School Week 1 Recap

Right folks, I was told to "brief it up" on my blog by one of my toughest blog critics out there. So, in the spirit of completely ignoring her (which is what I spent most of my teenage years doing so I have lots of practice), I am going to give you a play-by-play rundown of the first week of classes.

Monday started out fresh and bright at 5:30...pm. Well, no, not really, I mean, I got up, went to work, worked the day away, left work and bought all of my books, all $240 worth...pretty light when you consider all the textbooks a med student or a law student might have to buy, and actually considering I am an English major, shouldn't I relish in buying books? I suppose...anyway, bought them all, checked 'em down, and went to my Intro to Media Research class. Yikes.

My instructor started out by explaining that her background is in theatre. Yeah, no joke there. But, I thank her, because of the $240 I spent on books, not one penny was spent on a book for her class because she hasn't been able to find a book she likes. Yay! So, this class is basically an 8 week intensive pilot study on some sort of media of my choice...and I have no clue what to do or how to go about it. So far for the semester, College 1, Elliot 0.

Tuesday morning rolls around, I get a little bit of a lie-in, I guess. Class at 10, as opposed to the usual work at 9 (but it's still better than Target any day). We gather, it's a small class. It's my advanced playwriting class, and of all the people on the roster, there is only one with whom I have never had class, and only two that were not in my playwriting class last semester. John returned, Chelsea and Anne as well, plus Shannon, with whom I have had a class every semester since I started at Webster, and then the last person is Alan, who seems like a good fit with the group. Sadly, Pat didn't show up, so the score kinda evened out for the day, leaving College ahead, 2-1, but I still had work to go to, and after that...class with Sheila Hwang. Now, don't get me wrong, I actually really like her, so I didn't want that to sound like a terrible thing. It is not, not by a long shot. But it seems that once a semester, just like it is inevitable I will have a class with Shannon, it is inevitable I will be one of a very small number of men-if not the only man-in a class packed with women. Webster's English program is not very evenly distributed amongst men and women, and the men all pick lit classes like "Heroic Themes" and "Lit Into Film; Tinsel Town" and so forth. Not "Contemporary Multiethnic Literature of the United States." That just draws a crowd of women. Plus, the only other guy in this class is a guy who I worked on a project with last fall...a project that he got a worse grade on than our other group member and I (that other person happened to be Shannon...Ah! Small schools are so much better than the U of M (your experience may differ (especially if you were in a small program at the U of M (like design))), because he flaked out a lot. So...Webster 4, Elliot 1.

Wednesday was a mess...the third day in a row I am down at St. Louis City Hall trying to locate a deed to plug up a hole in this chain, plus I had to run to Madison Illinois first thing in the morning, about which the best thing I can say is that at 9:45, it is much easier to find a parking spot in downtown Edwardsville, but it's still fairly close to impossible to find a parking spot which should give you some indication of how my visits to Madison normally go. While that is not the game we are recapping, it's a good time to tell you that the score so far is Edwardsville 23,955,201, Elliot 17. So I took off from work finally, ran to my parents' house and grabbed a sammich for dinner, then over to campus, where the only parking spots I can find are way over by Pearson, and my photography class is all the way over in Sverdrup. Now, this is not a substantial hike, but in the heat, hauling a bag you're not quite sure what the contents thereof are, and you're cutting it close on the first night of class, it might as well be sixty miles uphill. Webster 5, Elliot 1. Get to the classroom, and it's ten degrees WARMER in this classroom. Webster 6, Elliot 1. But then...the teacher turns out to be a really cool French guy who talked about le tour with me a little bit. Nice, Webster 6, Elliot 2. Ah, but then the annoying freshman expert girl, as I will call her (reminiscent of "Poetry Award" girl from Fiction Writing at Meramec...) pipes up about how she loves photography and already knows everything and is only taking the intro class because they wouldn't let her sign up for the advanced one...mm. Hm. It's looking like a runaway win for Webster, they're on the verge of their seventh point when all of a sudden...I know more about things like shutter speed, and how depth of field can be controlled by aperture, and most importantly, how to use the Nikons we were looking at. Webster 6, Elliot 3, then Elliot 4! Yeah! But then, after class, as I am walking back to my car...my car is the ONLY CAR in the ENTIRE EAST PARKING LOT. Elliot 3, Webster 90.

You read that right, 90 points.

So, this morning I went back to my playwriting class, and still no sign of Pat. Fortunately, my monologue went over well, and John has not lost his touch over the summer, and it turns out Alan is a teriffic fit in the group, and Shannon's not doing too terrible herself. So, I left class for work with my head held proudly...it had been a solid win for Webster, but it's only the first week, and I think I held myself in pretty good standing in the face of significant adversity.

Final score for Fall Semester 2007 Week 1:

Webster 91
Elliot 6

"We've seen photo-shopped pictures of French President Nicolas Sarkozy with big love handles, and we've seen massive abs placed on Barack Obama, so what is next?"

"Dennis Kucinich in a Speedo with fantastic abs and a great tan."

"There's only so much photoshop can do, you realize."

-An actual conversation between my photo instructor and I.