I’m taking classes again; two of them, at a community college out in the suburbs. Monday it’s psychology from 6 to 10pm and Tuesdays cultural anthropology from 6 to 9pm. The quality of the instructors is a little bit of a letdown after the U of M, but man it is nice and cheap. Tuition came to just over $900 compared to about $2,500 at the U (that’s for 7 credits plus fees).

I was worried I wouldn’t be able to concentrate all the way to the end of class, since I start work 12 or 13 hours earlier, but surprisingly it hasn’t been a problem yet.

So, like I was saying, the quality of the professors leaves something to be desired. My psych prof is actually really awesome, and my only complaint is that he dumbs down a lot of the material in an attempt, I assume, to make everyone understand it. My anthropology prof, however, is another story. She has an unfortunate habit of ending her train of thought in a different spot than it started. The first night of class someone asked her to explain the difference between society and culture. She stopped mid way through her first sentence and started talking about the Inuit. I think she had decided an example would be better than whatever she was about to say, but then she switched paths again and instead of explaining society and culture using the Inuit, she just started talking about how they were able to eat lots of fat without getting heart disease. To give you another example, she has presented the following ideas in class:

1. It is unethical extrapolate natural resources from a native people’s land.
2. Priests in Bali who control the flow of water to rice patties need to be trained in hydroponics (if you don’t know rice patties work, the rice grows in soil covered by water)
3. Once the last native speaker of a language dies, the language is said to be a dead. Once a language is dead it can not be revitalized.
and my personal favorite,
4. Everyone gets their morality from religion. Er… except the atheists… But they have morals too (as though you wouldn’t expect it). Um… you guys know what I mean, right?

Sigh… good times, good times.