Week Two

Been to two classes in each subject now so things should start to get serious this week. It's going really well - so well I'm sort of waiting for the "hard part" to show up! I walk about a block and a half from my office to pick up the free inter-campus shuttle at 9am, it takes me across Speedway and within about half a block of my first class in about 12-15 minutes. It's so nice to not worry about driving through campus and trying to find parking.

My morning class (MIS) has over 350 students in a big auditorium, but the professor is really personable and funny. Starting this Thursday they'll take attendance with a clicker system. We each register our clicker (picture a tiny remote control) on a website and then click in at the beginning and end of class. It will also be used for in-class surveys and opinion polls. As a practice, last Thursday they had us pick our Major from a list and when done, it displayed a pie chart of the class and what majors were represented. Pretty interesting. (Yes, you could conceivably give your clicker to your buddy to click in for you, but if they catch you, you BOTH risk being expelled. Not exactly worth it!)

Assignments are turned in via a special website (www.turnitin.com) that immediately checks for plagiarism before the prof even sees it. If your work looks too much like a classmate's, or even too much like someone's from a previous semester, you get a personal invitation to visit the prof!

After class I pick up the shuttle again which drops me back at UMC, and walk back to the office. A lot of walking with a fairly heavy pack of books and my tiny laptop - I can already tell I'll be losing a little weight this semester! Love it!

My afternoon class (English) follows the same routine of shuttle ride at 3pm to within a block of my class building. This is a much smaller class with just 25 kids. The professor is really nice and I think I'll like the class a lot. He designed his own website for us - you can view it here:

http://web.mac.com/chrisminnix

According to the syllabus he'll soon be separating us into Writing Groups which should be fun. I'm the only "old goat" in the class, but that's okay; my classmates seem nice enough. I love reading and we'll likely learn different ways of dissecting passages and analyzing them. Our first informal "Response Paper" is due tomorrow in class so we'll see if I did it the way he wants it.