Ready, Set, CLASS!!

Mom: So what are you most excited about for this year?
Me:(thinks about it for a second)Classes.

The saddest part is that I was not kidding. Or being sarcastic. I am absolutely in beautiful nerd love with the classes at Brandeis. Yesterday I had French (enchantee!) and Psych (which I dropped. Promptly.). French was basically like a high school language class, and I just really didn't care enough about Psych to put in the level of work they were asking for.

Today I just got out of my new Anthropology course: Landscapes, Places, Meaning, and Memory Across Cultures. The professor won my heart as soon as he walked into the room. I had gotten there early (because I am pathologically punctual) and everyone was just sort of sitting around waiting for class to start. Oh PS, the desks were arranged in a circular formation with a clear head but there were too many desks for the circle so some were scattered around the edges, clearly not places of authority. Everyone arranged themselves around the room according to how close they did or did not want to be seated to the professor (I might have just made a grammatical butchery of that sentence...oh well.), of course leaving the head desk empty in anticipation of his arrival.

When Professor Golden entered the room however, he sat at one of the edge desks without a word. No introduction, no 'time to start class!'. Just entered and sat in a place unusual for the teacher to sit. It put the whole class into semi-spaz mode as everyone had to decide in a split second how to orient themselves to this new positioning of the room. As he watched this, Professor Golden smiled and said, "Now see how nervous I've made you all? That's the effect that space and placement has on our culture."

OMG. He did NOT just underline the ENTIRE PURPOSE of our class.

Except that he did. In an exquisitely simple but poignant manner.

Wow. You go Professor Golden. You go.

Now I'm off to Adapting and Revising: A Collaborative Process for Prose Writers, Playwrights, and Screenwriters. Hopefully to be wowed again.