School: June 2004 Archives

It seems that the two lockstepped classes I thought would not be offered may have "experimental" alternatives, found in an addendum to the catalog. Which means I can take every class I want next semester (some long days in there, but apparently the college is not fond of early-morning classes). I've worked out how many classes I need to take every semester, and even with a minor in construction management, I'll have no troubles; my work load will be about 15-16 units a quarter, which is well below the recommended 18 for the college, and the allowed 20 for the university.

I'm going to try to figure out how to fit in some Spanish classes (very useful, working in construction in California) and maybe some more ceramics.

I've just spent a while working out what a possible schedule would look like at CalPoly. Alas, it seems that a couple of the classes I want to take in the fall are simply not being offered (including my Structures class, which is a lockstepped class, so I'm not sure how that's going to work), so I have to work out some alternatives to the four classes I was planning to take.

I was thinking maybe I should have taken physics over the summer, but fortunately, that is not one of the classes that is not available in the fall. Less fortunately, one of the classes is another lockstepped class, which is the intro to the studio. I can't use the studio until I take the intro, and I can't complete my design class (which I can get into) unless I can use the studio.

I'm thinking it's a good thing I signed up for the summer advising program in late July, because this seems to suck, big time.

On the other hand, maybe I can get some of those weird construction management classes out of the way early on, which would be handy. I have one semester with three of them at once, which seems a bit much, even for one given to excess like myself.

Speaking of the summer advising program, I'm planning on going down to SLO for a couple of days around it to scope out housing and other things that might be of use sometime before I am absolutely required to be on campus and ready to go (things like hardware stores, hobby shops, and art supply stores need to be found well in advance of my first project). Summer classes will be over, and I can spend some time figuring out how the place works, and how to get to and around campus. Should be interesting.

I've been in the throes of a weeklong public speaking intensive. I need to have three credits in public speaking (and public speaking alone) for transfer to Calpoly, and I need it by July 15th, so I signed up for and by the skin of my teeth got into a class that runs June 1-8 at Contra Costa College.

It works out to one or two speeches a day, two of which have to be ten minute speeches with formal outlines and citations (I did my first one on how to make a linoleum block, transcription to come).

Because I am incapable of arriving at a class like this unprepared, I have spent nearly all weekend writing my last big speech: a debate with a classmate on whether you should submit to store receipt-checks without argument. (I'm anti, natch.) I have charts. I have statistics. I have moving quotations. I have said this speech five times, trying to get it down under ten minutes so I don't go over my time.

I am very much looking forward to Tuesday, 4pm.