Four Courses Blended Into One

Jonas Clark Hall

                I can’t believe it’s only the second week of classes. I already feel so engaged in everything I’m doing in classes that it seems like it’s been at least a month so far. The incredible thing about my classes is how connected they are to one another. I thought Wednesdays would be terrible because I have all four classes piled on one another, but it’s helped me make so many connections. Let me break down an average Wednesday. (I don’t know if this really is an average Wednesday since I’ve only had two of them so far.)

                I get up in the morning, get ready, go to breakfast at the cafeteria and then head off to Economics. We spend time talking about making choices with trade-offs and we learn the difference between normative and positive. In this context, positive means how the world is and normative means how the world ought to be.

                Next, I go to lunch and then off to psychology. What is normative again? In psychology it means normal behavior. I make a mental note to not confuse the two definitions while my professor discusses different theories of psychology. He starts to talk about a man named B. F. Skinner. We learned about his theories of observable psychology through stimulus and response. Before I know it, it’s 1:15 and my next class starts at 1:25.

Freud's Perspective

                I trudge through the snow covered campus to my Personal Values class. We’re talking about what makes an argument logically valid. I’m reading over my notes when my professor says that next week we’ll be talking about B. F. Skinner. This is just too much. I know that my classes are all social science, but really? This is just getting weird.

                After class, I have my first real break of the day. I go back to my room for two and half hours to study before going to dinner and off to managerial communications. Did you know that a huge part of communicating and motivating people is psychological? My brain is spinning, but in a really good way. It’s an experience I never had in high school that my knowledge from one class is so directly connected to my other classes.

                One other cool thing that actually just happened – I’m a student ambassador. That sounds really fancy, right? It means that one day a week, I open my room to prospective students on tours. It was a really cool experience. I remember going on my tour here and the friendliness of everyone really made it a very pleasant experience. I hope that I was able to make that experience equally enjoyable for that group of students. I’m a student ambassador on Thursdays from 11-12, so if you’re thinking about Clark University, I’d love to meet you.

                Along with this entry, you may have noticed a bunch of pictures of Clark University covered in snow. I took those pictures today. That snow storm last night was the real deal. It’s really beautiful and I’m thankful for the small campus when I’m going from one building to the next in the snow. Have a nice week and if you’re a local, I hope you had a nice snow day/two-hour delay. We didn’t have one here, but several classes were cancelled.

The Green - Which I guess right now would be called The White

Spring Semester - New teachers, classes, roommate?

                Hello everyone. It’s been a long time since this blog’s been updated, so I guess I’ll try to cover all the bases by saying Happy Hanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Hopefully I didn’t miss anything. Sorry if I did.

                Anyway, I’ve been on campus for a few days now getting back into the gear of classes, cafeteria food, roommates, and independent living. My month-long vacation was a lot of fun, but I’m definitely glad to be back here for my second semester here at Clark.

                Classes started on Tuesday, but the way my schedule works out, I didn’t have classes until Wednesday. That sounds great, but I had all four classes in one day. That’s over six hours of class time. That seems normal to a high-schooler, but in college, it’s a nightmare. It really wasn’t that bad. I’ll try to give you a little run-down of my new courses, but keep in mind I’ve only just had the first taste of what the courses will actually be like.

                My first day started at 10 AM with my Economics class. Professor Geoghegan (pronounced gay-gen, go figure) seems like she’ll be a fantastic way to start my morning three times a week. She has a really great sense of humor and is enthusiastic about the course material. We spent the beginning of class going over expectations, scheduling, blah-blah-blah, and then talked a little bit about what economics really is. I don’t know enough at this point to do it justice, but I was actually surprised about how interesting the class was. I signed up to fulfill a requirement and was not expecting it so be something that would actually spark my interest.

                After lunch, I went up to my next class: Psychology. As this is spring semester, the class was only 80 students, a dramatic decrease from fall semester’s class which if I have my figures right, was over 120 students. This is a very large class for Clark, but psychology is the most popular major here, so it only makes sense to allow the most people into the introductory level before the classes decrease in size based on specialty. Professor Brown is new here at Clark – this is his second semester teaching here. Again, he appeared to be very enthusiastic about the course material and the topics seem to be very interesting from the start.

                Directly following psychology, I trekked across the snow-covered campus to my philosophy class: Personal Values. Professor Donahue says that the class should be called Ethics because that’s really what it is. Professor Donahue, like my other professors, has a great sense of humor and is very excited about teaching. In class, we discussed the concepts of utilitarian vs. Kantian. Rather, should we always hold true that it is wrong to lie, or do we analyze the consequences of telling the truth before we decide to lie. Most of us are utilitarian. Think of the last time a three-year-old asked you about Santa Claus. I’m sure you wanted to keep the spark alive in their eyes. I'm not sure why this picture creeps me out, but here you go...

                Finally, my night-time class: Managerial Communications from 6 PM to 9 PM. It seems intimidating, right? It’s actually the class I’m most excited about. In the class taught by Professor Kimball, we will learn different methods of public speaking and writing in a managerial context. These are essential skills to any professor, whether I stay in the business management department or not. So many people have told me the most valuable classes they took were public speaking. We learned a lot about a large project we’ll be working on most of the semester. I’ll tell more once I know more.

                This entry’s already getting rather lengthy, but there’s one more thing I wanted to talk about. My roommate from the first semester transferred to a state school for financial reasons, so I currently don’t have a roommate. There was the possibility that a transfer student would be placed here, but it seemed unlikely since my dorm is freshman-only. Anyway, one of my friends and I filled out a form to have her move in with me. It’s a pretty easy process. We just had to answer a few questions and get some signatures. It’s not finalized yet because this is still the “freeze period.” That means that we can’t change rooms the first two and last two weeks of each semester. It looks like the chances of her moving in are pretty good though.

                Last paragraph, I promise. Things are looking pretty good for spring semester. New roommate, new classes. The change in course focus will be a blessing as well. Clark has a fantastic science program, but I just don’t think it was the right kind of thing for me. I’ll be much happier with social sciences. That’s all for now. I’ll update more about my classes next week.