This semester is completely different from the other nine I've spent at Mt. A, mostly because I only have one actual class. I'm taking a correspondence course and working on my thesis, but those are both kind of lonely pursuits. :) My one class happens to be a seminar, so we only meet once a week, for about three hours. You'd be surprised how quickly that time goes by! I've always found that the Tuesday-Thursday classes, which are 80 minutes long, feel like they drag on forever - even longer than a three-hour seminar.
My class is pretty much the highlight of my week. And it's great to be able to look forward to going, instead of dreading it when you're underprepared or way too busy. If I could have done a whole degree one class at a time, I think it would have been such a different experience in terms of decreased stress and increased learning and participation. Of course, I would have also been 43 by the time I graduated!
This year is such a transition for me - ever since second year, I've been taking six classes per semester. The normal workload is five, but since Mt. A doesn't charge per course (you pay a part-time fee for 1-2 classes, and a full-time fee for 3+ classes), you can take 6 classes for the same price you'd be paying to take 3, 4, or 5 classes. It's a nice way to fit some extra courses in, especially if you're like me and you can never make up your mind. I have a biology minor, but I also took several physics classes along the way. I've also got a history minor. I wouldn't have been able to do two minors plus an honours degree if it wasn't for the opportunity to overload.
In a weird way though, taking fewer classes is more difficult. I feel a lot more responsibilty toward my work, and for the first time ever, I actually have every last one of my readings done for class. The more work you do, the more work you realize you should have been doing all along. I've also taken on a lot more in terms of employment this year, which makes it hard to do schoolwork, especially given the conflicting nature of some of my jobs (teaching a course + bartending? Not exactly easy to get to bed early or get work done during the day).
Anyway, I've been wanting to write about this class of mine for a while. We're studying medieval comedy, but even if we weren't, I know the class would be hilarious anyway. There are only nine of us in it, so you can work pretty closely with other class members and everyone gets to know at least a few things about each other. We spend a lot of time laughing - about the material, completely off-topic jokes, each other, our mistakes, funny stories our prof tells us - pretty much everything. The nice thing you'll find about being in upper year courses is that some professors honestly tell you what it's like to be a prof. You get to hear about the funny stuff their first-year classes are doing, as well as crazy situations they've encountered in academia. I had a great professor last year who would take a few minutes of every seminar to update us on the inner workings of Mount Allison, from the faculty point-of-view. It can be very eye-opening.
When our class manages to stay on topic, we have a lot of fairly productive discussion about medieval comedy. Not everyone in the class is an English major, which is cool because it's a chance for each person to appreciate the texts from a different perspective. Some people in the class bring a strong Latin background, while others approach it with more knowledge of history or literature. With only nine people in the class, I don't think anyone is intimidated, which can happen in bigger classes or if the wrong personalities are present.
Each week, someone in the class does a presentation. This usually means that the student examines extra articles dealing with a more specific aspect of the work than in the normal process of preparing for class. My presentation was at the end of January, and I researched the origin and analogues of Chaucer's Reeve's Tale. In examining other stories that were similar to it, I was able to show the class which parts of the tale were Chaucer's own creation, and which parts were already well-known and widely-repeated in other humourous stories. Because I presented my findings to my classmates, they came away with most of the same knowledge that I did, but without having to do all that extra reading themselves. Learning from your classmates is a really great way to learn, and because it's all self-directed, everyone's topics are quite varied. Some people research a particular idea or event mentioned in the work, while others concentrate on the author or the creative process.
The other interesting thing about this class is that we all got to arrange our own assignments and due dates. Our prof had a couple of guidelines for us - everyone had to do at least one paper and at least one presentation, since that's stuff we'll all have to do and do well in grad school. Apart from that, everything was fair game, and we got to set the values of our assignments ourselves. We also had to make a list of our academic strengths and weaknesses, and do at least one thing from each list. I wanted to get the bulk of my work out of the way early, so I made my presentation and my paper worth 25% each, and assigned myself very early due dates. Now all I have left is a play and a few short assignments! It's a great system to have in your third or fourth year, when you're aware of your strengths and weaknesses and what kind of assignment schedule will suit you best.
Anyway, one thing I really do need to work on is my thesis...so that's enough writing about class for now! Time to actually do some work. :)
Oh, just to keep everyone updated on the grad school front, I found out yesterday that I got in to Education at STU! I still haven't applied for my Master's at Dal yet though, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Regardless, it's nice that the labourious application process has started to pay off.
