let's go exploring

Guys, guys! I'm so excited: out of the five classes I'm taking this semester (yes, I'm overloading on credits for my minor and internship), I think that Psychology & Adolescent Literature is definitely going to be my favorite. We're reading Jung and C.S. Lewis and Ursula Le Guin and Neil Gaiman, and we would have been reading The Dark Is Rising if not for time constraints, but we get to do extra reading and research, all wrapped up in semiotics and comparative analysis. After class, I went up to my professor and started talking to her about paper ideas, pretty much.

Yeah, I do get like this when studying material that I'm keen about.

I've always loved YA fiction. Thinking about the reading in this class reminds me of all the books I loved when I was younger, like The Bridge to Terabithia and Ella Enchanted and Walk Two Moons, along with heaps of long-running series that were inevitably taken up by ghostwriters about halfway through, like The Babysitter's Club and Nancy Drew and Animorphs and even The Boxcar Children. Other books, too, like Redwood and The Face on The Milk Carton and Bunnicula. (Even though I was never sure if I liked TFotMC, and Bunnicula used to freak me out.)

Whenever I end up talking to friends about these books, it always leads to a long string of free-association: we ask each other about other YA books we used to read when we were younger, and build a chain of names and titles extending back and forth. Nor does reminiscing about them ever seem to get old, either.

So, I have an automatic bias towards any class that lets me build on that freewheeling association and get lost in my own thoughts again.

During class, my professor also slammed Twilight by saying that she has to "sell" the texts that she teaches to the class, and that in Twilight's case -- unless you're familiar with Mormonism -- there just isn't enough compelling material to work with for that. Between all of this, my mind kept drifting to Philip Pullman's vehement dislike of C.S. Lewis and Le Guin's not-so-enthusiastic response to Gedo Senki.

People in the class seem really quiet, but there are a good number of students (about forty), so I'm hoping the things we read will open up some interesting discussions! I'm also looking forward to the rest of my classes, which I'm listing here for convenience:

( tentative class schedule for Fall 2009 )

Another thing -- Michael Sharp, my professor for Crime Fiction, is the proofreader of crossword puzzles for The New York Times! AND I FINALLY GET TO READ THE MALTESE FALCON. That brings me joy on all fronts. I've taken a class with Professor Glick before, and I've heard nothing but good things about Professor Cho.

Between all these courses, I think I'm going to be grinning like a maniac every time I walk in and out of class.