Now that I've completed a full week of classes at Purdue, I'm ready to pass judgment on them.
AD113: Basic Drawing
Having a class at 7:30 AM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays isn't ideal, but at least it's a wonderful class. The name of the course should be self-explanatory. We're drawing and reading about drawing. So far we've just been expanding on the beginning-of-the-year exercises we did back in Finneytown. Last week was contour line drawing of hands and organic objects. This week is gesture drawings of a peanut. I have a lot of homework, but it's all readings I can skim and drawings I enjoy.
AGR101 (honors) and AGR120: Introduction to the College of Agriculture and Introduction to the department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture
These two classes combined only cost one credit hour, and they only last eight weeks, but they're back-to-back across campus from one another. All we do is listen to people talk about the activities, clubs, internships, research, etc. that go in in the college of ag as well as in our departments. It's not exciting, but I've already got people I can contact about helping with research.
COM114 (honors): Presentational Speaking
This class is about learning to address groups of varying sizes effectively. We're expected to address the class every time we're there. Normally it's just some sort of little impromptu thing, but starting Wednesday we'll be giving prepared speeches. I dread speaking to small-medium sized groups, but I need to learn to. At the moment I'm still not technically re-enrolled in the class, but I'm trying to get that fixed.
ECON210: Basics of Economics
I don't much care for this class. On Mondays and Wednesdays we have boring lectures with nearly 400 students, and on Fridays we have boring recitation (which I fondly refer to as regurgitation). I'm not very excited about economics, and I don't suspect I ever shall be. Fortunately, the course is extremely easy. Today I drew the girl in front of me instead of taking notes on one of the professor's many trivial examples.
ENGL108: Accelerated Composition
This one is okay. I like the instructor, but I can't determine what exactly we'll be doing this semester. Her goal is to focus on the writing skills we'll actually use later in life, but we haven't started on that yet. Right now we're analyzing articles and video clips to see how they argue their point using ethos, logos, and pathos. However, the definitions she uses for these terms aren't their actual Greek definitions - she defines them in terms of how they relate to making an argument. This took some getting-used-to, especially since ethos in this class doesn't refer to a lifestyle, it refers to the reliability of the source.
HONR299: Insects in Literature and Art
I love this class already, and I've only been to it twice. It's an interdisciplinary honors elective with only ten students and a great professor. As the title of the course implies, we're looking at the use of insects in literature and art. The professor is an entomologist, so he has a lot to bring from the insect side of things. He expects us to all work together on the artistic applications of entomology. Last Thursday he brought in a Madagascar hissing cockroach, a millipede, and a tarantula. I got to hold the latter two, and I loved it.
HORT101: Introduction to Horticulture
There are many things I like about this class. It's the only class I actually have a friend in, it's about plants, and our lab section meets in the greenhouses. Right now we're just going over the basics of plant biology, all of which I know from AP Bio. Hopefully we'll be covering material I don't know in the near future.
That's all, folks. Ta-ta for now.
2 comments:
On COM114, remember the professor is always the ultimate authority on course enrollment.
On ENGL108, you are learning what the national conspiracy of colleges thinks English is all about (in addition to assuming college freshpeople cannot argue their respective ways out of a paper bag, to use an expression that doesn't make any sense). Those Greek terms come from Aristotle, whose concept of ethos is "character," which is one of the elements of tragedy found in the -Poetics-. For Aristotle, the state of a character has everything to do with lifestyle, since according to Aristotle's virtue ethics (from the Nicomachean Ethics) the state of a person derives from the kinds of actions that person takes. As this relates to a source, reliability is directly related to the character from which the source is derived. Do you dig it?
I should have COM114 worked out before the next class. I found the proper person to consult.
That helps form a connection between the definition Ben uses and the definition the instructor uses.
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