Now *this* is what I was hoping for

Hrmm, third post of the day...methinks there is growing evidence for a positive correlation between number of posts and milligrams of caffeine ingested.

Moving on...I would jsut like to say that THANK GOD academically things are really looking promising this term. Maybe my first semester was fated to be crappy any which-way by virtue of being a "foundation" semester, I don't know. But I switched three out of four professors, a decision I'm now really pleased with, and my classes are waaaaaaaaay more interesting.

Last semester I had been left wondering where exactly one had to go to school to get a top-notch education from engaging professors who truly teach and take students beyond the readings, rather than leaving them (by which I mean me) wondering why they don't just read the texts on their own and not come to class, since that's about how helpful it is.** I mean, I didn't even have to buy new notebooks this term, because my notes from last term amounted to maybe 10 pages cumulatively.

So you can only imagine my excitement when all of the professors I switched turned out to be, as hoped, improvements on last term's, and I even felt compelled to take notes from the very first class! So exciting. Plus our readings and assignments this term interest me so much more than they did fall term. For my Social Policy course, we have weekly pro/con and left/right debates on various current hot topics (I'll be arguing con on abortion rights, should be fun) and I'll be writing a policy brief with legislative history and analysis on some as-yet-undecided topic, probably juvenile delinquency. Cool! And I'm not even saying that sarcastically!

For Human Behavior in the Social Environment, we've been discussing the social construction of social problems. I guess I just enjoy theoretical-level debates anyway, but as someone whose work is often to combat these "social problems" it's fascinating to look at how very unobjective they are i.e. how they vary by historical period, culture, social climate etc. For example, we discussed child abuse as a social problem; it was relatively recently defined as such, despite the fact that what is now called child abuse existed before the time it was considered a problem. Further, the definition of this "objective" problem is not even clear, because culturally we make many exceptions e.g. spanking. Another good example was brought up by an international student from China -- she pointed out that abortion (and, arguably, childlessness/low childbearing among the mid-to-upper classes) is considered by many to be a "social problem" in the US, while in China to have multiple children is a social problem to which abortion is the solution. We also had an interesting discussion regarding whether or not there is any objectively "wrong" thing; one student brought up murder, but quickly other students offered the many exceptions -- execution, self-defense, retribution, etc. I mean, just think -- maybe one day we'll declare male circumcision barbaric, the way we currently view the practice of female genital mutilation.

In short: it's all relative, baby.

_______________________________________________________________
**Slight exaggeration. But seriously, I did not feel that I was getting graduate-level teaching last term, and most of my teachers -- while perfectly nice people and probably possessing really great CVs -- were just not good at teaching.