I just got back from my last class of the first day of school. Normally I’d be a little bitter at having to go back to school, but I must say that I am incredibly happy and a finer first day of school I have not had.
My first two classes were early and late British lit, which I have one right after the other at 9:40 and 10:40, respectively. Both of my professors seem really cool and in the second class, I’m going to have my American lit teacher from last semester as a TA. She’s very nice, very intelligent, and a very fair grader…all desirable qualities in a TA and a teacher. The professor in my first class is the most unpretentious guy I’ve ever had teach me in college. Right off the bat when he gave us our Chaucer reading assignment he said, “Here’s the thing with Chaucer: he was a funny guy. If you read Chaucer and don’t laugh, you’re either reading it wrong or you’re a stick. You don’t want to be a stick, do you? And don’t take yourself too seriously when you read this stuff. You don’t need to be marking in the margins of each page and highlighting text. There’s actually historical proof that yellow markers weren’t present when Chaucer wrote. Just read it and try to enjoy yourself.” That’s pretty refreshing stuff coming from a tenured English professor at ASU. I think he’s going to be great.
Continuing on with cool things that happened today, I reached my goal of meeting a new person. I know that probably doesn’t seem like a big deal, but my goal wasn’t just to make small talk with someone, my goal is to get to know someone, care for them in a Christ-like way, and generally reach out to them like Christ reached out to people around him. That’s a big thing I’ve been praying about and I was encouraged by the results that I saw today. Don’t get me wrong, there was no super-spiritual breakthrough or anything, but I talked with someone on a deeper than surface level and that’s something I can build off of in the weeks to come.
Another great thing that happened today regards my application to the teaching program. I, being a constantly worrisome guy, wanted to show my completed application to my advisor. I constantly think whatever I write or produce is crap, so I was incredibly happy when my advisor keep telling me what I good job I did on the application and whatnot. She said I should turn it in while I was there, which I did. That saved me a few more days of worrying about it. Now it’s all done and I just wait to see if I get in. I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be a problem, but today just made me feel really good about it. I was looking at this application as one of the big hurdles that stood before me being a teacher and now that it’s behind me, I feel really good.
I thought that the day couldn’t get any better, but then I went to my night class, which I’m taking with TJ…independent film. I had high hopes for this class and I wasn’t let down. It’s exactly what I thought it would be: an easy class where we just watch great, great independent films from people like Soderbergh, Jarmusch, Smith, Romero, Rodriguez, and tons of other people. We watched a film tonight called “Living in Oblivion” with Steve Buscemi and Catherine Keener. It was hilarious and entertaining in every way…AND I WAS IN CLASS. Crazy man, crazy. I didn’t know it could be this fun.
Now I better go read…
Oh yeah…two out of three teachers today made an ASU porn joke. Classy…real classy.
