a review of my classes: grad school edition

today is wednesday, the last day of august. six years ago on this exact same date, I posted this exact same post... but not really, because that was then, and this is grad school. I'm taking three courses, not five. I'm in Texas where it is exceedingly warm, not in Utah, where it snows three feet every weekend. so many things are different now. there are some freaky similarities though. I've got some killer financial aid. I have fabulous, fabulous roommates. and one of my professors is Kelli Cargile Cook.

so. now that I've been to at least one meeting of each of my classes, I can give the internet a brief report. I know you are all still solidly interested.

Bibliography & Research Methods, with Dr. Ann Hawkins (and Dr. Jennifer Snead)

these two make such an interesting pair. they teach really well though. we dove right in to some hands-on paleography, which was awesome. a colleague and I got to read a copy of a letter written by the then Princess Elizabeth, who was imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time. that Elizabeth I has really good handwriting. for our first assignment in this class, I get to transcribe, as perfectly as possible, this scribbly page.

Foundations of Technical Communication, with Dr. Kelli Cargile Cook

oh, it's exciting to have a class with Kelli again. she is wonderful, and she sets high expectations. this'll be an overview sort of class, and I'm still not sure how it'll fit in with my other work. but it will. it's called foundations of tech. comm. for a reason. there will be lots of writing, which will be lots of fun.

Publications Management, with Dr. Brian Still

in this class, we've been discussing the impossibly wide definitions of the words 'publication' and 'author.' at the moment, it's lots of theory, but any day now we'll be getting just as much practical experience as we have with bibliography so far. we get to learn XML. we get to write some real book reviews and collaborate on our own online publications. one of our first assignments involves doing a case study of a serial publication. I'm thinking I might pick one of the magazines I blogged about way back here. A List Apart might be perfect, since they've got so much information on their site about how they began and how they've evolved.

I may write more about these classes at some point. I'm sure there will be endless interesting stuff going on. what I'm not sure about is if I'll have time to blog about it all.