School’s OUT!

Oh my goodness! Boy am I ever glad for school to be over. I just got finished with my last final exam of my junior year, and I’m so happy to be finished.

As I look over the last year, especially the last semester, I can definitely see some things I’d like to remember, but for now I want to vent on the things I wish I could forget! 🙂

I had my first classes with Dr. Soto this semester, and as far as I’m concerned, I would rather not take any with him ever again. Not that he is a bad teacher; on the contrary, he has at least masters in teaching. However, he is the type of teacher who tells you how it is (or at least his opinion on how it is) and you can’t have an opposing view unless you want it to be torn down by his unceasing logical analysis. It’s just so exhausting! So even though I learned a lot, I think I learned more about how not to be.

In addition to tiresome rants from Dr. Soto, I had a couple classes with Dr. Harmon, who seems nice enough, but those classes were some of the toughest on an 8-week schedule. In general this 8-week thing is just so awful, but nobody in administration will give us students a way to evaluate it. We are told repeatedly to evaluate our courses, but there is no venue for overarching institutional evaluations.

Oh well! Now, as far as the things which I’ll remember forever, there is definitely my classes with Dr. Stallter, the head of my department. He has made the few classes I’ve taken with him so meaningful. Dr. Stallter is an inspiration for me especially because of his work in Africa; he always has something practical to say about the principles we learn in class. It also helps that he is teaching the classes I most enjoy: Applied Cultural Anthropology; Understanding World Religions; Intercultural Communication. I just wish I could take more with him! Maybe I will next year? avenue for complaint toward institutional policies. Anyway, with Dr. Harmon I also got my first officially awful grade. His Biblical Backgrounds course should definitely not be only 8-weeks long. I heard from upperclassmen that it used to be two separate semester-long classes, so I don’t understand why they smashed it into such a short period.

This year has been interesting since I’m no longer on campus with my friends and I’ve moved in with my husband. Sometimes I miss the closeness and community of living here at Grace, but I’m also very happy E-man and I live in Goshen where there is more shopping and a mall. 🙂 I’m such a girl. lol

Hopefully next year is even better! I won’t have traditional classes until next spring; this summer and fall I have some online courses to worry about while I work and start the internship in India.