28 April 2026
28 April 2026
Hello dear reader, and welcome back ! I am glad to be before you all again, having been invigorated by my return to the structure of academic learning. I have so far greatly enjoyed my classes, and although not much has actually *happened* in class yet I am greatly excited for this, what will be my final semester before graduating. That being said, I have already had to deal with a number of issues, which I intend on relating to you in this blogpost.
Without further ado, I would first like to discuss my classes this semester. I am technically enrolled in four different classes, although one is merely meant to facilitate my internship that I will be continuing during this semester, and the other, a class on modern Latin American history, will not begin until late Vendémiaire (mid-October). I must also confess that I am intending to drop this class, as I will not be needing it to graduate and I find its status as online asynchronous to be deeply unappealing, although I was initially enticed by the subject matter. The other two classes I am enrolled in are much more traditional affairs, a class on the history of China and the West, and an introductory course in photography.
My Chinese history class is most appealing to me as, despite my interests in history being extremely wide-ranging, especially with history I am unfamiliar with, I had never taken a proper course on any history east of western Asia. I have taken history classes on medieval Islamic history and the Ottoman empire in which we briefly discussed the Tang dynasty and at a few points the Indian subcontinent, but this class is my first proper delve into east Asian history. Another factor which has made me enjoy the class more so far is that the professor is very clearly early in her teaching career in a way I find quite charming and sweet. She is still very clearly capable, but there is something special to me about seeing someone earlier on in their career, still figuring things out, and I am excited to spend more time in that class, both to learn and experience the classroom.
My introduction to photography course is taking up the last of my required elective credits, but do not take this to mean that I am uninterested in the course, or that I am only taking it to fill a slot. I was utterly elated to discover this class when I was picking classes for this semester, especially after a string of disappointments. As I may have alluded to in past blogposts, photography is something I have had varying levels of interest in for a long time now. All of my actual photographic experience has been with either my phone or my 3DS however, and for this class I will be getting a proper DSLR camera, and learning to properly use it, as opposed to my experience with the 3DS, which has mostly amounted to pointing the camera at anything and everything, and seeing what sticks. I will admit that I was not *quite* expecting for cameras to be as expensive as they are (I was not expecting them to be cheap, but when I asked a photographer friend of mine for a good introductory camera, the cheapest she mentioned was well over 1000$). Happily, I have arranged to get one at a discount, which will happen in the next few days. I will most probably discuss the camera in my next blogpost, once I have it. Lastly, I will say that I enjoy this class’s professor for something of the opposite reason to my Chinese history teacher. She seems to me quite experienced and at this point very loose with her teaching and expectations, which is something I enjoy.
As mentioned before, I have had a few difficulties during this semester already. Some of these are of a more personal nature which I will not be discussing, but one which has been quite prominent has been a major issue with getting enrolled in my previously mentioned internship course. The course, while mostly being online focused, has “workshops” roughly every two weeks to make sure our internships are going well, and to better transition the internships into proper careers and the like. These workshops, unfortunately, have a thirty-minute overlap with my photography course which made it impossible to enroll in it without outside intervention. Fortunately I have been able to work around this, although it took a not insignificant amount of effort which was at times frustrating. This was done just in time, as if my task was completed even a day or two later I would have had to pay a hefty late enrollment fee, all over a thirty-minute overlap.
Regardless, I am excited for this semester, and to continue with my internship this semester. Of course, I intend to tell you all of some of my goings on this semester, and I am happy that this semester is not shaping up to be a very busy one. As always, thank you for your time, and farewell dear reader until next we meet.