Starting College or Going Back

[norealityhere]

Originally Posted by myrosiedog

My advisor has suggested I take advanced public speaking instead of the required public speaking class that everyone takes and I think I will do that as it goes more into speech writing and better delivery methods. The other class is designed more to get people over their fear of speaking in public and there is not a lot of your own writing done in that class. Obviously I don't have the fear and I think I could use more help in the speech writing department.

That sounds perfect.

[Google]

 

[Missyboxers]

Good luck, everyone and MRD, glad to hear it's going so well. I took German in high school for two years, and it can be tricky. I don't remember a whole lot of it, but my teacher used to have us sing songs that seemed silly at the time, and those are the words that stuck.

[Ellen]

Originally Posted by Missyboxers

. . . my teacher used to have us sing songs that seemed silly at the time, and those are the words that stuck.

There's a lot to be said about singing and learning/memorizing! We used songs a lot in my German, French, Spanish, and Polish classes, and those words and structures always come back to me. And anyone who's watched "Schoolhouse Rock" will never forget the states and their capitals, or "Conjunction junction, what's your function?"

[Broadway]

"Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, ..... Connecticut. Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana...." Singing is the only way I can list the 50 states in order. Ellen

[ElizabethG]

Originally Posted by myrosiedog

I LOVE my Southern Politics class. The teacher is great. We have started off discussing an overview of Southern politicians like George Wallace. Then we did a whole class of "defining" the South and defining the Southern time periods: Colonial, Old South antebellum, war and reconstruction, redeemers and populists, The Jim Crow South,Civil Rights: "The 2nd reconstruction", accommodation and moderation and The "Southernization" of America. We also discussed the 4 "media events" that define the South: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind and Roots.

I would say this professor is in his late 60's or early 70's and he was an adjunct in 1979 when they had a long time SC politician come on faculty. When this guy came on, he invited many politicians to come speak in 1979 and they videotaped them so we will get to see some of them. Like George Wallace, Claude Pepper (Senator from Florida) and others.

It's just a real interesting class. We've discussed the "Solid South", Nixon's Southern Stragegy in 1968, Reagan's annoucing his run for president from Philadelphia, Miss (The movie Mississippi Burning takes place there. It was the location where the 3 civil rights workers were murdered).

So far I would like to slap the you know what out of Sissy Sorority Girl that is in the class and I'm not the only one. We have to write a paper and we are to pick a Southern state and do it's political history including colorful characters in it's politics and we are also to compare and contrast it to another state, talk about how that state has voted in 2000, 2004 and 2008 and analyze any changes. So this girl says why do we have to do that? Why would the old elections have anything to do with it? You could almost hear the class do a collective gasp. And she's a senior and a political science major. There's a certain political party that cannot WAIT to hire her when she graduates. I bet she wishes she could see Russia from her house.

Anyway, this is one of those classes I wish everyone I knew could take so we could talk about it as it's just really, really, really interesting and the Prof is a very interesting man and most of the other students are interesting too. It's a very discussion oriented class. And I made a friend there already and since both of us are from Florida, the Prof suggested we work on our papers together and choose the state of Florida.

As for the book thing. I totally understand why they cost so much and I realize that textbook authors don't make a lot, but most college students don't have a lot to spend either and it's just a universal gripe about the cost of books and the edition changes that you have to keep up with when most of us are getting financial aid or are pinching pennies just to go to school.

I included your entire quote because it ALL sounds like a class I would love, love, love!! If I had to do a paper on the colorful characters in Georgia's past, I would include Herman Talmadge and the time (late 60's I think - somebody correct me) that we had three governors at the same time and at least two of them refused to step down. The state even had to change the locks on the governor's office to keep one of them out. Then of course there's Jimmy Carter and his family down in Plains (anybody remember Billy Beer??), Andrew Young, Maynard Jackson, Cynthia McKinney.....just off the top of my head. Wish I was there MRD!! Are the majority of the students from the south or do you have a fair amount of other regions represented? Any good debates get going?

[Stargazer]

Originally Posted by Yardgnome

We are in our second week of school. I have 1 of 4 grades back from last semester, and probably won't see the last three for another three weeks. The waiting for grades is almost as stressful as exam week. This is a horrible system.

Oh my gosh, I would go mad if we had the same kind of system at my school. I go to class in an actual classroom, but a lot of quizzes are given in the supplemental online interface, so I often get test scores back within minutes. I sit there staring at the screen waiting the whole time. I can't imagine waiting as long as you have for your grades! Here's hoping that you do great in everything!

This semester, I have two psychology classes, another anthro class, public speaking (barf), and a history class. I was majoring in Biology but ended up changing to Psychology because that's where my true love and skills lie. One of my psych classes is Human Sexuality, which is turning out to be rather amusing. I don't know if I'm just in a class of especially naive kids or if all 18-22-year-olds are that ignorant about sex. I honestly can't remember how much I knew back then. Probably not much more.

Here's an interesting FORT connection. We're supposed to do our first speech in Public Speaking on an interesting place we've been or something we've done. I decided to speak about how we all got together in Chicago. I figure it doesn't get much more interesting than meeting up with a group of people that you've never met before to spend several days sightseeing.

[queenb]

Good choice, Star! I'm sure everyone will enjoy your speech because it will be about something a lot of people have thought about doing, but never had the guts to actually follow up in. And I bet there are a lot of parts where you could get some giggles, which never hurts. I'm sorry I missed the original Fortcon, but really enjoyed reading about it. Good luck!

[myrosiedog]

Originally Posted by ElizabethG

I included your entire quote because it ALL sounds like a class I would love, love, love!! If I had to do a paper on the colorful characters in Georgia's past, I would include Herman Talmadge and the time (late 60's I think - somebody correct me) that we had three governors at the same time and at least two of them refused to step down. The state even had to change the locks on the governor's office to keep one of them out. Then of course there's Jimmy Carter and his family down in Plains (anybody remember Billy Beer??), Andrew Young, Maynard Jackson, Cynthia McKinney.....just off the top of my head. Wish I was there MRD!! Are the majority of the students from the south or do you have a fair amount of other regions represented? Any good debates get going?

The majority are from the South. The interesting thing is that the student doing Georgia is from New York. We also have a kid from Hungary in there. There is some good debate. Most of the younger students have NO clue who the professor is talking about when he mentions the Talmadges, the Longs of Louisiana, George Wallace, etc. The older students are all from SC and boy can they tell you SC politics, but they don't know a lot about the other states. But there is some good debate and the prof is fabulous. I wish you could be in there too. He brought in other books that he reccomended we read and I already had 2 of them which he said he found interesting as the rest of the class was furiously trying to copy down the names. Hey, I'm interested, so I already know some of this stuff and have read some of the books.

I still cannot believe that NO ONE knew who Earl Long was or George Wallace's famous Segregation now speech. Even the old timers.
It's probably my favorite class and its small enough that we do have a lot of debate and for the most part only about 5 of us do any speaking at all.
There's one silly little girl in there that I think the whole class including the professor would love to slap repeatedly. She's also doing Florida because she lived there for 3 years when she was 10-13, but she had never heard of anyone from Florida in politics when the prof quizzed her, so he looked at me and said: "I expect you go give me at least a page or page and a half on George Smathers." She was completely blank. (I wasn't much better, but I at least knew who he was and what he did) Anyway, she is a political science major and I cannot even begin to imagine her working in government. She's interning in one of the state reps offices and apparantly keeps hanging the phone up on him according to her self. She thinks this is hysterically funny. However, I'm sure given the lean of her politics she'll end up with some big, big job in a few years making the whole country shake their collective heads and I can say I knew her when she was a twit from college.

Stargazer, I bet that will be a cool speech and very interesting.

I took a human sexuality course back when I was about 19 and I just remember being embarrassed the whole time.

[gabriel]

Wasn't Earl Long a relative of Huey? I seem to recall that one thought the other was a crook. I remember reading about Wallaces segregation speech but I do not remember it. George Smathers was a peer of John Kennedy or am I thinking of another Smathers?

[Gutmutter]

We still have a can of Billy Beer at my mom's house. Not sure why.