College ~ semaine premier!

So, originally I was going to blog on Tuesday after my first day, but since I didn't get home until ten, I wound up starting a draft and not finishing.  I was then going to blog yesterday after class, so I could blog about my first experience in all my classes at once, but that opportunity was passed up in favor of impending homework due date concerns.  So, I now take this four-and-a-half hour interval to share my observations and escapades of my first week.  
Prepare for an indubitably lengthy post.  I will try to keep my stream-of-consciousness observations to a minimum.  :)

Tuesday:  After being dropped off by my gallant mother (can you use gallant in reference to women?  Hm.  Whatever.) an hour before my first class, I wound my way through throngs of tall people, bulging backpacks, enthusiastic and brightly colored staff, and offerings of free yoga coupons to the bookstore, where I waited in a very long line to buy my math textbook and be disappointed to see no silver Sharpies left for sale (I might go in there today and buy one). I encountered both eldest Demske sisters and their cousin Cassie, which brightened my nervous morning considerably.  (It turns out I actually have one of the same classes at the same time as Leah, though not in the same room.)  First up—Honors English 160, at 12:45 p.m.  (Afternoon classes:  one reason to love college already!)  

This was the class I packed the most stress about beginning, because it looked pretty intense—an intuition confirmed by the 75 pages of reading he assigned us the first day, to be completed two days later.  (As it turned out today, I was one of the only ones who actually did all the reading—and I took notes, which resulted in me having to catapult our small group discussion by reading them aloud.)  Mainly we went over the syllabus and course requirements, and he explained how our research project (or "Literature review":  essentially it will wind up being a giant annotated bibliography of articles on our topic) will be organized, and the types of essays we'll be writing.  It stressed me out at first, but we had the second class today and it was really interesting.  We practiced brainstorming and breaking down topics (my small group broke down the broad topic of "food" into a thesis debating the line between freedom of speech and ethics in advertising to children).  The professor seems really nice and fairly laidback, and he said he's really open to one-on-one discussion and helping us along, although he warned us the coursework would be really intensive.  My classmates are pretty cool, too.  It's awesome being in an environment where people seem to really think for themselves and care about their education (since I got the opposite vibe from most of my fellows in public high school).  I think I'll probably really enjoy this class, though I do foresee a lot of stress coming my way in future.  We also got out twenty minutes early, which was weird.  The teacher instructed us to brainstorm for potential research topics and told us we could "just leave" when we were done.  That will take a little getting used to (but I'm definitely not complaining!).

At 7 p.m. I had Mathematical Ideas.  I wasn't sure quite what this one was going to be like, but I'd heard it was pretty easy and focused heavily on applying mathematics and not just working problems.  The first meeting of that class was an interesting experience.  The professor confessed that it was her first time ever teaching a college-level course, and apologized in advance for treating us like teenagers ("I revert to treating high schoolers like elementary students, though, so don't feel too bad", she said, haha).  She's a bit of a goofball.  She split her pants and broke the projector five minutes in, so she walked sideways the entire two hours and scratched out the homework assignment.  So we talked about inductive vs. deductive reasoning and played icebreaker games.  (Apparently we were all enjoying ourselves, because she kept us seven minutes over and nobody noticed!)  The curriculum looks like a lot of review of midlevel algebra and geometry, stuff I learned or started to learn, and there's also a section on economics and finance, and a bit on statistics, which I haven't really done before.  i think it will be a pretty fun environment and pretty easy coursework.  Unfortunately it ends at nine (I'm quickly finding out that evening classes might not have been the great idea I thought they were.  My brain works really well at that time of night, but scheduling doesn't, especially when I don't have my own driver's license yet).

Wednesday:  I had Humanities 101, Modern Culture & the Arts.  I wasn't really sure what to expect from this class, either, but it looks fairly interesting.  Again, the professor seems pretty easygoing and friendly to all the students.  We had a couple of interesting discussions about the definitions of art and popular culture (the girl across the aisle from me stuck up for my grey corduroys, which someone in the back was disparaging [as a fashion item in general; I'm sure she had no idea I was actually wearing a pair]).  It looks like we'll have a fair amount of reading and frequent quizzes [timed, eww], as well as  a major research project early in the semester, but the class environment is interesting.  
We learned about this awesome guy who carves sculptures out of pencil leads.

I still am a little fuzzy on the exact content, but I think the actual class time will be entertaining.  I got some creative writing done (a hobby I have been neglecting sadly the past two weeks) in my hour-and-a-half wait afterwards.

That's my first take on the actual classes.  The KVCC atmosphere in general is really nice.  It's open, comfortable, people are friendly (but not creepy), and not being on strict time constraints the entire time is really nice.  Even though there are a lot of people, it's not really noisy, and I can do homework (and blog!) without being too distracted (though at the moment Oprah is on in the student lounge, which is not conducive to studying Seneca).  (Six people at home make more noise than this:)  The students commons have live trees and hanging plants all over the place, and a glass roof, which is pretty awesome.  The furniture is uber comfy; the rice krispie treats are huge and have chocolate chips.  My biggest complaint thus far is that the plastic silverware is enigmatically hard to find (and sometimes my classes are too, but thankfully I've done enough wandering around campus that my kinesthetic memory is starting to kick in).  It's a really nice environment to just hang out in (which is good, since I'm here from three until six-thirty on Wednesdays and Mondays, and eleven-forty till nine on Tuesdays and Thursdays!).

I also took a city bus today for the very first time (well, my first time alone, awake, and during the day—sorry, there's not as much of a story there as it sounds like there is), and I actually didn't mind it much.  I admit that I love moving vehicles.  There's something really relaxing about them, even as crammed full of bodies and conversations as this one was (and even if I was too short to see out the window).  I actually rather liked the experience, although I'll only get to do it once a day (maybe twice, until it starts getting dark by five in the afternoon, since I don't want to hop buses in downtown Kalamazoo in the dark, alone).  There was a girl on the bus with a sweet hat reading dc Talk's Jesus Freaks anthology (I liked her immediately and I don't even know who she is).  I overheard one woman speculating about whether she could trade in the earrings she'd gotten for her birthday for skis, and whether her niece would be able to play soccer since she'd fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her shoulder.  There was a guy who changed seats three times because he offered his seat to each successive elderly person (and one blind man) who got on the bus. One student downed two full cans of Monster in the latter half of our 25-minute ride (I bet his professors have their hands full with him today).  Three girls in the back carried on a heated...discussion (I'd say it sounded like an argument, except it was punctuated with a lot of giggling) in Spanish.  Overall, I thought it was a rather fascinating ride.  The only downside was there wasn't enough time for me to catch a nap...

Well, with three hours yet to kill before tonight's math class, I plan to go hunting for that plastic silverware and eat my lukewarm key lime yogurt.  And see how much a silver Sharpie costs in the bookstore.  And then maybe nip in my nap.  

              Adieu, inhabitants of the blogosphere...