I’ve planned on doing this in previous years but never got around to it before it was too late. But now it’s my last year here at McMaster, so it’s now or never guys! Oolie boolie! “This” being my formalized initial impressions of each of my classes, so that at the end of term I can look back and see just how wrong I was (or, conversely, to see that I predicted exactly what I would verily think of a course).
THTR&FLM 4A06: Honours Performance Project
This class is a big deal. In some ways it counts as a thesis project, I guess. I had some ideas going in, they have been altered, but I’m pretty excited about what we’re doing now. Traditionally the course has been an every-man-or-woman- for-him-or-her-self- gets-to-direct-a-50-minute-play- of-their-choosing type of affair. Now we have to work in groups, which led to nervousness going in, but worked out very well for me. I’m working now with already friends Kristen and Marco on a piece of interactive theatre that will explore Hamilton’s relation to the steel mills. Steelcity, Hammertown, the smell, all that good stuff. It will be a lot of work, but the kind of work that I welcome doing (creative and fulfilling). Cockett is teaching it, of course. He is british and cockettish, which is more often than not a good thing. We get a week in the theatre for our play without having to share it with another production, and it can be as long as it needs to be. Look for its performance coming up probably late February or early March kind of a deal. Maybe. Also track its progress and find out more (eventually) on the production blog. It will probably be one of those pretty gruelling at times but ultimately awesome kind of experiences.
ENGLISH 2I06: Modern British Literature
Wow. Second year classes all of a sudden seem so.. straightforward. So we read a bunch of books, right an essay, do some minor group work and do an exam. The prof, one Monsieur Granofsky, seems pretty… straightforward. I can see it maybe getting boring, or too by-the-books, but, I bought the books and they look pretty cool in general. I love Heart of Darkness. Well, not super worried about this one, like I said. Seems straightforward enough, but I do want to actually read the books for it; hopefully I can manage that. We’re going to get a new professor in January, and it’s hard to know yet if that’s a good thing
MUSIC 2II3: Popular Music In North America and the United Kingdom: Post-World War II
Whoo baby. This one is right up my alley? Or is it? Right now it looks like one of those put minimal effort in and hopefully come away with a good mark deals. I’ll probably learn some stuff about older music, which I tend to not end up listening to. The prof however is largely uninspiring. A rather bland lecture style, with some very occasional signs that she does know what humour might be. One thing that bugs me is that she won’t put up her power point presentations online, which I feel is an outdated practice. Most teachers have realized now that it’s easier for the students to pay attention when they aren’t frantically trying to copy things down from the board. But this is one of them regurgitation courses (whatever Dr Fast claims) and there isn’t much that she says that isn’t on the slides, so if they were online maybe attendance would drop significantly. I also disagree with some of the things she’s said, mostly that you need completely different criteria to evaluate every genre of music, and that electronic music is all about dancing. Oh well. Should be pretty easy, if boring. Though tests are on Saturdays which is silly.
ENGLISH 4FW3: Forms of Creative Writing
The Course Calendar says that English seminars are supposed to be limited to 15 people. This one has 48. So a computer has divided the class into groups of 7 with whom we will primarily collaborate. The course is almost exactly the same idea (and same prof) as the creative writing course I took in second year. We have to do a rough draft of an assignment each week, as well as hand in a final draft of the one from the previous week. So it will force me to write, which is always a welcome thing, and a thing that I definitely do appreciate. The result I guess, is that if my group-members are talented and dedicated, I could learn a lot. If not, it’s basically a teach-yourself type deal, and maybe trying to share titbits of wisdom with others.
ENGLISH 4CJ3: Crusade and Jihad
This was possibly my first seminar, because as much as it wants to I’m not sure whether 4FW3 counts as one, and as an introduction to seminars, this one kinda scared the shit out of me. I didn’t choose it, because in this lovely department of English, that’s really not done. You give them a list of your top 3 seminars in each term and they try and slot you in one in each. The one they gave me for second term conflicted with Thtr&Flm 4a06 so they put me in the only one they had room in. That’s okay, though, it seems like an interesting enough topic. However, the prof, one Dr Savage (scared yet?) scolded us on the first day of class for not having much to say on the topic. “This isn’t that kind of class, if this continues we’re not going to get much out of it” well, something to that effect. Err. I don’t know anything about the subject. But I guess we were supposed to be researching it over the summer or something? Also the course outline stipulates that late assignments will not be accepted and gives unclear descriptions of the duedates rather than actual dates. And so after 2 hours I went to buy the courseware because I felt like I really had to read something from it to feel a little less frightened. And they were sold out! How that happens in a class with a strict number of students enrolled, I couldn’t tell ya (they got me one printed up in 2 days though at least). We have an assignment due on Friday already (or the last day of the third week of classes, which I understand to be Friday): we have to decide on a theme related to the topics in the course to pursue and create an annotated bibliography. A good idea for an assignment, but at this point I really don’t know what the fuck. So. Ahh. The topic of the course is basically analysis of conflicts over the holy land with a focus on the rhetoric, specifically the words crusade and jihad which might not actually be all that different. This will be stressful, hard, and scary.
THTR&FLM 1A03: Introduction to Performance Analysis
I’m not actually taking this class. I am, however, being paid $18.25 for each lecture I attend, so even though it’s 8:30 in the morning, I can deal. I’m a Teaching Assistant for the class. I have 2 tutorials to lead, which both go down on Fridays. My first ones went down pretty well. The 12:30 kids were much more chatty than the 9:30 kids, understandably. And for some reason I can’t not refer to them as kids. teehee. I enjoy the whole teaching thing, I think. It’s pretty straightforward, though will be a fair amount of work.. cause I’m not going to just look the plays up on Sparknotes like my TA for this course did. I have an office hour every week, and will get to mark essays and exams, etc. It’s rewarding and important seeming work, though; a cut above doing phone surveys with Americans for sure! It’s probably the second most exciting class I’m involved in this term (next to 4a06, of course). And it will cover rent. But despite the fact that I feel I should, I can’t really think of anything else to say about it.