Thursday, March 1, 2007

Worst midterm ever. Okay, not in the sense that it was particularly hard or anything; quite the opposite, in fact. It was three handwritten pages (don't ask me why) of multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank. That's it. Took me roughly 10 minutes.

So anticlimactic, you know? Here I am, studying like the dickens (did Dickens actually study? Seems to me that he was a pretty smart fellow, and probably didn't need to study, especially Old Testament tribe allocation, but I digress), and the test takes me 10 minutes. At 8:00 in the morning!. I woke up, got ready, and went to school at 8:00 in the morning to write a 10 minute long test?! Oh, it burns.

Fortunately, I am a college student, and there's always work to be done. So I went to the library and made myself useful, studying the history of evangelicalism since the 1940's in order to be adequately prepared for my presentation in a week. Interesting stuff, in a way. History is always important, I feel, because it's good to know where you came from and be able to extrapolate where you might be going. I also find it fascinating because I've grown up as an evangelical and haven't known anything else. I take it to be the normative experience for faith, but that's because I don't know what else is out there. And studying the development of evangelical thought makes me realize that many of the things I've taken for granted as part of evangelicalism at one time had to be fought for. Interesting stuff. Worth a read if you've got an extra half-hour and some brain cells to spare.

As I've said before, I'm really looking forward to this presentation. The more I read and study, the more excited I get. It's fun.

Speaking of presentations, one of my classes this semester is very presentation-heavy; every student has to do two 10-minute "book reports" in class in the course of the semester, following a pre-established timetable. The problem is that this means we have at least two presentations per class, and they always go long (plus, you have to account for question-and-answer time), so we're left with a class that consists entirely of presentations. That's not inherently bad, but I know that you all have seen a boring presentation before, right? Not everyone is cut out to be an oral presenter, and it shows. The class has become quite boring as a result. Oh sure, occasionally someone impresses you, but it's rare.

The thing is that these books are all raising really interesting topics that I'd love to discuss with my peers and instructor (it is, after all, a 400-level course, and that sort of dialogue should be expected), but we can't because we're too busy trying to get through the reports. In addition, the instructor didn't know he was going to be teaching this course until about three weeks before the end of last semester. He was handed the course and told to teach it, but had no opportunity to see if he even agreed with the material (which he doesn't). So we've got an unprepared instructor (but who can blame him) and a class full of somewhat-boring presentations. Wow.

Anyway, as the rotation would have it, there are sometimes not enough books designated per class session to have individual presenters, so you get this team presentation thing going on where two people present on the same book. Not sure how that's supposed to work, because I haven't seen an example of it actually working this semester. And today, I found out that my second presentation in April is a team presentation. Great.

Two problems here. First, I've already read the book and prepared my presentation notes (yes, I am a keener), assuming I was going solo. Second, the guy I'm paired with is a terrible presenter. Okay, I'm no genius either, but I'm at least engaging. He's not. Oh boy. I'm trying not to be cynical about it, but come on. Aren't there enough books out there for all of us?

You knew I had to throw a weather-related comment in here somewhere, didn't you? Let me just point out that today was the last day of February. March beckons, with its promise of spring. Except that when I woke up today, it was snowing and -20. Again. I figure winter has to end sometime, but now I'm not so sure I'll actually see spring come before we leave in May. Stupid, really.

Here's the kicker, though. I check the Environment Canada forecast daily (often several times per day) just to keep up--hey, I don't have cable; give me a break. Anyway, they're predicting more of the same for tomorrow, but getting sunny into Friday and the weekend. Plus-1 on Friday, and plus-18 on Saturday. Wha?! Okay, either that's a vast typo, a cruel joke, or an actual forecast. And here's the part where I wonder what kind of cruel mistress winter is. Throwing spring-like temperatures at us (and maybe reducing this darned snow pack that now stands at about three feet on my lawn) and then what? Snapping us back into cold oblivion, that's what! Such a tease. And you know, it just makes me loathe this province a little bit more.

Okay, glad I got that out of my system. By the way, because I'm compulsive I just checked again: still says plus-18 for Saturday. And yes, I have a problem with weather-related compulsiveness.

In other news. The moment has finally arrived when we're caught up on Grey's Anatomy. We've been living in a blissful state of catching up with the show, knowing that there's always another episode ready to be watched. But not now. We just finished watching the episode from three weeks ago--it was the last one on the most recent DVD I burned--and it was a cliffhanger. Of course. Now, I face the unpleasant task of having to wait until I get another three episodes so as not to waste a perfectly good DVD on two episodes. Grr.

I have to say, it's still the best show on TV. Yeah, Studio 60 is (or perhaps I should say, was) great, 24 is plain old fun, and there are others I enjoy, but no show can touch GA. And even though Isaiah Washington the man is a big boob, I can look past it on the show. Just spectacular, I have to say.

Right, enough of that gushing. Time for bed. We're sleeping so badly on this darned matress again that we've pulled out the hide-a-bed to see if it makes a difference. Let me tell you, when you resort to hide-a-bed hoping for a better sleep, you're really past the point of no return. But hey, today was the mid-point of my semester (13 of 26 class sessions done), so it's all downhill from here. Well, hopefully not my grades, but you know what I mean.

Anyway. Tomorrow's a day off, so even if we sleep badly, at least I'm not in school all day. We'll see what happens (there's my cliffhanger for tonight). I hope you'll come back again tomorrow and see how things turned out, and just because I like to get some hits on the ol' site. I might actually get around to a new Theo blog posting in the near future, too, so keep your eyes peeled. Until we meet again, then, adios.