hopefully that won’t bother me too much.  Thankfully, it doesn’t look like it will be too much work to keep up with the course.  But, we will have some cases to play out in our placements which will be interesting.  I also find myself very alone in my education classes now. Every single one of my College of Education friends is student teaching this semester, which means I’m the only one taking classes and I’m amid crowds of strangers who have taken a half dozen classes with each other. It’s a long three hours to say the least.

History Methods is kinda the same. I don’t know many people, except Clay who petitioned to take the class while he is student teaching. It’s the same professor as my other history class, which is why we watched John Adams excerpts and will be doing some similar assignments.  Hopefully I’ll learn something to augment my giant binder from my other methods class.

Modern U.S. History is my dreaded online class.  Lots of reading, lots of discussions, and very little break time.  Online history courses are simply a nightmare sometimes.  But, it’s a time period I know less about so perhaps it will help out.  I would have taken colonial history instead (one I have even more to learn from) but that professor is really annoying, so I’ve chosen this one! We’ll see how it goes.

As for my classroom placement, no word yet! I’m officially a week behind, so I’ll be calling up the PFE office soon enough.  In the mean time, I’ll try to get through everything else.

All in all, my actual assignments have been meager.  Write a poem, fill out a survey, yada yada.  However, in one week I have been assigned a whopping 469 pages of reading about history, countries, economics, education, and languages.  I guess I should wrap up this post and crack open a book or two.