I Am So EXCITED!!!

Yeah!!!! God does answer prayers. Ok, I've known all along he does, but I also know he chooses to not answer if the request will not be in your favor! I have been emailing a professor about letting me take a course as "independent study" since it is offerend in the middle of the day and I wouldn't be able to work as a substitute at Garrett/DeKalb. I need this course to graduate so I've had my fingers crossed for a month now! Here is the response I received today from her.

Hi Carma,

I'm glad you signed up for the course. I talked to the English dept. Chair, who suggested you attend at least the first class and arrange for someone to tape record the discussions for you. Last year, I taught the class for the first time and I noticed that I had to do quite a lot of explaining (cultural, historical, literary) to help students wade through the material. I have readings on reserve that relate to the cultural and historical background, but we still had to go over it in class too so that everyone had a good grounding. With my heavy course load, I don't have time to do all of that discussion one-on-one in the office with you. So if you could arrange for anotherstudent to help you get the material, then we could probably set this up. The Chair also recommended that you attend at least one other class and make some kind of short presentation. I think at some point I'm going to have students look for a news article on an African topic and write asummary of it and briefly discuss it in class. So maybe that would work for this part of your attendance. As you know from L101, 20% of the course is discussion-based. We'd have to find a way to make up that component, possibly with another short paper or project. Last semester, my students interviewed African people and wrote up their interviews for their paper assignments. We compiled them into a "book"that was very cool. The class loved the project and I plan to do it again. You could still contribute to that, though you'd miss out on some of the planning. I'll have the syllabus completed in a week or so, and can e-mail it to you if you want to see it. Also, if you come by sometime, I can show you the "book" if you're interested. The Chair has to approve this being an independent study course, so let me know your thoughts on what I've proposed.

Best,
L.W.

I am so excited because now I only need to drive to campus twice a week, if that! The other course I have to take is "Chaucer" and I laugh as I type because I spent 5 weeks at Garrett teaching "Chaucer." I know that I do not know everything about him or his work, but at least I have a head start and I am wondering if I present all of my material to the professor and/or the class I can get out of going to class for a couple of weeks! We are only doing 3 works and the major one, Canterbury Tales, is the one I researched and taught at Garrett! Even if I don't get excused for that portion of the class I still shouldn't struggle! Yeah!

This news certainly brightened the dull day!! Oh, and Ayron went into Smith Farms Manor (a nursing home and assisted living facility) to apply for a Chef job and that went fabulously well and then he went to Applebees just to get an application and he ended up having another interview with a final interview on Wednesday! Life is wonderful!