First Night

Sorry for the break in service - busier than usual over the last week, trying to catch up on various small and large jobs before my class begins. Said class - Intermediate Algebra - begins tonight, a full two weeks after the semester started. The class is Monday evenings, and the first day of the RCC semester was September 1st - a Tuesday - and last Monday was Labor Day.

Looking at the schedule, I think that means there are only fourteen actual classes - although I'm sure that the High Holy Days, Columbus Day or something else will lower even that tally. I wouldn't be surprised if they move Thanksgiving this year to Monday, killing two birds with one stone: canceling my class and getting the holiday off on my birthday, where it falls this year (the 26th) for maybe only the fourth time since my birth.

Night classes are a little problematic for me to begin with. My first year at RISD, I took a history elective that met at 7 PM, and I just could not remember to go. It pissed me off no end, because I really, really liked the class (about the late Middle Ages). But RISD Freshman Foundation classes were all-day studio affairs, 9-6 with an hour for lunch, and I would completely lose focus by the end of the day. Hit the cafeteria and then go back to the dorm to crash, only to awake in a panic to find I'd missed my history class. At some point - presumably before the cut-off - I ran into class just as it had ended and the professor officially dropped me from the class.

So why go with an evening class at RCC, when I actually have to remember to drive across county for it - and during rush hour at that? The early morning classes just weren't cutting it. In addition to finding it a huge drag getting across county at 6:30 in the morning (poor me) - and finding it more of a drag as the mornings grew progressively colder and darker through the semester - I also found that being in a class of 18-year-olds was really starting to wear on me. I'm hoping that there will be at least one or two other 'adults' in the evening class, although if they, like me are taking Intermediate Algebra at 40, I'm wondering if they're going to make me feel better or worse about class in their presence.

D.