Tuesday Marathon

Since nothing too blog-worthy has occurred between now and last Sunday, I thought I'd give you a rundown of my Tuesdays, which for me really are like running a marathon. (But don't worry. My Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are ridiculously laid back, so it all balances out in the end.) When I was in high school, I always wondered what a college student's schedule was like. It differs from person to person, of course, but here's mine:

(Disclaimer: This is out of the ordinary for a class schedule. Really. I promise.)

9am-10am: Second Year Japanese

Japanese is hands down the hardest class I've taken at Beloit thus far. And now that I think about it, it's probably the hardest subject I've taken... ever. When you do poorly, you feel miserable, but when you do well, you feel like you're on top of the world. Being successful in any other class doesn't feel nearly as good as being successful in Japanese. The class atmosphere is often light-hearted (which I like), but at the same time, you have to keep on your toes. We teach each other different tricks to help us remember all the kanji, have grammar and vocabulary drills, translate text, have daily quizzes, and we bow at the start and end of each class (my favorite part). There's definitely no staring off into space in this class! I took Spanish in middle school and high school and I often felt like I was being left behind. When I didn't understand something, I just had to deal. In Japanese class, our sensei honestly wants everyone to succeed, so drop-in tutoring sessions are provided twice a week, a conversation practice session is held once a week, and there's a Japanese language table at DK's (a smaller cafeteria in Pearson's) five days a week where we can practice our conversation skills further. But at the end of the day, it's up to the student to study and do all the homework. Japanese is one of those classes that you can succeed in, but you have to be willing to work hard.

10am-12pm: Japanese Ghosts and Monsters
This course focuses on the supernatural within Japanese culture and we look at a wide range of media featuring them. (Books, movies, anime, plays, short stories, oral history, woodblock prints, handscrolls, poems... You name it.) It also functions as a 'history of' in that the class is framed in a chronological fashion, so we can see for ourselves how this or that developed over time or where this or that idea came from. (For example, My Neighbor Totoro, which is a modern anime movie, has a lot of grounding in Shinto.) The class is fairly big for a Beloit College class - I would say there are 20 to 25 students enrolled in Ghosts and Monsters. The style in which the class is taught is very much discussion and there have been some really fascinating conversations so far. There is quite a bit of reading assigned for this class, and we almost always have a weekly movie to watch outside of class. (But it's hard to complain when you're reading fairy tales and watching My Neighbor Totoro!) There's also a number of writing assignments, but that goes without saying since pretty much every Beloit College class has a writing aspect to it. We'll also be asked to come up with our own ghost or monster of our own design (a project I'm really looking forward to).

12pm-1:30pm: British Literary Traditions
British Literary Traditions (or Brit Lit) is an English class that I'm fairly sure every English major is required to take (ie it's required whether you're majoring in Literary Studies or Creative Writing). The particular section I'm in is a lecture-style class, which is a little out-of-the-ordinary for an English class at Beloit, but my professor's lectures are fun and enlightening, so I find myself really enjoying the class. (When it's nice out, we almost always have class outside in the poetry garden.) There's a lot of reading in Brit Lit (some of our texts: Pride and Prejudice, Troilus and Criseyde, Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, etc.), but I can honestly say that each book we've been asked to read has been interesting (and if it's not interesting when you read it on your own, my professor makes it interesting).

1:30pm-2pm: Lunch!
It's off to the Java Joint I go to get re-energized. (Their hot chocolate is especially awesome. I especially like it with whip cream and cinnamon on top. Best combination ever or best combination ever?)

2pm-4pm: Intro to Journalism
Right now in Journalism we're looking at the theories, history, and the hows behind Journalism itself. The class is a lot of discussion with a little lecture thrown in here and there for good measure. Later in the semester we're going to have to write a variety of articles (a feature story, a sports story, an op ed piece, etc.), but right now we're just focusing on examining and critiquing various forms of media, which I think is a very important skill to have. Not just as a journalist, but as a news consumer. The class size in my journalism class is more typical Beloit: about 15 students or so.

7pm-9pm: Intro to Astronomy
I've really missed having a science class (the last science class I'd taken prior to astronomy was AP Bio... in my junior year of high school), so astronomy has been helpful in shaking the rust off my science mind-set. (And it truly is a mind-set.) One of the reasons I chose Beloit was because the students are required to take classes outside of their general focus area. Clearly, I'm not planning on majoring in science, but it's nice to be able to dip my toes into something different now and again when conjugating Japanese verbs and analyzing Chaucer get to be too much for me. Intro to Astronomy is a really nice course in that it does what it's supposed to do: introduce you to Astronomy (who's really not all that bad once you get to know him, though he does have a tendency to chew with his mouth open). Intro to Astronomy is mostly lecture, but we also get to do hands on things like lie on the roof of the swanky, new science center and find constellations (something I could never do before this class). The professor also asks us what it is we'd like to learn about each week. I've never before been in a class where the teacher asks the students what it is they'd like to learn.

10:30pm: SLEEP!
Ha ha. I know. I'm a total loser for going to bed at 10:30pm, but after a day like this, you'd want to crawl into bed a little earlier than normal too.

(And again, don't worry. Schedules aren't usually this completely insane and in fact, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have only one hour of class, so it really does work out in the end. And if you've made it through this whole elephantine post, you deserve a cookie.)

Weekend Escapades

As mentioned in my last post, this past weekend was Family/Friends weekend. There were more parents and grandparents wandering around than there are squirrels skittering about campus. Not wanting all the parental units to get bored, Beloit College organized some entertainment venues such as a screening of The Real Dirt on Farmer John and booking Beau Soleil, a band that mixes Cajun music, New Orleans jazz, and blues (with a side helping of a bunch of other related music styles).
I wound up seeing Beau Soleil and holy dang, Eaton Chapel was packed to the gills. (I'm not kidding. Beau Soleil sold out.) I'd never really heard Cajun music before (let alone of Beau Soleil), but it was really enjoyable and it was a good, cross-generational kind of music that everyone can enjoy. And true to Beloit fashion, a handful of crowd members got up out of their seats and started an impromptu dance party off to the side of the stage.

On Sunday night, our old FYIs reunited for a nice dinner at commons (and no, that isn't an oxymoron. we were even given cloth napkins and everything!). For those of you who aren't familiar with the acronym, FYI stands for First Year Initiative, which is a program nearly every Beloit College student enters. Its purpose is to help ease you into life at Beloit College and it basically serves as your training wheels while you move from being a high school student to a college student. FYI carries over into your second year, but swaps out the 'F' for an 'S', becoming Second Year Initiative. SYI is basically your backbone and guide to mapping out the remaining two years you spend at Beloit. I didn't stay long at the dinner, having to run off to work, but it was good to reconnect with my FYI advisor (and interesting to see how everyone in my FYI has changed since we were unsure, newly-minted first-years).

Even though October isn't quite here yet (I wish!), I'm already getting in the Halloween mood. Instead of working on my Japanese homework (or at least pretending to), I wound up swapping ghost stories with a bunch of friends. It's amusing how much your own imagination can scare you. Forget scary movies. Just wander around a dark and silent dorm for a little while. I'm usually pretty difficult to frighten when it comes to that sort of stuff, but even I checked under my bed before settling in for the night.

A Lesson in Procrastination

My one and only class today, Japanese, was cancelled due to our teacher having caught the flu bug, so I had six whole, glorious hours in which to write that essay I'd been procrastinating on for the past week and a half. And as the minutes ticked on, I thought about my essay, outlined it, opened up a fresh word document and... suddenly my six hours were up. Oops...
Unfortunately, procrastination is something that plagues a lot of college students. I blame my parents. They're both huge procrastinators, so putting things off is hard-wired into my genes. But luckily there are a couple workshops offered for free at Beloit's learning center that focus on time management ie how to *not* procrastinate. (Gee, I should take some of my own advice, huh?)
I have to survive the rest of this week, though, because parent's weekend is on the horizon and even though my own parents won't be making an appearance, my friends' parents will which means being temporarily adopted for the weekend (ie Sunday dinner won't be Jimmy John's again).
Well, it's off to finish (or rather start) that essay of mine.

Greetings and Salutations

I'll be honest. I'm awful at introductions, so I'll try to make this as quick and painless as possible.
Hi. My name is Kaitlin, I'm a sophomore at Beloit College, I'm from Racine, WI, I'm a Creative Writing major and Journalism minor, I'm also studying Japanese as well as a smattering of other subjects when and where I can, I'm a part of Beloit's literary magazine 'Pocket Lint', I'm currently working towards studying abroad in England, and my dog's name is Sparky (which was a highly essential fact when I was 9 or so. It doesn't seem so important anymore, but I thought I'd throw it out there just to make sure I'd covered all my bases.) Phew. Glad that's done.
Hopefully this blog will provide some sort of insight into what it's like to actually be a student at Beloit College or at the very least provide a break from reading all those college brochures you've no doubted started collecting. (There's only so much college brochure reading a single person can take.)
Now here comes the part where I regale you with riveting tales of my summer vacation adventures. If only I had any. (One of the more exciting things I did was learn how to knit and play the theme from Pride and Prejudice - though not at the same time.)
So while some return to school dragging their feet and wishing it were June again, I was ready to dive back into the school year. This year is definitely busier than last, but it was also a lot easier to get back into the groove since Beloit College is more like an old friend now rather than a new acquaintance. (Though it still has its surprises. Just last week on my way to Japanese class a fox crossed my path and stared me down for a little while before scurrying off. It was quite surreal since the only wildlife I'd ever seen on campus before was a duck couple and the ridiculously large population of squirrel.)
This semester I'm taking 5 classes and lucky me, they all managed to land on Tuesdays and Thursdays (but on the positive side of things, my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, are wide open). Two English courses, two Japanese courses, and Astronomy. I wasn't so sure I'd like Astronomy, but it's a little hard not to enjoy lying down on the roof of the new science center and looking up at the stars for an hour and a half.
This year I brought my faithful car back with me from Ray-Town so that I can get out and about in the Beloit community more often. The only misgiving I had about having my Chevy Cavalier sidekick hang out with me in Beloit was parking, but there are a surprising amount of places to park on campus, and now that I'm here, I don't think it's going to be a problem at all.