Wednesday, September 16, 2009

My classes

Almost two weeks of classes are finished and I realized that I never talked about which classes I'm taking!

I started out taking a class called "Introduction to Public Relations" which would count as an elective class for my major back at home. After the first class meeting though, I quickly dropped it. In short, the professor was all over the place, and he basically told us that if we're in Rome to have fun and travel, then to drop the class because he only wanted people there who were focused. I would have been working on a huge public relations group project that spanned the whole semester in addition to an individual project, and I didn't want to do that. I know I'm here to study, but really...this is kind of my one semester to take things easy, so I had no guilt about dropping that class :)

So my schedule now is:

Elementary Italian II on Mondays and Wednesdays from 10:35am-12:00pm. This class is fun, but definitely challenging. Most of us didn't realize how rusty we are from taking Italian 101 back at home...but we have a really good professor who is pushing us without being intimidating, which I like.

My second class is European Mass Media and it's on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:40-5:05pm. This class counts as an elective for my (Communications) major, and so far I like it. My professor reminds me of a professor that I have taken a few times back at TCNJ who I absolutely love, so this class is good so far.

Next is Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome. This is the class that I switched into after dropping Public Relations. I've only had one class so far, but it seems like it's going to be really interesting. It's a History class and Classics class combined, and so far we've learned about the ancient dating system and how it works (using B.C. and A.D. in dates) and a bunch of other things about everyday life in ancient Rome.

My last class is possibly my favorite one...it's called Italian Sketchbook: Images of Rome. I never would have been able to take a class like this at home, so I am so glad that I get the chance to take it here. It's a drawing class, and each week we meet a different monument or famous area of Rome and draw something there. It's a four hour class, but I love that it's on-site so I am able to see a lot of things that I probably wouldn't get to see on my own time. My professor is adorable -- she's a tiny, older Irish woman with a heavy Irish accent (she's from Dublin but lives in Rome)...so she's also fluent in Italian. She is really laid back about drawing, and is big on individual progress in our drawings rather than giving us grades for everything. We did some sketches at our first class meeting, and tomorrow we are meeting at the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere which is gorgeous so it should be fun to just relax there and draw for a few hours. We are allowed to bring our iPods when we meet on-site, so that's an added bonus :)

So far, my classes have been great...I can't complain (especially since I dropped Public Relations.) This semester should be fun!

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your classes sound much more interesting than mine I can tell you that much, especially your drawing class, I hated taking it here at school the best outdoors stuff we got to draw was the lake behind the art building -_- anywho, I missed your IM by like 20min gahhhh i woke up and stewed in bed for a few and when i went to check my computer I was super excited to see an IM from you but you were signed off by the time I read it :( well I have skype on my computer but haven't set up a username for it ha I should probably get to that now! I'll email you shortly.

P.S. a digalig LT trip to Italy for food sounds good, I'm gameeee

bye boooo I miss you haha <3
- LAUR TAUR