Class commentary

When I first registered for classes I thought, this is silly- why can't I sign up for a bunch of classes? Why do they only recommend that you start with 8-10-12 credits? Oh, now I see your point.

I am taking Sustainable Cities on Mondays, (only, having shown up on Wednesday with no one there- read your schedule genius!) which as I have had only one class so far I can't really comment on it, other than the professor seems very well educated and knows what he's talking about, which is always good. And it is "seminar style," so we do a lot of reading between classes and then apparently come back and sit at a long conference table. Though it pays to show up early as there are more chairs and students that would like to sit in them than there is room at the table. Oops.

Luckily for me, can I sound a little smug?, the building that my class is in is literally right across the street from where I live and it's only about a ten minute walk to class, getting up to the 4th floor, included.

Tuesday/Thursday is my history of urban planning and legal environment of planning classes- back to back, hence my death race to get to legal on time, which is significantly farther than I'd like. Fortunately, a good majority of my history class also goes to the legal class.

My history class is taught by the former department chair, but due to inevitable department reshuffles now no longer holds that particular position and I think oversees the undergrad division. The class is a little different than I'd pictured it in my head. But then again so was my visual culture, which had nothing to do with say, ads on TV and everything to do with semiotics and Levi-Straus, not the jeans guy! The class has started out being grounded in theory with Kevin Lynch and Spiro Kostof, two of the first theorists. My syllabus says we're going to be talking about Chicago and Irvine, so party on.

My legal class is a LOT more fun than I ever imagined it would be. My working knowledge of the law outside the basic amendments and Illinois work comp is pretty limited. I know I've never been able to talk my way out of a ticket that's for sure.

So, I was a tad apprehensive, thinking that I was going to have to commit a lot of statutes and dates and laws to memory. Nope. But my class has helped make my sit-in's on the site plan reviews in Visalia make a lot of sense.

Now I know why, for example, Dennis, the city manager (?) always added that the developer needed to submit an EIR (environmental impact report) after he'd discussed all of the other codes like fire and health and safety. Also, my professor is a hoot.

He has all these sly remarks that makes one think one is watching an old movie like the Man Who Came to Dinner or a Marx Brothers. Example:

"I used to live in Kansas. But being in the Midwest, I don't really consider that living."

Being slightly anal and definitely a little OCD I have marked all of my major assignments on a giant dry-erase board that I found on the side of the road and promptly Lysol'ed the heck out of before bringing it inside.

I figure that it's dumb to try to read too far ahead, especially for my history and legal classes as I know I need Sloane to break down whatever we read for his class and Kushner definitely can break a case down into sound bytes.

But it is comforting knowing exactly what will be expected and how to budget my time.

I have work-study, which won't make or break me, but I would like that extra X $ alloted to me. And I have applied for a reading tutoring program, one of whose schools is literally right across the street from me- so fingers crossed!

The second half of the semester I swap history & legal for theory (planning, of course) & stats- ack! Luckily, my stats professor announced that he hadn't taken stats himself since he was in school, so we won't get weighed down in a lot of extra superfluous stuff.

I'm fairly confident (even if my pater familia is not) that I will do well in that class as I have always preferred large groups of numbers, especially of concrete data that I could use rather than 8% of 3/4 of 250- if you know the answer great, I don't care. But if you want me to explain why it is important that we build housing for the needs of the 35% of the population that are married, but with no children, the seniors that make up 20%, the singles that compromise 30% of the population and not just the 15% of the two-parent, married with children population for whom suburbia is designed.

Plus, the class's full name is statistics and arguing from data- so all those junior high debate team competitions and trying to sound like I knew what euthanasia was will come in handy too!