It's Christmas time at Bob Jones!
Classes have finished. Finals are done. And all the students have scattered in their different directions.
It is December 17th, and earlier this morning at 10:40 a.m. chapel at BJU dismissed and several thousand students threw their bags in a vehicle and drove away.
I was excited to finish the semester, but somehow not quite as excited as I was when we were approaching Thanksgiving break. And I think that that is because I was so burned out before Thanksgiving break. But still, I'm pretty excited to be done with this semester. :)
I was a really good semester, I had some easier classes that allowed me to focus better on some of my harder classes, like Greek and English. Photography and Logic were probably my two easiest classes. I think that it's pretty obvious why Photography was easy, I had already previously learned most of what they were teaching on my own, so that wasn't much of a challenge. Logic though, is a bit puzzling why it would be an easy class. Well it was easy because if you didn't get anything lower than a "B" on a test then you didn't have to turn in the homework, and that was a huge blessing, because I could understand how to do the problems when he explained it in class, so I didn't have to spend any time outside of class doing homework for that class. I could have gotten a better grade in the class if I had actually studied for it, but I chose to rather spend time studying for other
classes, and considering I already had 97% in the class, without studying, I didn't really see much need to improve on that. Amazing class though, it makes me want to switch to a Math or Physics major, because I just love how math works together and how things fit, if done correctly. (Logic has a lot of math involved in it.)
Greek and English on the other hand were quite a bit more of a challenge than Logic or Photography. I managed to do pretty well, but I'm glad that I had enough time to devote to them. I ended with a solid "A" in Greek, and then a decent "B" in English.
English was an interesting class. I was in 103 this semester, Composition and Literature. Ah, literature…. I really came into the class with a positive outlook. I wanted to like this class, I really did. But it was hard to do that. I don't really enjoy reading fiction to begin with, but I read the assignments and most of them were fine. Although I can't say that I particularly enjoyed the really weird ones, or as my teacher called them, "memorable" ones. "Miss Brill," "Paul's Case," "Araby," and "The Destructors" are a few that come to mind. "The Destructors" took the cake as far as pointlessness goes. (Look it up and read it if you want.)
But anyway, the part that really made it hard for me to enjoy was when we would read into the poems or short stories further than the author even intended. Like for example in "We Real Cool." by Gwendolyn Brooks.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Nice poem. But why is the "We" on the line above, and not on the line that it's supposed to be on? Well according to the teacher that is so that the very last line "Die soon." doesn't have a "We" which signified the aloneness in death. When we die it doesn't matter what we did, or what friends that we had. It doesn't matter that we were "real cool" we are still going to die alone. So, it's a warning against the gang mentality because they thrive on their friends.
Now, I can see why you might say that, it even makes sense (which is a whole lot better than some times).
But….
That's not what the Author said that it means. According to the author the reason that she designed it that way was so that you would have to stop after the "We." The purpose wasn't to remove the "We" from the last line, that was just a side effect of the main purpose. "The 'We'—you're supposed to stop after the 'We' and think about their validity." (Taken from "An Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks" in Contemporary Literature")
So, that kind of thing bugged me some, but I got over it. :)
I'm still glad that I had to take the class and I still managed to learn from it. If nothing else it taught me that as a left-brained individual living in a right-brain dominated world, I'm going to have to realize that most people's minds don't work the same way that mine works. :) And that's the way God designed the world, so I'm not going to complain about it, I’m going to praise Him for it.
Anyway, I really enjoyed all of my classes, even English (though a few things bothered me, it was very good overall). And it was an excellent semester with much profit.
I'm glad that I can be in Florida now though getting to do some of the things that I don't have time for at school. :)
Z Bogiem!
Tim
