Romii

Now it’s winding down to my last year of college. Seniors just signed up for courses today (started at 7:00am on the dot), and so of course I deprived myself of some sleep to do so. Here is the tentative class schedule; I may be taking another independent study this semester, this time in Computer Science, if the Director of the School of Engineering gets back to me sometime before the summer…

Definite classes:

• ART 451 – Senior Studio Art Coordinating Seminar: This is my senior seminar class that I must take. For some reason it’s not letting me sign up for it, so it’s not official, but seeing as we only have seven senior Studio Art majors, it shouldn’t be a problem. Of course, this is for my Studio Art major. This class kind of cut off some of my options for other classes though, ’cause it spans over 3 class meeting times (Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:10pm-2:30pm).
• ENG 312 – Norse Mythology: Although I now have heard mixed reviews about the professor teaching the course…it’s Norse mythology. I always have been interested in Norse mythology, and have been trying to take this course for a while now (but it’s either always full or during a time slot where I have another class I need to take). It meets every Tuesday and Thursday, from 11:10am to 12:25pm. Right after a nice class about ancient gods, I’ll be having lunch! I’m taking it to fulfill my English minor.
• PSY 376 – Cognitive Psychology: Apparently the professor is good (and easy), and I’m taking it with a friend of mine. I’m not so sure how interested I am in cognitive studies, but might as well try it out. It’s an early class on Tuesdays and Thursdays (9:35am-10:50am), but not as early as the Lifespan Development class (8:10am-9:25am) I’m taking this semester so I’m not complaining. This is for my Psychology minor.
• TRS 260 – Christianity and Culture: Eh…the advisor for TRS majors/minors suggested that I take this because the professor is good. I need to a take 200-level Christianity related course in order to fulfill my general requirements for my major. Since I’ve already taken four TRS courses (Confucianism and Taoism falls under elective since it doesn’t fit my remaining TRS requirements), I figured I might as well minor in TRS since I would be forced to take five either way, and just need one more to make a minor (six courses). This one fits in pretty nicely with my schedule, meeting at 11:10am-12:10am every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It’s a pity that it’s my only Friday class though, but oh well. 300-level courses is where it’s at though…to be honest, I really put off taking a course to fulfill this requirement because the classes that actually fit for that requirement sound so terribly boring. I mean, Introduction to the Old Testament? New Testament? I had to go through all that in grade school/high school. I don’t need a recap in college, thank you very much.

Possible choices:

• CSC 696 – Independent Study: This is all to fulfill a requirement in Natural Sciences. Argh, it’s so frustrating that the most advanced web design related course they have is “Introduction to HTML”. From what one of my friends told me, it was a joke, and probably would’ve been an absolute joke for me to take it. So my supervisor at work and I worked out a proposal to make a more advanced course just for me, which would essentially teach me the programming aspects that I don’t know (ColdFusion, Java, etc). We were going to do it this semester (Spring 2010), but I had another independent study, so it wouldn’t work.
• ART 309 – Introduction to Photography: Now I know that I’ve already taken the Introduction to Digital Photography and Photoshop course, but this is different. This is old-school photography, with the darkroom and all. It’s so exciting! Though, since the Art department doesn’t officially have a professor for this yet, I can’t say that I’m definitely taking it. It’s sad. It meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:35pm to 8:55pm, so I’m not sure how much photography we’d be doing in class, but it’s definitely good conditions for using the darkroom and whatnot. And of course, it hopefully fulfills my concentration in Digital Arts. I’m not too sure about that though…my advisor never made it really clear…
• ART 303 – Painting I: This is a maybe. I may take this if I can’t get into the Photography class, I may take this even if I do. This depends slightly on whether or not I get the Computer Science (CSC) independent study course that I want. This may or may not help me with my senior project, seeing as I still don’t really know what I want to do. We’ll see. It meets right after my senior seminar class (Mondays and Wednesdays 3:10pm – 5:30pm), so that would be kinda bad in terms of work hours.
• ART 360 – Sculptural Self Portraits: Again, like the Painting I class, this is a “maybe” class. Depends on the Photography class mostly, as it meets at the same time as the Photography class.
• PSY 226 – Close Interpersonal Relationships: I signed up for this, but I’m not sure if I’ll actually take it. I was kind of interested in it, but now I feel like it’s not as interesting as I made it out to be in my head. It would be an easy class, but it also divided up my Tuesday/Thursday afternoons weirdly (it meets from 2:10pm to 3:25pm) so I wouldn’t be able to work as many hours if I took it.

There were a few other Psychology classes I considered, such as Psychology of Terrorism and Forensic Psychology, but the scheduled class times don’t work well for me.

Speaking of Fall ’10, I was able to get the housing I wanted off-campus. It’s technically an apartment in someone’s basement, but they just call it a room in their house. It’s so nice though and I’m so glad I was able to get it, because it’s only $650 per month, all utilities included (cable, internet, electricity, heat, water, etc). It’s a fully furnished room, and in the “hallway” area of the basement, there’s a kitchen – refrigerator, kitchen sink, stove/oven combination all included. The only thing not included is the microwave, but hell – I already have one! There’s also a washer/dryer combination near the bathroom (which I can get to through the hallway), and it’s my own private set. I’ve worked out the pricing, and if I max out on transportation costs (always going back and forth during peak hours, which I probably wouldn’t), then I still save a good couple hundred each month. I start living here in the summer (so after finals), since I’ll be working on campus again over the summer break.

There is no heat in my dorm room at all. I’m at work now, but last I checked the thermostat, it was at 57 degrees – two degrees warmer than what it was yesterday. Keeping the lights on at night helped a bit.

What I don’t understand is how they could allow early arrivals and not have any intentions of making the dorms a livable temperature. They knew I would be staying at the dorms starting Monday since before winter break started. How do I know this? Because I have to request for their approval so they can reactivate my student ID. Our student IDs are designed to swipe us into our dorms, and they deactivate them over the winter break to make sure people aren’t sneaking in and out.

It won’t even hit 60 degrees! I can live with 60 degrees because that’s what my mom keeps the house at, and the heater jumps on every now and then to warm the place up. But there’s no heat. At all. And they didn’t inform me of this when they said “hey, you’ve been approved to come back to campus a week early so you can work!” Now they just expect me to accept things as they are because they didn’t think to inform the poor student that they will not turn on the heat at all until Saturday.

The other bad thing is that it’s prohibited to have space heaters because it’s a “danger to the dorm and the student”…at least, that is what they’ve written in the student handbook. I think it’s more of a danger to not have heat and to allow someone to live in that kind of condition. Had I known I wouldn’t have heat, I would’ve disregarded the rules and brought a space heater from home.

I might still disregard that stupid rule and buy a space heater…