07.09.06
My first day of school!
Yep, Wednesday would be Christer’s official First Day of Classes. On the schedule for Wednesdays are the subjects of Political Science, Philosophy, and Liberal Education. PoliSci promised well for my first university experience — the professor, Dr. Paul Gecelovsky, was there before the students. He opened up by going through the course syllabus, I’ll describe that in another post. I muchly regret that there was only space in the back, because due to the construction work at the university there was quite a lot of noise. Must show up earlier for Friday’s class. The professor further specified that he hated lectures, and that he’d much rather have discussions. This promises well. Sadly, the 50 minutes allotted to this class went all too quickly. As a quick remark, I am deeply disturbed that in a class of 80 students, I was the only one who could answer the professor’s question about how we define an ‘ad hominem’.
Ten minutes later, it was time for Philosophy. According to Dr. Govier, the professor teaching the subject, we will be studying the foundations of western philosophy — from Socrates and Plato through Hume to Kant. The study of philosophy is about the ability to ask questions and dare to face said questions afterwards instead of running away from them. Very promising!
After this, I had allotted myself a nice hour of break. This was spent mostly in line to the Cash Office to ask why my tuition had been registered under the summer semester instead of the fall semester. This was apparently expected and would fix itself. Then I had lunch, a lovely salami and white cheddar sandwich, and proceeded to B660.
Liberal Education has proven to be the most interesting class by FAR. According to the instructor, Dr. MacKay, LibEd is basically a micro-University. It’s basically a ‘how to get the most out of university’. In addition, there is no final exam, and the assignments are all about exploring WebCT, the university’s online course system. I’m thinking ‘easy marks’. I should be able to score at least a 3.8 in this, and I need an average of 3.38 to get into the Faculty of Education (grades are from 1-4). I also got major brownie points for sitting there reading the book when the instructor arrived. His line to that was “Hey, we’re not going to use that book before November. Great of you to come prepared though!”
I’m pondering whether to designate Philosophy as a Credit/Non-Credit class. Basically, if I should against all odds fare badly in that class, it won’t hurt my GPA unless I fail.
