Class

Excited: A date was announced today for the Beatles version of Rock Band, September 9 of this year. While I don't think I'm willing to pay the $250 for limited edition Beatles instruments (although maybe it'll have Paul's awesome Hofner bass), I am pretty excited about the prospect of a Beatles game (assuming my Guitar Hero peripherals work with a Rock Band game...). At the same time, I'm a little worried about if the game would actually be, well, fun. The Beatles's music doesn't really fit the mold of things in a Rock Band game. A lot of their earlier stuff is really conventional, as far as musicality (repeat the same three or so chords, George does a really brief solo) while all their later stuff is...unplayable in a video game, to say the least (can't wait to jam out on Wild Honey Pie).
Sports Thought: Well I've finally been convinced to join a fantasy baseball league with some buddies from school. My biggest fear is that I'll either spend every waking out obsessing over my team, or they'll totally suck. I haven't really found a way to reconcile this, but I'm gonna play anyway. I'm also in a March Madness bracket, even though none of the games are actually available for me to watch...
Shaq Says: "Weee weee wha weee weee wha weee wee weeee what's song is this"

Well the first week of classes is officially over (although it ended for me yesterday). On the whole, I'm really pleased with what I'm taking.
POLS 304: International Relations--Peacekeeping. Looks like this class is going to be all about the United Nations and it's various interventions throughout history. What really makes the class is that the professor was the Foreign Minitster (read: Secretary of State) for Afghanistan from like 1992-1996. He also has his own wiki! This class really tripped me up because, although being at the same time on Monday and Tuesday, it was in DIFFERENT lecture halls in the SAME building. Who does that.

POLS 202: Theories of Justice. I wasn't initially taking this class. Originally I was enrolled in Political Communication of New Zealand, but after going to a lecture and discussion where the professor talked non-stop about NZ political parties, figures, assigned us papers that were way beyond my ability (write a 1000 speech tailored for a specific member of NZ Parliament), I dropped it like it was hot. Theories of Justice seems pretty cool. The professor is an overly enthusiastic Australian, who often gets out of breath because she talks so much and so quickly. It's sort of like a hybrid of philosophy and political science, establishing how laws are just, what rights humans have, etc. I knew I was set when the first lecture referenced heavily John Locke and Jeremy Bentham (admittedly the real guys, and not the Lost iterations). This class trips me up too because the two lectures are at DIFFERENT times during the week in DIFFERENT buildings.

ECON 207: Environmental Economics. Taught by an American, who uses Oregon in lots of his examples. Also revealed itself to be very obviously an economics class, when the first two lectures were just about how to maximize your grade, and how the plussage system (more about that later) can work in your favor. Complete with lots of data, graphs, and Excel spreadsheets.

ECON 306: Health and Education Economics. I think this should really be titled Health Economics, with two weeks of Education. This class should be really cool, because it's over a lot of things I'm really interested in. Combined with the fact that the professor is a) an exuberant Canadian guy who has way much more to say than he has lecture time to and b) a carbon copy of my high school economics teacher.

Both the econ classes use a 'plussage' system, which is something I'd never seen before, but after it was explained in great detail by the 207 prof, is something I fully support. Basically, you can do no worse in the class than you do on your final. So in his class, he calculates four grades, one that's 100% final, one that's 80% final and 20% quizzes, 80% final and 20% discussion, and 60% final, 20% quizzes, and 20% discussion. This way, you're not punished for maybe doing really badly at the beginning of the semester, but then figuring it out by the time of the final. You can also, if you really dare, just not do anything and then bank it all on the final.

So far my biggest complaint is that the lectures are too short. Everything is 50 minutes, without fail. At home, the only 50 minute classes were either four times a week, or the supplementary discussions. Everything else was upwards of an hour and a half. I don't really feel like the professors can say everything they need to in 50 minutes, and they're really rushing the whole class to cram information in. We'll see how it plays out.