Coffebeans and Magic Wands

Halfway through the first week of the semester and I already know that it will be an awesome one. And for me the hardest one since Junior year of high school. Which is actually kind of funny because I'm only taking 14.5 credit hours rather than my usual twenty or so. My classes are all shaping up to be interesting and my professors are pretty cool.

But the thing is the homework load. For my continental European literature class we have about four or five hours of reading (at my pace) to do a week. For Visual Genres we have a huge stack of books and a long list of movies to see. Plus there's a wiki that the class is building - which sounds way cool, but knowing me I will spend way too much time on it. My Technology for Instructors class is not in fact Overhead Projections 101 - today we messed around in Photoshop - a program that I am developing a beautiful love-hate relationship with. I'm kinda loving it - but it hates me. That class we are building an entire online portfolio demonstrating our ability to figure out technology. And I suppose at some point I will have to figure out what my German professor is actually saying when he starts rattling off foreign at me.

But it should definitely be an interesting semester if nothing else. I had this vague idea about asking for more hours at work - but I'm kinda glad to only be working two shifts a week with these mountains shaping up around me.

On the subject of school, (I know, I just changed subjects, but I'm changing it back for my own devious purposes), we started reading Voltaire's Candide this week and I am... Well, I feel a lot of different things about it. It's certainly something that I think many people should read. It's considered a satire and in that way it's absolutely brilliant. Throughout it I went from laughing my head off to wanting to throw up because of the way in which very tragic things were talked of.

The title character Candide is thrown from his home when the master of the house catches the young man kissing his daughter. From there Candide endures all sorts of horrible things, all of which are couched in such terms that you cannot help but laugh, even as you are sickened by the notion. The worst is the polite excuses for the atrocities of war.  Everything is well because it is all exactly how things are supposed to be.  

So I was going to continue that thought and...I'm not.  But really, you should read Voltaire, he's cool.