so, i just took my last final on thursday. it's saturday morning and for some strange reason, i shot out of bed at 7:40 thinking i'd overslept. yeah, i still haven't posted those photos of the loft. (like anyone's keeping track). but now that i'm on break (for a week) i have no excuse. hopefully i make the time to do this. we're still trying to get moved in to the new place. it's enough smaller than the loft that it's been a huge challenge trying to make everything fit and still be comfortable. and we're still looking for a dining room table. but the patio is looking great! thank god amy has such a green thumb. well, the housewarming should be soon. this break is my chance to get it all ready (since there's no homework to neglect).

oh, by the way: expect to hear not a peep from me next quarter. i'm anticipating being insanely busy. if you're interested in knowing why i'll be so busy, possibly stressed out, and neglecting my loved ones, i'll explain. i'm taking 4 classes, all heavy on reading and writing.

ECON360
[developing countries and the new global economy]
i expect this will be the easiest course, but if it involves research papers, well, i'm going to work hard on them because i'm really interested in this subject. i've heard a lot of stuff about how globalization and trade agreements of various sorts cause unfair labor practices. hopefully i'll realize some of the ways my consumption habits cause disadvantage to less-developed countries' women and children and learn how to reduce that impact.

HIST388
[historiography]
i emailed the instructor to ask a few questions about this one. in his reply, he said, "The course focuses on exploring how historians conceptualize the past, think about issues of agency, frame topics, use sources, etc." we'll be reading ~15 articles from academic journals that focus on medieval/early modern venice by various folks (mind you, this is in a 10-week quarter). and at the end, we write a 15-page essay analyzing these articles.

HIST390
[historical research and writing]
since most of what we do in school involves doing research in academic journals, most of what we produce is based only on what other people have actually researched first-hand. but who writes a book, or a newspaper or magazine article, based on academic journals? yet college doesn't, on the whole, prepare us to do primary research. thus my interest in this class. i would like some practice conducting primary research. it seems like a good skill to pick up while i'm in school. so i assume this quarter will be spent digging up information, conducting interviews, etc., and culminating in a rather lengthy original work of research.

PHIL400b
[advanced philosophical writing and journal production]
in this class, luckily, i don't have to write anything from scratch. no new research. what i will be doing is taking one of the philosophy papers i've turned in for class previously, that i think is my best work, and editing it over the quarter. of course, that's not all that's involved. i'll be helping all the other students edit theirs, too. everyone in the class will read (and make suggestions for editing) all the other students' papers. in addition anyone can submit a paper to the yearly cal state philosophy journal. we will also review these entries and help edit them as well. we're graded both on how helpful we were to the editing process of others and on how much we improved our paper.

as you can see, it's going to be a writing-heavy quarter for me. not to mention, there's lots of reading, too. and if you don't know this about me, i'm a very slow reader. it'll be a hard quarter, but a rewarding one. sorry if i'm neglectful. i'm trying to keep up my GPA for grad school.

and before you tell me that i don't need to worry, let me explain: currently it's too low to get admitted to UCLA. i've got a 3.4 and they require a 3.5. it's the only architecture grad school i can afford to go to in southern california, and it's incidentally also one of the best, if not the best. so, i've got something like 3 or 4 quarters, starting with next quarter, to bring up my GPA.