If I'm ever late replying to emails, Facebook wallposts, or calls...that's cause this is where I'll be:

Weekly Class Schedule

And that's before we factor in all the office hours...debate practice rounds...lit mag meetings...various events and trainings...debates...food...time to have a life...

It may not look like a lot to all you high schoolers used to straight 7AM-3PM days, but trust me - it's taking a heavy toll. Too bad I'm still a humanities nut and therefore have to finish close to two full books a week. (And yes, they do mean "annotate-finish" not just "skim-read-fast-finish"...I picked up horrible habits in high school.) But plus point...at least I'm not taking any more 9AM classes! Having my classes over at 11AM on most days was nice, but it wasn't worth falling asleep in all my lectures.

To be honest, I realize that not all of these classes are very hard - but the sheer effort of running to and fro from class after class throughout the day is increasingly difficult. Especially when I have 5 minutes to run as fast as I can from Salomon to Barus & Holley in the cold. My time gets split into little 50-minute chunks, one following the other, click-clinking into place, so that a great deal of my energy goes towards just getting through the door of my next class. Rest by drifting through class, and then hurry off until the next one.

But I'm pretty happy with my classes for this semester. They feel slightly more focused than my courses from last semester, although I loved those as well. I'm taking:

• BIOL0200: The Foundation of Living Systems
  Say hellllooo to my dead easy 5th class of the semester (the recommended class load is 4 per semester). Since I never took AP Bio in high school, I can't skip this prereq for pretty much all the other interesting biology courses, but so far the course looks like it's going to revolve around what I did in my year of Honors Bio. The professor is a FANTASTIC lecturer, though (he was on the Colbert Show! I guess you get all sorts), so I'm having a good time and picking up some more supplementary knowledge...definitely one of those "must-take" classes at Brown.
  Also, he likes to randomly call on students to answer simple questions...by putting their Facebook profile pictures up on a screen in front of the entire 500+ student class. Therefore I'm making sure my Facebook profile pictures stay relatively tame for this semester...
  
   
• ANTH1322: The Anthropology of Global Aid
  Lydia convinced me to shop the class because she "needed a friend"...and I'm glad, because it's become my favorite class so far (Emma Watson was in it too, but she dropped. Sorry, stalkers.). The class is an incredibly relevant and interesting critique of the way humanitarian programs and social justice initiatives work in the world today, from specific campaigns and human rights groups to broad themes like media coverage. It's an analysis of the way successful service groups have had to make humanitarian aid into a sort of industry, with images of innocent victims as their currency - and at the areas where well-intentioned people can do more harm than good with the ways they go about their goals. The professor is incredibly sweet, ensuring that the class - while still critical - never devolves into a cynical ripping-down of honest service efforts. Instead, it's a way of understanding how service awareness grows and how we should target it to be most effective. Absolutely love every single lecture...and on a selfish note, I've gotten sooo many ideas for good debate cases from the class so far :P
   
• ANTH1110: African Issues in Anthropological Perspective
  The prof for this one is one of those quiet, pensive men that you can tell is really smart and probably unexpectedly glib in a discussion, but just has trouble commanding a class and staying on topic throughout. That said, it's still a good class, full of a lot of classic anthropological tools used to illuminate misconceptions about the nature of Africa. Africa gets a lot of attention in aid news, but it's surprising how little people really know about the state of its affairs - such as the colonial groups within it that don't quite follow the straight binary of dominated-dominating many people have come to expect. Probably my hardest class, but it's great in conjunction with ANTH1322.
   
• PHIL0360: Early Modern Philosophy
  Taking this one with Myles, Natella, and Maddy. I'm always worried about philosophy after the excruciating Political Theory class I took at Georgetown summer school a few years back (although I think I probably worked harder on those papers than I do on some of the papers I turn in here...), so I'm hoping I do alright. I'm really not cut out to be a philosopher - you can probably tell from the content of this blog, haha - but the lecturer is really eloquent and engaging so hopefully I learn something productive! Descartes is proving to be immensely fascinating so far...and yes, I know how obnoxiously pretentious that sounded...
   
• ENGN0900: Managerial Decision Making
  Closest thing to a business class Brown has to offer. Not even going to pretend this isn't a joke. :P That said, I'm actually legitimately interested in the case studies we go over, and as the professor is another one of those Brown legends (he's on a Nantucket Nectar cap! For Asians, that's the American equivalent of a Snapple cap fact!) and a total sweetheart, I'm all for it.

Anyways. I just wrote paragraphs about all my classes instead of going to sleep. I think that officially makes me a geek, as if it wasn't already obvious.....;)

muchlove,