The beginning of each semester always seems like an emotional rollercoaster for me. I can’t help but think that it is inevitable something is going to go wrong, no matter how carefully I planned it out. Seeing as this should be my final semester at San Jose State, the stresses involved in these little hiccups have been magnified tenfold.
Last Wednesday was my first day of class. I had a class that was supposed to be from 9:00 to 10:15. However, I wrote the ‘start’ time wrong on my little reminder card, and came in at 10:15, which was after everyone (including the prof) had skeedaddled. :smack: (usually classes get out early on 1st day).
This was extremely bad. Profs can drop you if you miss the first day of class. Particularly if a bunch of people are trying to add, many Professors will drop people simply to add the people who actually showed up. The screwup was 100% my fault, so I knew I didn’t have any excuse. All I could do was leave a letter in the Professor’s mailbox BEGGING her not to drop me. I came in during the next class meeting (this Monday) and I see people continuously piling in the class. I’m thinking, “Shit, there’s so many people adding, I REALLY hope I didn’t get dropped!” when the Professor showed up, I explained the situation and she assured me I was still registered to the class. WHEW!
One frustrating moment was finding out I need to get the Norton’s Anthology of English Literatore Vol 2. It was only until after I had purchased it (didn’t have time to shop around, needed the book immediately) that I realized I had owned this book a year ago, and sold it, figuring I wouldn’t need the same textbook for a different class :smack:
I had another close call when a class listed as ENGL 120(English 120) was written as TA 120 (Theater Arts 120) on the syllabus. I started to freak out, because I need a certain number of upper division English classes to graduate, and as fun as the class may be, it does me no good if the credits won’t go towards me graduating! Fortunately, it turns out the class gives credit in EITHER major, hence why it was listed twice in the catalog. Whew! :eek:
Thus, the last five classes I need to finish school have all been successfully added and started. I’m actually extremely enthusiastic this semester, for a few reasons-
One, hearing lectures and being very familiar with the material because I actually somehow remembered 4 years worth of English classes. (Me? Remembering something I learned 4 years ago? Impossible! :eek: )
Two, knowing that this is the last semester, and that I can’t drop classes just because I don’t like them or I’m having difficulty early on. This is also my last chance to really shine. I’ve never gotten straight A’s before in my life…but I know that there were many opportunities I had to achieve that, but passed over because of lack of motivation or stress. This time I really do believe I can hack it. Two of my professors have taught previous courses I took. One in particular taught a class I thought it would be impossible for me to pass because the books we were discussing weren’t really clicking with me. I wound up getting a ‘B’ on supposedly “impossible” class, and now I have that same professor again. Given my experience with knowing what both these professors want, it would be mortal sin not to get an ‘A’ when I have all the mental tools at my disposal to excel.