Classes and General Week 2

This was the first week of classes, and it was interesting to say the least.

Italian: I'm in the 102 class, and I have a lot of work to do before I know what I'm doing. I could understand everything that my prof said (in Italian) but I could barely form a cohesive sentence. This should be interesting.

Bodies and Burials: This is the class that I was so excited to take until I got here, and heard people talk about the professor. Then I realized that most study abroad students here don't want to do any work. (The work ethic of people here is ridiculous- they never want to do anything, ever!)  From what I heard, the professor was a huge pain who grades really hard. Well, she might be, but she's not the biggest witch in the world. (Mom, I think you still have that title.) We have a few on site visits, one large paper and an oral presentation, plus midterm and final exams in that class. The class itself should be interesting, it's on funeral rites and archeological funery with a focus on Roman and Etruscan burials. Not a normal topic for most colleges.

Writing Rome: This class is really going to challenge me, and I know it. I'm a good writer, but I can't write fiction to save my life. And our first assignment is a fiction piece. The class is interesting because we do a lot of on site writing, and we have our first field trip on Wednesday. The prof is basically an adjunct who doesn't care about much, she walked in and started swearing and bitching about her life.

Advertising, Culture and Society: This class is boring right now. Like, really boring. But it will hopefully get more interesting as the semester goes along. This is the main class where I'm appalled at the behavior of other students. People today were playing on their blackberries, hanging out on facebook, or chatting with their friends. DURING CLASS! yes, there are people at AU that do those things, but they also take notes. and packing up early is unheard of, professors will call you out for that, then hold the entire class late. Just because. Today, the prof let us out early because people were "antsy." Eh, I'm getting comm credit for this class, so I'll suffer through it.

Ancient Empires, Conflict of the Mediterranean: I love this prof. I really love this prof. He's a small British man who has a very british sense of humor. And unfortunatly, most people in the class don't understand it. (He quoted Monty Python's life of Brian for about 5 minutes during the first class. I was in stitches laughing, and no one else got it.) One of his quotes today was "yes, yes, that's enough of watching Brad (Pitt) lead a lovely gang of transvestites up a hill."(We were watching Troy.)  Later, we were comparing Troy and Saving Private Ryan, and he came out with " Did you know there's a porn version of this? It's called Saving Ryan's Privates!" He also allows people to swear in class, and constantly relates everything back to politics and current events. It's going to be an awesome-ly hilarious class.