And so it begins...
The holidays have whizzed past us, and before we know it Spring will be upon us. The first few weeks at ASU are kind of exciting. You sit up straight in your chair and take notes diligently, making sure that if someone happens to be looking your way, that you're not texting or looking around the room not paying attention. Well, that's how I feel anyway.
After a while, about week eight or nine in the semester, you begin counting down the weeks dreading each assignment as it comes, feeling like you're stuck in a never-ending mud pit. Like one in the Princess Bride, except instead of a large evil rat thing chasing you, it's a due date and a final grade.
Forty classes, all I need to graduate. Except forty-three in my case since some of my credits do not count towards my degree. I could have done without the snobbish arrogance of my freshman year art teacher who ridiculed my work, and the only piece she did like was the one that I based off of her rules for the project: "No skulls, and no hearts. I don't want to see any of that." So I did a bright charcoal print with a skull and heart pattern, I didn't like her very much. But she loved it, and completely forgot about her rules.
Even though her class doesn't "count," I spent a minute getting upset about the wasted time in that class, but then thought about what I learned in there. Because if it doesn't count as 2.5% of my diploma, what did it count for? I learned that sometimes people are put in positions of authority, and they don't know what to do with it. That one day, they got a promotion and celebrated that fact, and once they showed up for their first day, learned the frustrations of the vocation, and went along with it anyway. I learned that maybe we shouldn't get upset at that other person who just made a bad call on our team's game, because they're just a person, trying to get through the burning rings of fire that each day at a job brings, and make it out on the other side, un-singed.
Class number two: Dr. Heywood's Designing Life. Now, I could care less if this class counted or not. It gave me inspiration about how I should view a job, and what really mattered about that particular job. It was on my way to this class, that I ran into my now boyfriend, on campus for the first time. It was there that he gave me his phone number, and we went on a mini date after Heywood's class ended. He had taken that class a few years before me, so it gave us something in common to start off with. I could care less if that class counts, because I have Chris.
Class number three: General Business at PVCC. I think it is funniest of all that this class doesn't even go towards my degree, since it is the class that made me want to go into business in the first place. My life would be completely different if I hadn't made that decision. If we all looked at the things that "count" in terms of how important it was to us, instead of how someone else recognizes it, it would make things simpler.
