College, part two

One of the classes that I have the most mixed feelings about is the English one that I have added on at near the last minute. I have added the class soon after the semester began; my university gives the students a week—from Monday to Friday—at the beginning of the semester to muck around the class schedule. It is different from auditing: if you were to audit a class, you would simply sit around the class, taking lectures but not get graded by it. Although I have stayed at the university for four years, I have yet to take advantage of things that it has to offer, such as auditing. I wonder if things would have been better if I took advantage of auditing and sat around the classes that I was interested in? It is probably not too late to do so now, although it is but a missed chance that I would have to live with, as I could not take advantage of it sooner.

The class I put myself into—and the one that I cannot get out of now as I have missed the last drop date (which was yesterday)—is called “Modern Fiction Craft.” I have less of an idea of what the class is about now than what I have thought it was going to be like before I stepped into the classroom (or rather, as I found out when I looked for the classroom, a seminar room with desks all connected and everyone facing the center of the room). My initial before-in-classroom thought was that the class would learn about the techniques learned from the books and stories and apply them to our own writings. The syllabus that I have received some thirty minutes after a normal class would receive tells otherwise, however. Reading books and short stories? Great. Presenting book and author? I suppose that is fine. There are even two tests and a final exam… wait, what? Despite my hopes of being in a class that is a bit of unconventionality (while my introductory creative writing class was not entirely so, it was a refreshing change from AP-esque biology classes that seem to decide to haunt me from my high school days in the history class) and the class’s interesting setting (I have not been to class with a seminar-style seating arrangement, ever), I find the curriculum to be a bit of a letdown. Oh, but what am I to do? Perhaps it was a bit too much for me to expect miracles and hope that a refreshing change was on its way. Funnily enough, the pleasant surprise was from the introductory computer science class…

…oh, crap. Don’t tell me that introductory classes are baits to get the students into certain majors? On a second thought, that is painfully obvious, but again, I am not too quick on realizing some things (like this) that are supposed to be common sense. I guess the common sense is not very common when you do not know them?

Choosing a major is hard.