It started at 9:15 this morning. That's right. 9:15. When I woke up and realized that I was late for my first day of my 9am copy editing class. I don't think I've ever dressed so quickly. I realize that being a little late for a class isn't that big of a deal but I had heard stories of the professor that I was about to meet, so I thought that I was going to get grief about being late for sure. However, when I entered the class, breathless from running, the professor let me sit down without much of a problem. Sure, she teased me a little bit about being late but it wasn't bad. After doing a brief assignment of copy editing a story so that she could see where we were in our copy editing ability, I went up to apologize for being late. I did not want to start off on the wrong foot with this professor, especially because I wasn't supposed to take this class until after I took news-writing.
However, after she found out that I hadn't taken news-writing yet and that I was actually taking it this semester, she told me that I needed to talk to the department chair about being in the class. The same department chair, she also informed me, who forced her to drop 3 of her other students for taking news-writing at the same time as well.
JOLLY DAY.
I was devastated, of course. My adviser had promised me that taking this class would not be that big of a problem and I would be able to push through it fairly easily. So, I went to speak to him and he seemed surprised that he needed to speak to the department chair as well. What??? I thought to myself. Haven't you done this before?
I didn't hear from him the rest of the day (and still haven't heard from him... bad sign?) but I did run into my instructor. I got the guts up to ask her if she had spoken with the department head. She said that she had and he had said that, I quote, "under no circumstance is she allowed into your class this semester." No circumstance? What if I was dying and finishing my journalism major was my last dying wish? What if I was getting a job at a large magazine in the summer? No circumstance... I think wanting to be Chief Copy next semester is a freakin' decent circumstance. It means, "Hello. I'm willing to kick my butt taking a class that's going to be a little harder for me than other people because I'm taking the prereq at the same time instead of the semester before... see how dedicated I am???"
Anyway, I emailed the department chair (due to much persuading by the managing editor of the newspaper) and am going to go in and talk to him tomorrow, whether he emails me back or not. I will not take "no" for an answer until he tells it to my face. I'm not an ordinary student and I want him to know that, even if he tells me "no" again. I would be fighting for this a little bit harder if I didn't have 12 units (luckily the newspaper saves me with an extra 3 units because, technically, it's a "class"), but I do want this. And I'm not a fan of being told "no" when he doesn't even know me.
Apart from that, the day went fairly... I guess I could call it smoothly. (Since there were no tears. Weird things still happened.) My C.S. Lewis and Tolkien class took an interesting turn when 1) my professor decided to "make fun" of the story of Job in the Bible and 2) my professor decided to call this class useless and said that neither the works of Lewis or Tolkien were great works of literature. Luckily, with the first, I discovered that there is another fairly strong believer in Christ in my class, who I will probably be paired with for projects since we appear to be the only 2 Christians in a religious studies class. And with the second... I pretty much blew the professor away with why the works of Lewis and Tolkien not only matter, but are great works. (I'm going to give props to my background in Literature.) Then, in my other journalism class (it's a basic people & media class), my professor decided it would be funny if everyone told him what food we would be when he called our name for roll, and then made crude sexual jokes about whatever we picked. I don't give a darn if the man has tenure... he needs to learn some manners.
Right now, though, I need to begin to read 5 chapters of the Hobbit (due Thursday) and get some sleep so I don't wake up at 9:15 again. More to come with the events of tomorrow...
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