Not Terribly Exciting News but Mostly Good News

So as the title suggest, nothing terribly exciting has happened these past few weeks. It's really been about focusing on schoolwork and trying to get as much work done as possible. However, this post is basically being written to avoid reading a thirty page article.

I finished my paper comparing media in Italy and United States for my media class and I really hope it's what she wanted because she gave practically no directions. My friend, Babette, and I read each others papers and they seemed to be pretty similar format wise, so hopefully we did what she wanted. We also both present on Tuesday and we also have no idea what she wants from our presentations. But if you give no directions for something, you can't be too picky, right?

For the most part, my class grades are made up of one paper and one test, maybe a presentation or class participation. Something I find frustrating/different here is the fact assignments are given so late. The professor might mention it the first week of the semester but I've only just started to receive detailed information for papers that are due soon. Of course, some of my professors are just disorganized,so it might be them and not the system in general.

I have one class that is just a giant disaster. If I didn't need 30 credit hours (15 CofC credit hours), I would force someone to let me drop this class. I'm not sure if I can really describe what a mess this class is, but I'll try. Basically, a large group of professors teach the class so every week or so we have a different lecturer present. There is one professor that is essentially in charge of the class and is responsible for grading our papers and tests. This has really lead to classes feeling random and not connected at all to the class before. It feels like I'm taking a different class each week. We have a paper and test but none of us can even guess on what we will be tested on. How do you test people on something that was briefly talked about for two minutes once? We asked our lecturer last class if she had any idea what would be on the test and she told us no one had asked her for any test questions. Great, so everyone has been lecturing without any idea on what we will be tested on? How did they know what to cover? What is happening to me? The professor that is the head of the department is actually my professor for my monday/tuesday class and I'm going to have to talk to him about what is happening. I don't want to lose my scholarships (I need 15 credit hours for my Ketner, not sure about the other ones) but I can't be expected to be tested on things I was never taught.

I have some suit mate drama but I don't really want to get into that right now. I have a 60 year old suit mate, that should explain enough for now.

In better roommate news, Naomi and Megan are officially my roommates next year! We got a really cute house that we had planned on applying to before but someone got to it first. However, it become available again and we got it this time! It fits our needs perfectly, except for the no pet policy, but it was a choice between no pets or being homeless. It's really nice we are getting a house for the price of an apartment. It has a great location, just about twenty minute walk to campus. It's also just down the block from Nick/ Nagao/ Shoshana/Maegan's house, so that's nice. We officially signed the lease a few days ago and it feels great to finally have that all taken care of now. I really appreciate Naomi and Megan doing all the work looking at potential houses/apartments.

The most important news of all is that Russia is happening on Thursday. I’m so excited I start to shake a little when I think about the trip. The thought of standing in the Red Square is honestly just unbelievable. Seeing St. Petersburg and Moscow has been a dream for so long and now it’s really happening. Plus, Russia has Starbucks. Come on, how could this trip get any better? My phone is officially dead so I had to buy a camera (90 dollars for a crappy camera, lovely) because I couldn’t go on this trip and not take pictures. My next post will be all about this trip of course. (I'm aware this last paragraph is in blue. I keep trying to get it to be in black but nothing I do is working right now)