Monday, August 30, 2010

Well, I don't know what happened to summer but it is gone, gone, gone. I'm afraid to look at my summer to-do list for fear that I will be disappointed in myself. Maybe later.

As for school, my impressions so far are that I will not care for the Children's Literature class; my Ozarks history class is going to be a lot of fun; and my historiography class is going to be my most difficult undertaking to date.

Quite frankly, I have a hard time even spelling the word "historiography" and I'm still not sure what it means. I was hoping the professor would tell us what it means, but after one evening, I have decided he is not going to tell us much of anything. We are going to tell HIM. Turns out we have to speak in this class or we fail 20% of our grade. Yikes. I usually sit on the back row and don't speak unless spoken to. Now I'm going to have to find my voice. Finally.

For Ozarks history, in addition to two book reviews that I could live quite well without, we will be keeping a journal about how the people of the Ozarks are represented in film, print, and in the media. Also, we have to take a road trip through several sub-regions of the Ozarks and record our impressions of the land, people, cities and towns, etc. I'm very excited about this project.

The Children's Lit. class has as interesting book list and I enjoy reading children's books, but I'm just not a literature person. Right now we are looking at how to determine who is the "implied reader" for children's books. Not my cup of tea, but no doubt I can learn a few things from this class nonetheless.

All things considered, I expect this to be my most interesting and intense semester so far!