Bad roomates and good Poli Sci classes

Wow! IS summer already over.  Well, for me it almost is, although considering I worked and went to school all summer it hasn't been much in the way of vacation.  Still it's been a good summer and a lot of fun, so I have no regrets.

Most of you are darned sick and tired about me going on ad infinitum about my desire to be a firefighter so I won't harp about it too much, other than to say that once again, it didn't happen.  I got awfully close, but it wasn't in the cards.  So I decided to go to summer school instead.  Two of my friends had also decided to go to summer school and so I decided to move into their suite with them. 

It was, for the most part, a pretty cool arrangement, except that for a month I had the the most obnoxious roommate.  The suite, though like an apartment, is still university property and housing and dining can can add and remove people as they see fit.  They placed a 47 year old man in with my friends and I (All in out early 20s) and that's only the beginning of it.  Fortunately, "the creature" as my friends and I called him, moved out about halfway through the summer. 

I had to move to my new dorm room last night and have spent a good part of today settling in.  This room is smaller than the one that I had last year and smaller than the one I had over the summer, so I am going to have to be a little more conscientious about being neat (wipe the grin off your face, mom.)  I may also have to jettison some stuff to make room me.  I sent a letter to housing asking that my bed be "lofted" this morning,  Hopefully that will give me a few square feet of storage space.

Over the summer I took two classes, an "American Institutions" (PSCI 110) class and "Anthropology of Religion." (ANTH 302)

The PSCI 110 was one of the coolest classes I have taken in 5 years of college.  Most of my teachers come at politics from a liberal slant.  There's nothing wrong with that, I agree with them many times.  Despite what some people would like to say, there's nothing wrong with being liberal.  There's nothing wrong with being conservative either.  Its nice to mix in a little diversity.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much political diversity on this campus.  Around here, you're either a commy-pinko-let's-roll-over-and-take-it-from-the-terrorists liberal or you are stupid.  (Although there are a few people who are frighteningly conservative, According to one person, God doesn't know who I am because I believe men and apes might be related -- she has obviously never watched C-SPAN.)  The great thing about the instructor of this PSCI class was that he was IMPOSSIBLE to pin down.  Sometimes he would appear to be VERY liberal and other times he seemed VERY conservative.  I asked him what he was at the beginning of the class and he said that if I could figure out what he was he was not doing his job.  He would launch on very funny, sarcastic attack both ends of the political spectrum.  He'd bring a Bible to class and show us how Martin Luther's attack on the Catholic Church was the basis for democracy (if everyone can talk directly to God, then we are all equal and all deserve to be heard by the government.)  He also showed us how Clark Kerr's Master Plan, upon which California's three tiered higher education system, California Community Colleges, the California State University system, and the University of California system, was designed to maintain a certain class structure.   He would explain how the "system" was screwing us, and then show us how we could make that same system work for us.  In the end, his message seemed to be, "The system will screw you, but only if you let it."  All in all, PSCI 110 was a very cool class, and while there were some interesting things in my Anthropology class, I would have preferred another 5 weeks of PSCI 110 than the anthropology.

My PSCI instructor also looked pretty cool too, with a knit cap pulled down over a unruly mop of curly salt and pepper hair, he had a wild look to him, but was nontheless brilliant. 

In other news, I have job now. I will be working about nine hours a week in the in campus “Window's Cafe,” were I will be washing dishes. FUN!!  So, I am looking forward to the start of school, meeting my roommate (who had better be a good guy, no more “creature,”) and maybe, hopefully, possibly GRADUATING in the spring with a BA in Communications.

Stay out of trouble,

j