My Courses and Stuff

My Courses and Stuff I think it was Snively who called this the freebie entry: describing the classes youre taking in a given semester. Well, now that Im a first semester senior who just decided to change her major around, this should be a little interesting, maybe. 21M.705: The Actor and the Text Youve probably heard about the required Humanities concentration. If notwell, now you have. I chose to do my concentration in Theater Arts. This will actually be the third acting class Ive taken, and were really getting into some good stuff. Im super excited about this class, basically we work on scenes all of the time. A typical 2 hour class starts with a warmup, some yoga/stretching type exercise to get us loosened up physically, and maybe an improv activity to get us loosened up mentally. Then we get to acting. Every week were responsible for memorizing a monologue or a scene with a partner or two. Then we perform, and get critiqued. We havent really gotten too far into anything yet, but Ive already memorized a super awesome anti-establishment monologue from a play called Another Antigone and Im really looking forward to it. =) 21M.604: Introduction to Playwriting Another Theater Arts class. This one might not make the final cut when (if?) my schedule ever finally calms down. But Id hate to drop it, Ive been wanting to take it ever since I was torn between concentrating in Theater Arts or Creative Writing. Intro to Playwriting was the obvious solution to this dilemma. As much as I love writing, creative writing is really, really hard to stick with. Its incredibly difficult to make yourself sit down and write something from start to finish. My hard drive is littered with scraps of nonsense that will probably never blossom into full-fledged novels or even short stories, so Id be thrilled to have a few one act plays to my name by the end of the semester. Also, the course instructor is supposed to be really, really good. Yay for HASS classes. 2.65J: Sustainable Energy You might be wondering what the J at the end of that course number means. Youve probably heard by now that all of the courses at MIT are numbered, but where do we get off throwing letters into the mix? I remember as a freshman being told that courses with more numbers were harder, while courses with letters were easier. This is a total lie. It all depends what the letter stands for. Well, Im not actually sure what the J stands for, but it means that a course is offered under multiple course numbers. Whats the point of that? Well, it can count towards your degree in any of a number of majors. Courses designated with a J are interdisciplinary, so students from more than one major might be in the class- but they might all also be fulfilling a graduation requirement! Most of these courses represent only two different courses, but 2.65 J is officially called 10.391J/1.818J/2.65J/3.564J/11.371J/22.811J/ESD.166J- thats seven different departments! The numbers are only for administrative pur poses- everyone in the class shows up in the same lecture hall at the same time and turns in the same psets, they just have a different course number listed on their transcripts. The point of the course is to analyze different types of energy and figure out what might represent the right solution for a given application based on technological, economic, and political concerns. The first pset for this class doesnt look so bad- there are some very practical problems about things like estimating how long youd have to own a hybrid car for the extra initial cost to outweigh the money saved in gas mileage, and figuring out the impact of switching all the lighting in Boston to high efficiency lightbulbs. 11.366 Planning, Participation, and Consensus Building for Sustainable Development??? Hopefully Ill be able to add this class as part of my newfound purpose in life. According to the course catalog, the course analyzes the competing interests that come into play in the field of sustainable development by looking at case studies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Ill be sure to keep you updated if I manage to add the class! 2.009: Product Design and Development This is it, the moment youve all been waiting for. Course 2 majors look forward to first semester senior year with equal parts excitement and dread. 2.009 is sort of the be-all and end-all of a Course 2 degree. Every fall, of the seniors hoping to graduate in the coming June eagerly await the announcement of the 2.009 theme, which is the area in which the different teams must design and fully develop a new product. This years theme is the home, so were already busy filling our design notebooks with brainstormed ideas about better mousetraps, energy saving and water recycling systems, and mattress alarm clocks. (Guess what that is.) Within a few weeks well settle on a final product, do some detailed design, analysis, testing, marketingthe whole deal. Definitely check out the website, its insanely detailed, regularly updated, and full of tons of pictures. They take photos every day in class, and there are definitely a few of me in there. See if you can spot them. ;-) So, those are my classes for this semester. They seem pretty awesome so far. Of course, I say that now Also, at this point its necessary to wish both Matt and Mollie a happy anniversary- they married their respective spouses (not each other!) one year ago today. So go spam them with comments. =)