First Impressions, Part I

It's day two of my second semester at Mt. Royal College. I'm still an electronic publishing student, but not yet certain exactly what that means. Colin studies accounting & finance, and by all accounts (no pun intended) is familiar with the various career options and subsequent models of BMWs his education will afford him. All I've divined from the various poobahs of my program is that when I'm done I'll know all about "publishing" and maybe something having to do with "electronics". This makes the whole endevour seem just slightly moot, but I've been promised a fancy-looking document at the end that will tell employers that I've spent a lot of money learning something and that I'd be a better choice for a job than the guy who begs for quarters outside their building. So, I've got that going for me, which is nice.

I figured I'd record my first impressions of the new semester's classes here, so when I start the really intensive bitching later we'll all be on the same page. Let's begin:

Freelance Writing 1311 (Writing for business): Fairly self-explanitory, which should have left the professor plenty of time to explain why I'm required to take it. I've already taken a mandatory english composition class that apparently ensures I can translate thought into written words. I can understand its pertinance as a job skill, but having this second class focusing on business communications seems a presumptuous type of overkill. If I want to learn how to write the perfect business letter, that's one thing... they probably sell books on that. But training design students on the writing of an annual report? Designing an annual report seems like something I should know, but I think the writing is best left to someone who knows how the company in question is doing. Furthermore, who assumed I'd be going into business, anyway? Maybe I'm going to take my degree and work exclusively with circus folk or Alaskan wolfhounds. They're certainly not going to care if I use full-block style in my inter-office correspondance. I'm guessing that they needed a class to fill out the first year in the program and picked Freelance Writing because it's easy to rationalize as a "career skill".

English 2243 (Introduction to the study of film): Now we're cooking with grease. I get to watch movies, talk to people about the movies in class, write a few papers about how The Matrix ruled and then take my nice easy A home to cuddle when it's all over. Proving that there's no such thing as a free lunch, I had to pay for my lunch today... wait, I mean that as cool as the class seems straight off, it seems to be populated by people who are either: a)looking for an excuse to watch movies and lay low for 4 hours a week, or b) convinced that they are serious conneseurs of film because they watch movies like Amelie and claim to like Atom Egoyan. You know the sort; they dismiss everything popular because discussing popular films makes them feel common and dirty.

As readers of my movie reviews will know, I'm into movies. I watch movies the way certain aquatic mammals breathe oxygen. But I've rarely met a movie I didn't like. Film making is a creative and collaborative endevour of the highest order, and just because I don't get it, or don't find it funny or sad or exciting or whatever it was supposed to be doesn't mean that it wasn't a valid effort. I may be able to recognize certain elements of film like narrative style, cinematographic details, literary or historical reference, etc, but that doesn't make me a "better" movie fan. I don't like films just because they're in Italian. And I don't hate films just because they've got a big star in them. I could rant about this forever, and I'm guessing that at least one paper I write for this class will afford me a better opportunity. I'll finish this by saying that Paul Verhoeven is not a genius, and Starship Troopers, while certainly a leader of the giants bugs in outer space genre, is not in even the slightest way, not even a little itty-bitty bit, not in any conceivable fashion brilliant..

Linguistics 2211 (The nature of language): I wish to avoid any undue rudeness here, but I find it deliciously ironic that my linguistics class is being taught by a professor whose use of English is of the seriously halting and stumbling variety. While she seems emminently capable and learned, watching her as she searches for a word to describe something, gets visably frustrated and starts over is somewhat akin to watching Marie Curie die from exposure to radium; with so much knowledge of it, I wonder how she's not better equiped to handle it properly. I suspect, without raising any issues of competancy here, that today's 50 minute lecture could have been disposed of in half an hour by someone more adept with english. Vectors of instruction aside, I'm sure this course will become a favourite of mine, since I've always been fascinated by the origins and evolutions of language.

I've got two more classes yet to experience, so once I've had my first hours of those I'll add my recaps here.