Perfectly Petersen

Biting Off More Than I Can Chew

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It seemed like a good idea at the time: take 12 hours of classes this summer because they are short semesters and one of them is online. After my first week of summer session, that’s not such a wise thing after all.

Taking that courseload was going to be a sacrifice, and we knew that, but until you take that sacrifice for a test drive, it’s just not possible to get the full effect of what the next 15 weeks were going to be like. This week went like this:

• Left home at 6:15am Monday, got off at 3:00, got my books, ate dinner, arrived at school, and got home at 9:30pm.
• Left home at 6:15am Tuesday, got off at 3:00, ate dinner, arrived at school, and got home at 9:20pm.
• Left home at 6:30am (pretty tired) Wednesday, got off at 3:00, ate dinner, arrived at school, and got home at 9:20pm.
• Went back to bed to sleep until the last minute and left in a rush at 6:30, got to my desk, logged into the USF website, and dropped my Monday/Wednesday class.

I feel much better now that I’ve done that. I was missing our small group on Mondays, putting in too many hours away from home, spending extra money on gas and eating out, and I could see that for the next 15 weeks I was going to be doing a pretty “average” job at everything and leaving loose ends everywhere.

I can’t operate like that. My plate needs to be full, but I need to be able to clear it on a whim in case other stuff (especially paying stuff) comes up. Nothing like someone saying they want to pay you $1,000 to do something that takes a few evenings to do, but not be able to commit to doing it, right?

So, I’m still taking one online class and one on-campus class each semester session this summer with a 3 week overlap for the two campus classes. Not too bad. Life just got simpler.

To Post, or Not to Post? Seriously, That’s the Question.

I hope hope most of you are aware that I’m a non-fiction writing major at the University of South Florida (go Bulls!) and wrapping up my Junior year this Fall. Good, because I am getting tired of typing out Professional and Technical Writing so many times.

One of the benefits of so many literature and writing courses is producing writing material. I’m checking to see if there is any interest in checking out my work and using it as bonus content on the blog to defer some content to other days. That said, here is a sample of my last paper for Expository Writing, which earned a 96%, and I know there are two typos in it to take care of before posting the entire thing. Here goes nothing:

Boob Tube or YouTube?
Technology has a way of shaking things up from time to time. The staple of the music industry for decades was the vinyl record, which gave way to CDs, which have been left on dusty shelves since the advent of online music sales. No one wants to buy an entire CD of second-rate songs when they only want the one smash hit to listen to until they can sing it backwards. The next big revolution is targeting television and the way we watch programming. Why would anyone want to sit in front of the TV with all of its commercials and drawn-out programming?

British Literature Is a Relief, After All

I think I’ve struck a goldmine of a professor with my Brit Lit instructor. She is a Ph.D. with a care and concern about keeping people interested in reading. One of her emphases is that we understand the works that we read (which is almost all poetry [gag] and one novella [Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]) and concentrate on the historical significance of the Romanic “proper” and Victorian periods with heavy emphasis on biographical information on the authors themselves.

It appears that there won’t be all too much reading after all, and the exams will be deeper material that builds upon the weekly quizzes about the biographical information from our trusty copies of the Norton Anthology. We’ll see how tomorrow’s Expository Writing class goes.

Spring 2008 Semester Begins Today

Classes begin for me today. Campus opened back up Monday, but I’m only taking a course on Wednesday nights and Thursday nights. It looks like a 17 week semester, with a week off for Spring Break. I have my syllubi for both courses and have several things to dread… but I’m still optimistic, or trying to be, at least.

• I despise literature courses in general. I’m a slower reader than I should be for how much reading I do. I’m more of a scanner and skimmer and only enjoy reading what interests me because I’m slower at it. I’m pretty much a 60-page per hour fun reader, and it drops like a rock if it’s complicated or I’m not enjoying it.
• There are no out of class writing assignments for my literature class, which happens to be British Literature 1780-1900. /scream Everything is in-class quizzes and exams and participation.

Ok, that list wasn’t so bad, but it’s daunting to me, nonetheless. My Expository Writing course will be mostly fun because I love to write, but it appears that the text is one of those typical liberal arts devices to mind flay the last remaining shred of one’s youth and optimism about our wonderful culture and country. It’s about (seriously) “unraveling the myths that make up American Culture today:” Freedom, Family, Equality, Opportunity.

That’s disgusting! In order to write what I believe rather that spew the view of the textbook, I’ll have to cover all of my bases and not sound like an idealistic floosie. Who doesn’t like a challenge?

USF Bulls Beat West Virginia for Biggest Win Yet

Tonight, the now 4-0 USF Bulls took the West Virginia Mountaineers to town, beating them 21-13. It is the Bulls’ first win against an AP Top 5 ranked school in the program’s history, in the school’s first year being ranked themselves. Currently ranked 18 in the polls, this win is sure to put the Bulls on the national map.

I’m proud to be a Bull, and my sleeping wife was, and shall evermore be a Bull.

GO BULLS!

Succeeding and Struggling

My life is in a state of turmoil between my two courses for now. So far, I have a perfect score in my Technical Writing course and have not received a single bit of feedback for my Modern Novel course. I’m holding on to the hope that my prof will give us something back tonight about last week’s paper, because I have to turn in 2 papers tonight and 2 more next week.

Tech Writing is going as smoothly as one can imagine. After getting some sense from the others after week 2 that they would rather participate in the discussion on the work than hear what I have to say about it (well, they were being too quiet and saying dumb things), I decided that I would be quiet this week.

That plan lasted all of about 5 minutes before the instructor began calling on me to get my “expert working student” opinion on some things he was going over for life-application stuff involving the techniques learned in tech writing. “Great, so much for that plan.”

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Boring Update; Don’t Bother Reading

It’s still crazy here with a flurry of activity. Last week I managed to put in my third consequitive 50+ hour week in at the office and started classes with 3 hours of Technical Writing on Tuesday and 3 hours of Modern Short Novel on Thursday.

Thankfully, Tech Writing is shaping up to be the easiest course I’ve taken, not by its content, but by the nature of my strengths. Combine that with the first two assignments being the same as my assignments for Professional Writing, it’s making the beginning quite smooth.

Not so much for Modern Short Novel. My wife had this professor when she was finishing up her degree… and I was wary of the situation. There were several occasions of cancelled classes and unneccessary reading because of that. I don’t have time to waste on reading stuff that doesn’t count, so I looked for alternatives. I’m in it now, so you can guess how the search went.

Our first novelette is “Daisy Miller” by Henry James. It was agonizingly slow because of it being a period piece of 19th century language and 8pt font with long paragraphs. Sometimes I had to re-read a 5-line paragraph 4 times to get what was actually being said. After page 5, I started writing down words I didn’t know for sure, and ended up with a list of 21 new words to add to my vocabulary. How embarrassing. I’m almost 30! I’m supposed to know everything by now and start forgetting it by the time I’m retired. At this pace, I’m not going to have time to forget everything I know by the time I’m supposed to.

We have to read 14 novelettes and 14 3/4-page critiques of them plus a 10-13 page paper on an outside book selected from her reading list. I haven’t quite decided between Steinbeck or Hemingway, but time is drawing near on getting started… like this weekend.

Being this busy is literally not leaving me much time to come up with original thoughts, advice, complaints, or much of anything at all. As a treat, I may post my critiques for you to see what kind of crap I put out there for the prof.