School Starts

Class started again today. It's not much of a break, less than two weeks between my last final and my first class. But it will all be worth it to graduate next Spring, a year ahead of schedule.

I was supposed to take a gen ed this cycle that I was actually interested in (a rare occasion), but the class was canceled due to a lack of students. Made me sad, not to mention put me in a position of having to choose a new class 3 days before classes started. However, I found a psychology class I hadn't noticed previously and that is being taught by a professor I know. It's as close to a win as I can make happen.

Dr. L (as we'll abbreviate him to) is an interesting professor. He's a statistician, which I like, and I took my Research 2 class with him over the summer. The struggle in that class was the abysmally slow pace, which was his attempt to not lose someone in a class where the most difficult math was taking a square root on a calculator and even that caused stumbling. However he didn't begrudge me playing Sudoku in his class, so I like him. Also, he made a point to talk to me all of the Fall semester and ask about my Research project, as well as offer to talk to a conference director on my behalf so I can present. Pretty good guy. His sense of humor can be a little...quirky, but he does make me laugh from time to time and is especially good at teasing students who aren't smart enough to understand what he's saying. I appreciate subtlety.

The class is Learning and Motivation. No surprise that a lot of the students are educational psych majors. They also seem to be relatively early in their course work, as the class only requires Intro to get into. There's a lab component using a virtual rat, which is neat, and the subject matter is generally interesting and applicable to my own future work, since basic training is nothing if not behavioral modification. He and I chatted about that a little after class.

I had forgotten that his course load is often tough. We meet a total of 13 days (we're off for MLK) and in that we have 3 lab reports, a midterm and a final. Ouch. My winter session last year had 1 paper, that was all. Funny enough, that class meets next door. Dr. L. also has a very strict attendance and lateness policy, so I have to actually go to class. But it's only 13 (12 now...) classes total, so it's not that bad.

I'm interested in seeing how this goes. We started out with basics today, reviewing different factions of psychology so that everyone is clear that learning is a behavioral, environmental area of psych. I think it will be interesting, and I'm pretty good at taking notes while keeping up with email and Google Reader or playing Sudoku. My iPad just became an invaluable resource. And the 30 minute break he gives is plenty of time to get to Starbucks and back. Should be fun!