First Impressions
Every time the semester starts I have the highest of hopes for all my classes. Here is what was supposed to be a quick run down of my five classes. Spoilers, I’m pleased as punch.
Research Methods
This class sounds useful but dry as dust, and no one would take it if it wasn’t required as a part of the SMPA core. It’s important to know but not fun to learn about. Thankfully I think I lucked out with my section and my professor, Abigail Jones. She’s incredibly enthusiastic and keen on making this an enriching experience with guests and quality work. She expects us to be on time and to show up, and to make the effort since she’s clearly doing her part. There are a couple familiar faces and that’s always nice in these small classes.
Political Campaign Advertising
Another small class in the same room as Research Methods, just two hours later. The professor knows his stuff and the work seems very manageable. The one tough part will be the group project, producing our own videos, but it’ll be fine. I’m taking for my major, and it’s one of those classes that I still can’t believe I get to take. The subject’s so specialized to my interests it’s a dream come true. We’re watching ads and figuring out what works. It’s great.
Legislative Politics
This is the second of two upper level Political Science courses I need to take for my major, but I would’ve wanted to take it anyway. I took the Executive Branch counterpart last semester and did very well. The format is incredibly similar and the professor is just as promising. She was quoted in the Onion for lord’s sakes. The funny thing is that the class is in the school of business rather than in Monroe, the poli sci building. I went in starting to look for the room number, and my heart positively sank when I realized that I’d been in 152 before. Oh yes, it was the same room as Consumer Behavior. It’s a gorgeous facility that always has the air conditioning on too high and is filled with terrible associations. When I busted out of that room after my group project I was awash with relief of never having to go back. Well, here I am, sitting in nearly the same spot, but with any luck I’ll be doing much better this time around. This is the kind of course I would’ve wanted to take anyway. I’ll be able to pick apart exactly why congress doesn’t work the way we want it to. I’ll have something of actual substance to contribute to conversations with, say, Uncle Peter.
Creative Writing
This is a class I always wanted to take. I’m not a bad writer and I wish I could’ve done more of this kind of writing rather than the research/college essay based work in high school. It made sense, but this is what I’ve always wanted to work at. And I always assumed it’d be a fun and relatively easy A.
Coming out of this class, I’ve never been more simultaneously terrified and excited. There are about ten sections of this popular class, and if I was taking it how I originally had wanted to, I would’ve probably looked for another section with a teacher who’s not as hard and not looking for much.
But a funny thing happened this break. I realized that telling a story is something I had been good at, but now wanted to be really, really good at. I managed to get off the wait list for a section that fit into my schedule. I committed to making my minor Creative Writing. This professor is exactly the tough, college creative writing professor you’d think of. He curses and knows all of the usual shit we try to pull and he’s safeguarding against it. He’s telling us flat out that he’s asking a lot. It’s going to be incredibly hard and incredibly scary (having the class read through our stories, and for the second half, poems). But I’m no longer looking to coast through this class and snag an A like I’d originally hoped. I want to push myself to the brink with this. I really want an A and I want to go through hell for it. I don’t want to skate by on my own amateur ability. I want to be better, if I’m going to go to USC and if I’m going to try Los Angeles, and this professor seems exactly like the guy who could help me get there.
Funnily enough, he talked about how girls usually write stories that would be perfect for 1950s teen magazine. Glass ceilings are shattered, the women protagonists are successful, but there always ends up being an element of “will he call.” He knows that we make our stories about ourselves and college students are removed from society. We will want to make our stories about feeling and thinking and nothing actually happening. He wants to teach us conflict. He made us sit down and think about using the word “like.” We’re removing ourselves from any kind of responsibilities. We’re not saying we were happy about something, we were simply “like, happy about” something. He wants guys to write about relationships and girls to write action, countering what we usually go for. It’s going to be really hard for me. I’m so used to analyzing and thinking and not writing any action at all. But this is exactly what I need to get going.
Contemporary Political Rhetoric
Holy crap. I’ve never fallen head over heels in love with someone, but I have now. Professor Loge. I thought I knew his name because he was one of those well known professors through SMPA. Wrong. I knew his name because in the summer of 2009, as a part of JSA in Georgetown, we went to the capitol for a couple representatives to talk to us. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin was supposed to be one of them. He couldn’t make it and Peter Loge filled in for him. I fell in love with him there, too. He was talking about health care, what he was working with Kagen, a doctor, on, and he was so practical and upfront about it it was a relief. No grandstanding, no idealism, just the reality of the thing.
I remember looking him up, seeing he worked at GW. That had always been in the back of my mind, I think, that the speaker who blew me away more than any other taught at this school. But an hour before the class I googled him and was knocked off my feet. This was it. He was here. And I had stumbled into taking his class.
He was everything I remembered and more. Glasses, tanned, boyish, energetic while knowing the realities, married, quick with a joke, excellent at telling stories short, interesting, and to the point. Can you blame me for being this much in love with him? We went around the class to start (a small bunch of 15 around a long rectangular table) and said our name, our grade, our major, and where we were from. It got to me and I said Milwaukee. He offered that he worked for Kagen. I was wondering if I was going to tell him this, I hand’t planned to in front of the class, but I decided to go ahead with it. “Yeah, actually I was in a Junior Statesmen thing through Georgetown a couple summers ago and Kagen was supposed to talk to us but he couldn’t make it and you did it instead.” I could feel myself turning positively crimson as I said it because halfway through I start laughing and saying “no kidding.” Maybe it was funny that I remembered, maybe it was funny that we happened to intersect, maybe it was that and everything else. I’m glad he got a kick out of it.
I got wrapped up in the rest of this class. It’s definitely not one I’ll be zoning out of, despite it being two to two and a half hours (he’ll only keep us as long as he wants). He’s done so much. He is Josh Lyman if I’ve ever seen him. He’s a keen political operative and campaigner, and his method for campaigns is downright brilliant. He lives in Adams Morgan with his lefty wife and they drive a Mini Cooper with an Obama bumper sticker. He has all sorts of rich real life examples that I was trying desperately to copy down. This guy is the real deal. I wish we met more than once a week.
Overall
These takeaways are tough, because I’m always optimistic. I have to be. If you can’t be optimistic now, during the honeymoon period, where you haven’t had to actually do anything, then your’e automatically set up for disaster. So it’ll be funny to go back. Genius teachers can always end up as condescending pricks. But that hasn’t been happening lately. I’m not nervous about any of these classes like I was for Consumer Behavior. Creative Writing will undoubtedly be the hardest for me, but I won’t be keen to blow it off and get out like I was with marketing because it’s so important to me. There’s incentive there. Legislative politics has such a similar format as executive and the teacher seems so bright that I’m not worried there. Campaign ads will be fun and should be easy enough. Research methods is certainly doable. And contemporary political rhetoric? Well good god, it’s going to be the most practical class yet. The key, as always, is going to be doing a good job on the reading and participating in class. That’ll set me apart. Creative Writing is the only one with a wildly different format than the rest, but that’s fine. I’m looking forward to this semester. I know it’ll be a ton of work, a lot of hours looking up from books and typing up my notes, but I know I can do that. Here we go.
