I logged into my school website last night to check my grades, but they aren't posted in the nifty, pretty 'check your grades' portion of the site yet--which I wasn't expecting anyway, they only turned grades in on Wednesday. But I still had to check.
But, when I went to check my transcript, because I was curious to see how many units I'd completed...hey look, my spring '05 grades.
And...holy crap.
I got an A in my Geography class--which I was kind of expecting.
But then, I about fell out of my chair.
I got a B in my English class, which I was hoping for but so *not* expecting, considering I got a dismal grade on one of the really important assignments.
WOO!
~20 credits under my belt, and my cumulative GPA is 3.7.
I'm not taking any classes during the summer quarter--we're way too busy, between trips and moving and everything else. Not only that, but I couldn't find anything I wanted to take that wasn't a four day a week thing.
Lots more random nattering about school below, more for my own reference than anything else.
I really need to tackle my math requirements, which I'm really dreading. Math is not my strong point. I have to take the placement test, and I'm pretty sure I'll end up dealing with some remedial courses before I can get to the classes I'll need to transfer. I really ought to get the placement test done before fall quarter. It's far too easy to avoid it otherwise.
It'll be awhile before I can transfer, speaking of that. As of fall 2005, to transfer from a community college to a CSU school (which I'll do--SJSU is the current plan), students need 90 transferable quarter units, if I want to be considered an upper-division transfer. So far, everything I've taken is transferable, yay.
As it turns out, I *am* going to have to take a speech class, ugh, though they term it 'oral communication' rather than speech. Whichever it is, I still don't want to. Bah. :)
I'll probably head back to the 5am shift for the duration of fall and winter quarters, as I did this past year. Whether I'm going to take two classes remains to be seen--I think I'll have to manage that really carefully, because this quarter wore me out.
For now, though, I'm feeling pretty optimistic. Registration is later on this month, so we'll see. At least I'm not dead last in registering anymore! Time to go hit the fall schedule to see what options I have.
Easy stuff first. Think good thoughts for my English professor, as she's in the running to be selected as a spokesperson for a political party (she didn't identify which one), and it's something that she's very interested in and would do really well at, so...yeah. Think good thoughts.
Geography yesterday was...entertaining. Right now, we're talking about east Asia, and spent most of our time talking about China. 1.3 billion people, most in the eastern third of the country, which is about the size of the US. Compare that with our 295 (I think) million, and imagine how bad the traffic would be.
Anyway, one of the things that was discussed was their 'one child, one family' policy that has been in effect since 1980. The only exception to this is when two only children marry, then they're allowed to have two kids. It's a pretty hefty penalty if you have more than one, in fact--the fines are two times a person's annual income. Amazing. But the birth rate is still fairly high for the 'one child, one family' rule, mostly because the country is 70% rural, people in rural areas are less educated, and less educated people have more babies--a worldwide truth, which I found interesting.
And thus, their population continues to grow (though India is estimated to outstrip China's population by year 2025), and the gross domestic product is around $324 US per *year*, and people commit infanticide, and selective abortion is not only popular but is government funded, and and and.
One of the girls in my class asked, "But...can't someone fix it? Give money or something?" The implication is, of course, can't the United States fix it, by throwing money and social programs at it?
I guess this is one of the things that makes me something other than a democrat, because I sat up there in the front of the class, shaking my head. Sorry, but no--I am not going to let the government raise my taxes still further to throw still more money out in foreign aid, and by the way, we already DO send aid all around the world. If you're that interested in making a difference, join the Peace Corps.
It shows my age, I suppose, that I am not the idealist I used to be, that people who *are* still that way just...make me shake my head.
I really love the class, though. Makes me wonder how I'd use a dual degree in psychology and geography, if there's even any way for me to do it.
But then I remember that it's bad enough to deal with *one* major. Two would probably be the death of me. :)
On the first night of my English class, the professor asked us all to make name tags to wear, to help her not only learn our names, but to make sure she called us the right name until that happened.
I should add in here, this woman apparently really likes me--this is what the other two people in my group have said. Example, with explanation: She's focusing a lot on the classical definition of rhetoric, and on giving us tools to make us rhetoricians in our own right. (Heh. We'll see if that ever works.)
One of the assignments was to analyze the second part of Odysseus' plea to Achilles in Homer's Illiad. Tag each appeal into one of the three categories, emotional, ethical, or logical, or identify whether multiple appeals were used. Explain why, blah blah blah. So, since my group-mates and I didn't get together to work on it, we all worked individually, and they decided that mine should be the paper that was turned in.
She loved it. Like...a lot. Wrote several very complimentary comments. Asked for a copy that she could use for next quarter's class. Which...kind of shocked the hell out of me, but okay, there are worse things than to nail an assignment so well, I guess.
So, anyway. She knows my name, I know she does, but over the past couple of days, she has started calling me Patricia. It's really disconcerting, not because the name's wrong, but because Patricia was my grandma's name. When I mentioned this in class last night, she paused for a minute, looked sideways at me, and said, "Huh. That's interesting."
Now I am filled with burning curiosity about why that was such an interesting thing. Maybe she's a lot more...'with me' than I thought.
I've been waiting for grades from winter quarter for the past week, thinking in retrospect that I really should've just given the professor a postcard with my address on it so he could mail it to me. I wasn't sure where my grade would end up, since I missed two classes while I was in Arizona, and that results in an automatic lowering of letter grade by one point. I was wondering how that'd affect my GPA--though, considering that I have now completed 8 credit hours (out of 30 attempted, heh), fussing over GPA is probably pretty stupid, to say the least.
So, this morning the grades came in. And somehow, I pulled out an A. I'm baffled, especially considering what was on the syllabus, and considering that I *know* two of my tests were in the B range, so I was expecting and would've been happy with a B.
But go me. I took a class for a subject I had a hard time doing reading for, had a hard time retaining information from, and I got an A. Woo!
So, I have not yet started my journaling for class that's due tomorrow, in large part because the paper says that the composition book that we use is supposed to be black and white. Now, in class, she said something different at first, then kept on the b/w theme on Thursday, so at this point, I'm very kind of sadly bewildered as to what I should really be doing. How pathetic is that? I have this nice little Four Star Mead thingy that's a nice pine green color, but ... pine green isn't black and white. Arg!
I feel stupid for obsessing over such a tiny thing, but the past two classes have taught me, sadly, that it's actually probably not such a bad thing that I am so tweaked about it. That whole subjective grading thing, you know.
Even though it's a ton more expensive, I almost find myself wishing that I were actually attending UoP's Western University thing, as it's all online. However, I also know that online-only classes are bad for me--something about being in the classroom is actually big motivation, and I *need* that big motivation.
So I'll just sit here and obsess about my pine green not black and white journal and put off my assignments until I get the damn thing, because apparently, doing stuff in the current journal and then copying it over later is just something that I cannot wrap my brain around doing.
Sigh. My brain does weird things to me.