Even though it’s not yet even Thanksgiving, my spring schedule has been semi-finalized. By that, I mean that I’ve registered for classes, but things could still change a bit.

I’m annoyed that I can’t take any classes that start before 7:00. Why can’t I, you ask? Because my principal is playing with the schedule to accommodate whiners who want to leave for spring break at noon instead of 3:20. Those three hours irk me. It means that for any early Tuesday evening class, I’d have to miss a day for an extended day to make up for that asinine plan, plus another day for conferences. Missing two sessions of a once-a-week class probably wouldn’t go over well. Tuesday/Thursday classes would work a little better, but conferences are also on Thursday night, so I’d miss three sessions of a twice-a-week class. Grr.

Of course, Wichita State’s scheduling doesn’t help anything. It seems like all of the classes I’m interested in are offered at the same time. Double grr.

Anyway, as of right now, here’s what spring’s schedule looks like:

Monday: Seminar in European History (with Dreifort)

Tuesday: Comparative Politics

Wednesday: Major British Writers I

(everything’s from 7:05 to 9:45)

I wasn’t going to take a seminar yet, but there wasn’t much else offered. I wanted to take Imperial Russia but rumor had it that wouldn’t be the best choice. We’ll see if I regret it or not. Comparative Politics is one of the required courses for secondary social studies and British Writers for secondary English. I figure I may as well take some thing to make me more palatable to high schools.

With luck, Butler will beg me to teach a class, so I may end up shuffling that schedule.

Oh, and for my fun-filled math endorsement, I’m going to try to take Calc I online from Johnson County. I am a bit apprehensive about that little experiment. Trig last summer in person at WSU was easy enough, but it was so horribly taught it’s not even funny. I’m a bit concerned it wasn’t enough to prepare me for Calc, but I guess I’ll find that out.

The good news is that, assuming I pass Calc I, all I need in the summer (methinks) is Evolution of Math and Math 502 (Math for Middle School Teachers…whatever that means) and I’ll have that endorsement (assuming I pass the MS math test, which shouldn’t be hard, the practice one seems pretty easy).

On the Public Nature of Internet Documents

I had class this weekend. There are few things in academia worse than the "Weekend Intensive" class format, at least as practiced at Emporia State University. It's mentally painful and physically exhausting. (The mental pain comes less from grappling with "big issues" and from from trying to keep one's brain from completely atrophying.)

The big news on campus was that one of my classmates had been penning a tell-all blog. Sadly, it was less about the program and more about her slutty personal life. Still, she was afraid it would get out more than it had and deleted it. But may Yahweh preserve the Internet, Yahoo had cached it.

This whole incident begs several questions. Why does one get mad when someone "unintended" reads their blog? It makes no sense. You are publishing it. You are creating it in public places. People are going to eventually see it. If you want to type a diary on a computer, do that. But don't get all hysterical when people read your thoughts when you post them in a public place and, for the sake of all that's holy, don't put something up you don't want someone--anyone--to see.

I mean, this little blog of mine that I've played with for a few months is hardly the stuff of great intellectual fervor (neither is a true blog, by most any stretch of the definition). Yet, I don't care who reads it; it's in the public eye. My private thoughts are private or shared with only a few confidantes (often in e-mail, still not the best way). I know better than to post them for the world to see and then go ballistic when they are, in fact, seen. In all honesty, I knew this before I started in a program designed to make an "information professional" out of me. But if I hadn't, I think something would probably have sunk in at some point during my sojourns at Emporia.