Discussion Section

Today, I'm finally enjoying the chief benefit of my spring quarter schedule, namely, having only one discussion section each on Tuesdays and Thursdays. True, I did have last Thursday off completely, but I slept all day so it didn't make much impact. And yes, I did enjoy this schedule on Tuesday, but since I was at the Cubs game all afternoon, I really didn't get the chance to just kick back and catch up with myself.

Class earlier was actually rather enjoyable. I had my art history discussion,
and my TA for the class seems like he knows his stuff. Today's class was reminiscent of the better parts of my art history class in high school, with the teacher giving us the technical explanations of what's going on in the artwork and the rest of the class given over to the student's discussion and interpretation of the piece. All the stuff I learned over first semester last year is starting to come back to me: line, color, composition, perspective, and so on. I really learned a lot in that class. By our museum trip at the end of term, I could actually stand in front of a painting or sculpture -- even the most abstract modern ones -- and pick up on all the elements at work and interpret their meaning at least somewhat intelligently. Of course, after the class ended all art became obscure to me once again, but now, I think my perceptions are becoming sharpened again. I find it pretty strange to be enjoying the subject of art history so much since I am really not artistic and, except for Egyptian art, have had relatively little exposure to the art world. But something about being able to break the code of these paintings and other art forms makes their study seem very rewarding.

Art history discussion is not the only class I like so far, of course. USSR and Successor States is a lot of fun, too, and I'm glad I got stuck in it. The professor is such a cool guy, so excited about the subject that he seems like he'd be happy to just stand up there and effuse about the vivid descriptions in And Quiet Flows the Don all day. And yes, that's right, that was a novel I just mentioned. It seems I've gotten myself into yet another literature class. Fortunately, this one falls technically into the category of history, so I can enjoy without feeling bitter about my possible doom as a lit major.

In fact, I'm pretty satisfied with all my classes so far. History and Issues of Journalism has interesting discussions and so keeps me occupied through my longest continuous stretches of class this quarter. And certainly it's a given that I'm enjoying my Ancient Egyptian history class. I'm getting some fascinating insights into the culture (even if the prof tends to repeat those insights ad nauseam). I'll share them in a future entry, though, because this is getting long, and I intend to keep entries shorter and more frequent this quarter. But you should probably just wish me luck with that.