14 January 2010 Good morning little school girl

The next phrase in that lyric is “I’m a little school boy, too!”


My classes begin tomorrow at 1025 –>1120 History of the Holocaust and at 1130 ->1225 Crime Scene Investigation. I find myself a bit anxious, wondering if I can manage to compete with the young students who make up the class. While I read huge amounts of technical material when I was their age, I’ve gradually stopped reading much tech subjects in favor of fiction and military history. The next 3.5 months will tell.

I just logged onto my .edu email account to find a solicitation to donate blood, broadcast warnings to pay fees before classes begin (does not apply to me), and the course syllabus for the history class. There are two primary texts, two minor texts which are to be reviewed by the students, and there will be a required research paper of 8-10 pages. There are many aspects of the Holocaust that I can use for this. Conversations with Gloria’s father, with my cousin Leonard, may be useful as background if not primary source material.

I’m truly curious about how this course will be taught and what sort of student commentary and response there will be.

I spent the morning at VA meeting a new primary care doctor and trying to get something done about my right shoulder. Took all morning and nearly wound up in a drug agreement signing session in the afternoon. The purpose of that “class” is to inform a group of patients about the restrictions involved in receiving certain medications through VA. It is singularly boring with the sole purpose getting a signed agreement from every patient involved. I have one on file from last fall. I was saved from having to blow the afternoon by an LPN who understood my reluctance to sit through another “film strip” type lecture. Give me the syllabus or the regulation, let me read it and I’ll sign it for file. My time is important to me. I also wound up having blood drawn, having a urine drug screen collected, and having another set of shoulder films shot. I started a medrol dose pak tonight. Might help my allergies for a while as well. Still to come, a call from Physical Therapy to set up a learning session for instruction in exercises that may, may, alleviate some pain. We’ll see.

I can see that the nature of my reading will change markedly for the next few months.

It was Gloria’s idea to audit courses at ETSU. I sort of tagged along at first. Now I’m committed to 6 credit hours. That’s light compared to the 18 hour load I carried as an undergrad but I’ve aged and the gray drive doesn’t quite have the high level of recall or the rapid reading uptake that I had then. My slide rule skills are a bit rusty too.

“Good morning, little school girl, can I come home with you?

No one could perform that like Pig Pen.