You know you're going to have a lot of reading when you sign up for three religion classes, all on Tuesday-Thursdays, but I wasn't expecting one of them to take up an entire shelf's worth of books at the bookstore. Reading aside, though, I carefully chose each of these classes, so I am looking forward to all this reading, despite its sanity-taxing quantity.
Perhaps more importantly, I'm looking forward to these classes themselves. In all of them I have a vested personal interest in the subject material for my own growth as a person and as a Christian, and it will also help having a minimum of two friends in each class (completely unplanned, but a nice bonus). Two of the three professors, from their first day introduction lectures, seem like they'll be of the "great" variety, which will be especially critical for the class that meets at 8:00 am (oh, the pain!). The third teacher will probably be of the "average to good" variety, it's too early to judge. And of course it's worth mentioning the names of the courses: Jesus in Scripture and Tradition, Theology of Creation, Christian Theology and the Moral Life.
And then there's my Math/CS course: Theory of Computation. We started out nice and simple with stuff I knew, or at least sort of understood after taking Linear two years ago, but then we quickly moved to some more complicated things, things I didn't understand. I felt oh-so-much better after the teacher finished some lengthy mathematical statement with funny symbols and words on the board and proceeded to exclaim (in all sincerity) "that's just about as simple as it gets"...
One nice thing about that course is that I know the entire class (sans only one person), and I like the teacher (he's also my advisor, and the one with whom I traveled to India two summers ago). So, people-wise, it's going to be a good class, it's just the subject matter that will be dropping my GPA.
Lastly, I have a phy ed course, which, for as much as I was dreading it, is looking like it will go very well. I don't know anyone else in the class, but the teacher seems like he'll also be of the "really great" calibre; he is clearly very in-tune with what it means to be a student at St Olaf, and it was just amazing for me to hear someone so clear headed and "real" speaking from professor's shoes. It doesn't happen often, at least not to the degree he demonstrated.
Most importantly, more important than any classes, the start of the new semester means my best friends are back from their Global semester abroad! Last semester was a bit of a rough time without them around, so I'm absolutely ecstatic to see them again!
