first week at a glance

I have almost finished my first week of classes. So far I feel I need to reacquaint myself with the practice of taking notes. A year and a half out of school caused memory atrophy in my arm. I also can't compete with the across-the-board attractiveness of my female classmates, be they undergrad or grad, and am pleased that Heidi and I commiserate on this phenomenon. We've given up trying to look cute.

My Arabic class is reasonably fun, with systematic repetitions of crazy Arabic sounds and weak attempts to write our first names in Arabic script. The prof is young and energetic and inserts little French phrases into his lectures; he's Moroccan and teaches French, too. I have to recite the Arabic alphabet twice a day, but I'm also going to write it out, since the crucial thing for me is to be able to read a good bit of Arabic by the time I graduate. Heh.

Going into my Communication Research class, I didn't know it was actually designed for market research. I met this discovery with an internal sigh. Well, I am fulfilling my stats requirement, so I'll get through it, I thought. The entire semester consists of a group project. My group is researching Vitamin Water, with a goal of coming up with a marketing plan for the company, Glaceau. John, any advice? On a side note, the prof informed us that his childhood hero was Fonzy from Happy Days (aka Henry Winkler aka Barry Zuckercorn), and as soon as he said that, I figured out they were exactly alike. Accent, mannerisms, everything. That might bother or tickle me, I haven't decided which.

I feel generally appreciated by my instructors for having a B.A. in English. Today in The U.S. in the Middle East, after a short round of introductions, the professor (a teaching fellow at Harvard) commended us English majors (there were only two of us, me and this BU undergrad senior guy) because he's a "real sticklar for good writing". Yes! I thought. We are a force to be reckoned with.