new classes and the idea that the end is near

I'm on a high from reading my Children's Lit text and I realized the crucial thing my life is missing: fantasy! I am SO excited for this particular course that I'm giddy reading a textbook. I have a feeling that Children's Lit reading will be welcome respite from the rest of the semester... I mean, honestly, who can not love a class that has you read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe or Peter Pan????

The rest of the classes seem good: Human Sexuality will be facinating, Ballroom will be such a welcome bit of activity, and our Education class has SIX STUDENTS in it! That in and of itself is a nice change from the climbing class sizes at St. Olaf.

The one class I'm not sure about yet is my Environmental Studies Senior Seminar which is proving to be a crash course in Forestry and not having anything to do with what I studied in my track of the major. I almost wish I could have taken this earlier and instead have done a Campus Ecology as my capstone. The entire class has been biologically-oriented so far, which is disappointing because there's SO MUCH ELSE OUT THERE -- so many life-changing, beautiful, and inventive things to ponder in environmental studies that science alone falls short of. This seems such a sad way to end my fabulous major, but the texts and readings we have assigned are all scientific in nature. Informative? Yes. Facinating? Hopefully. Creative and challenging? Not so much. Sigh. If another week passes and we've still neglected an entire track in the ES major, I'll have to write an uncomfortable email to the prof begging that we talk about issues of Forestry in the larger cultural context or incorporate some art or something.

Ah well, one can't have everything. The idea that this is my last semester definitely hasn't sunk in. Tuesdays and Thursdays (children's lit, then ballroom, then human sexuality) are jolting me back to that reality, though. Being a student at St. Olaf is just so much fun! There are so many more adventures in store and I'm eager to move ahead in that respect, but why does the fun of liberal arts classes and running into friends and loving this particular place have to end? It will be difficult to let go of the Hill in a few months.

OH! Btw... I just looked at all the info on my profs using the new SIS and it made me feel surges of affection for each and everyone one of them.... I wanted to hug them and thank them for teaching me. AND! not every one of them had a PhD which is very empowering. Yay for school!