Week One: Update

I have finished (No not the guy from Ikea, he's Sweedish, not finish) my first week of school here at the University. It has been an interesting week.

First off let me tell you about my first class, which is "University Foundations (UFDN) 3001". This class is just for transfer students and a few 'special' Sophomores who are taking the class as UFDN 2000. This class starts up at 8:30(am) and lets out at 9:20(am). Day one finds me getting there a good ten minutes early and I plunk myself down in the corner spot in the back. (Honestly because there aren't many other spots. (Side note #1: I always get nervous sitting next to girls here at SPU. I think there is such a high ratio of girls to guys (~3 to 1) that there are a lot of expections on the girls side that the guy she'll someday marry will sit next to her in a class at some point and she'll have some magical conversation and she'll fall in love and live happily ever after. You can see this in their eyes as you look around the room for a place to sit. It's like looking someone else's destiny in the eye. It scares me.)

Five or ten minutes pass as I exchange awkward smalltalk with the girl who came and sat down next to me. ("Hi, I'm Rachel" "Hi, Ben." *pause* "So what year are you?" "Jr., how about yourself?" "Yeah, me too." *pause* "What's your major?" "Professional studies" *pause* "Oh." (side note #2 and #3: 2- I've met more young ladies here by the name of Rachel than I knew exsisted. Odds are if I forget someone's name I can call them Rachel. (If they aren't named Rachel a good chance is that the friend standing next to them is and I can pretend I was trying to talk to the other one.) 3- My major always takes more breath to explain than I really want to expound to people. "Professional Studies" is a fancy way of saying my degree from the community college didn't transfer. Thus I am doing my gen-ed here at SPU and then I walk away with a BA. People's eye's tend to glass over when I start talking about this.))

Thankfully at this point Dr. Rob Wall blows into the classroom like a hurricane in Florida. (However he only blows into the classroom ONCE. (Unlike SOME hurricanes we know in Florida...)) He's about six feet tall, give or take a few inches, has greying dark hair. He's waering (sorry, Latin kicked in there) a suit jacket and matching pants with a greenish turtle neck under that. Around his neck is affixed a red bandana, and upon his face sit movie-star sunglasses. After sitting there and looking at this for a while I start to think he looks like Jack Nicholson. But then I revise that thought. He looks like Jack Nicholson and Tim Robbins. Combined into one man. Especially when he wears the sun glasses all class period long.

After class I go to work and after working for an hour and a half Latin rolls around and I find myself (huffing and puffing) making my way up the hill and then assending 2 flights of stairs to the top floor of Demaray Hall. In stark contrast to Dr. Wall, Dr. Owen Ewald almost looks like a student. In his mid-30s he has a baby face and a timid nature to him. Although he is genuinly excited about teaching Latin, the 45 people in the class seems to intimidate him. From what those of us in the class can figure out he knows at least 6 languages. English, Latin, Sanscript, French, German and Italian. (The verdict is still out as to weather he knows ancient Greek or not (Added later: He does know Greek, and ancient Hebrew as well.)) He can give you the word origin or almost any word in the English dictionary. Timid though he seems he very much knows his material.

Lunch time comes and goes and I find myself a floor lower than the previous class, again with Dr. Ewald. Ancient Civilizations is where I am now. The first week I have a hard time staying awake in class because we're talking about politics and city building of the ancient world. While interesting in an overview to me, a deeper knowledge is boring. However on Monday we started talking about Warfare. This is where I proved myself to be quite the nerd. I was awake the whole class period and I explained in detail chariot warfare and it's effects of foot soliders. Dr. Ewald would ask a question and I would raise my hand and answer. In his soft voice he would answer, "Yes, good. Anyone else?" The room be quiet. I'd raise my hand again. "Yes, Ben?" and I would talk more about it.

We have to do an essay on Ancient Civ technology for this class due at the end of the quarter. I was thinking about doing Warfare, and this only seems to clentch it. (Sad as it is, perhaps I can imagine that better than I can imagine sitting around a room with a bunch of people and planning out the city. (zzzzzzz))

Add work to this mix, and I have been a busy fellow.

I'd like to continue to post more, but hopefully this update will do for now.

~B.