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April 25, 2000
I'm a good student, honest I am!!
I had an utterly disheartening class last night. I arrived tired and headachey, found out I hadn't gotten into the class I really wanted to take next semester (it's all about intellectual freedom and censorship, and I've been trying to take it for two semesters now, and I haven't been able to.) The class I did get into is fine, but it's four credits instead of two (thus it will cost me more) and it meets twice a week from 6-9 p.m., rather than once a week. Barry convinced me not to drop it, but I'm still not thrilled at all.
My professor assigns a whole lot of readings every week. An obscene number of readings. Usually a page and a half list of readings. We don't have a textbook, so these are all articles she puts on Reserve. I generally spend about twenty bucks making photocopies, unless I get lucky and find the articles online. This past week, what with not feeling well and trying to get ready to move and write a paper, I didn't get the readings done. I didn't read a single article. Normally this doesn't really matter, since we don't get tested or anything. Until yesterday, when I walked into class and was handed a pop quiz. D'oh! It was entirely on the readings for that week, so I couldn't answer a single question. Everyone around me was scribbling away like mad, and all I could do was sit there and stare at the paper. It felt like one of those bad dreams where you're in class trying to take a test that you didn't know was coming... I finally wrote a note to the professor across the top of the page, just saying that I had been sick and hadn't gotten the readings. Simmons students -- at least the library science ones I've had classes with -- are extremely standoffish, so I don't know anyone to call to get the readings. And I knew it wasn't an excuse, and I was very sorry that I was so unprepared. I don't know how much it will affect my grade, if at all -- according to the syllabus, our grade is based on the three papers we have to write. But it was uncomfortable and embarrassing, and made me feel like a big slacker even though I do the readings every other week. (There were a couple of other people who weren't writing anything down on their quizzes, and who looked as unhappy as I felt, so at least I don't think I was the only one. Small consolation.)
On a more interesting note, both the Fleet Center and one of my my alma mater'sdorms caught fire last night. Well, the dorm was last night, and the Fleet Center was this morning. It was all over the news this morning, and Barry called me as I was eating breakfast to tell me he'd walked past the Fleet and seen the flames and smoke... neither fire was very big, apparently.
Posted by Mary Ellen at April 25, 2000 01:57 PM