Return of the School

PSCB01 - Instrumentation in Science
this appears to be a bland, dry, lab course, without lab write-ups. the professor specifically told us that students achieved high marks in this class because of its low low target level. luckily i missed today's lecture because i printed off my schedule way too early (august) and the room had since changed. i was busy with a crossword in the original room and by the time i thought to check for people it was 45 minutes into the hour. skip along now, shirley.

ENGB10 - Introduction to Shakespeare
huge class! cramped into one little room fit for 87 people. one of the first things the professor told us on the first day of class was that he suffered from U.B.S. -- utter bastard syndrome. luckily, he only gets UBS attacks when cellphones ring during lecture, and other such annoying circumstances. apparently he worked in a Shakespeare theatre group with Patrick Stewart (ST:TNG). he also told us he would be retiring at the end of this semester (to become a melon-man -- one who grows melons), so he sold some books off after the first lecture for <$5 (proceeds going to charity).

ENGC10 - Studies in Shakespeare: the Histories
one might wonder whether or not it is a good idea to take two Shakespeare courses at the same time, let alone a third-year course on his Histories (Henvry VIs , Richard III, etc), what with all the reading required for the intro course (8 plays!) and this one (6!). the professor is fairly admirable, being both a Russian and a stutterer (that's a HUGE linguistic disadvantage). he lectures quite clearly without much accent and only stumbles on a word every 2 minutes and 14 seconds. unfortunately the class is packed with females (6F:1M) and that weirds me out, since i'm from physics.

ASTC22 - Astrophysics: Galaxies and the Rest of the Universe
speaking of physics and more comfortable gender ratios (1F:5M), this is the hardest astronomy course possibly offered in the undergraduate level at UTSC. it is so scary that there was only one student enrolled in the course a mere 4 years ago. this year we have a veritable glut of physics students. i was reunited with the ASTB21 class from last school year (that i dropped half-way through) and joined by the students that took ASTB21 with me last semester. now i'll have people to work on homework assignments with (i.e. the elite eleven that took all five of vector calc II, physics lab, E&M, quantum and PSCB57).

ENGB43 - The Bible in Literature II
a continuation of last semester's fun fun controversy hour. i still haven't received my mark for that class, but i hear i did well, according to the professor. considering the mark i got on my crappy night-before-unedited essay, i'd say i did well. this time around will be a little harder to flake my way through, since we're no longer in the realm of the Torah/Pentateuch, but rather wading hip-deep into the Prophets and the Apocalypse.