Semester Two

“If you think that this semester can’t be worse than last semester, you’re wrong! You’re going to think that last semester was child’s play when you’re done with this semester!”

That marks the first professorial threat of ’08. It took about fourteen seconds to hit. The kids around here never give it a rest. I find that it’s only an issue if you pay it any attention. I suspect that they’ll say something similar in the event that I make it to the summer semester.

So the first GA meeting of the year concluded and I stumbled back to my work station, which is still littered with the indecorous residue of 2007. My desk is covered with such trivia as a syllabus that I never actually read, drafts for papers that I meant to proof, and an empty water bottle, the contents of which I had long since consumed. I should probably just buy a fern or something.

After a long day of no classes but still not being allowed to leave, I made the vaunted commute from Muncie to Anderson all the while thinking about how much fun last summer was. I turned onto Scatterfield and decided to drop in on one of my old CS professors from AU who owns a comic book store that I drive by every day. This guy cracks me up. He’s a hardcore old-school programmer (COBOL, LISP, etc.) and he seems to have a really profound disdain for non-programmers.

I walked in and we exchanged greetings and he asked me what brought me by, so I told him that I was just coming back from Ball State. The next fifteen minutes, though slightly hazy for me, seem to have been crammed full of explications of just how worthless the CICS program really is, and that it basically isn’t going to help get me anywhere that I want to go. “Who’s going to hire you?” he demanded of me two or three times. After a few unconvincing answers, I think that I managed to finally stammer “Uh, AU?” His face brightened and his mood seemed to change. “Well, if you’re serious about that, you should get your name in quick, because we’re looking for somebody to teach some of our introductory courses, like 1100 and 1200.” “Um, OK. See you later.” Geeze!

So that was the first day back. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. I’m pretty hungry, if you ask me.

-Ryan