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The first week of my semester has come to a close, and I've gotta say, this is going to be the most interesting semester yet. In total, I'm taking only 8 credits on campus, along with another 3 online credits, and a weird 5-class cycle worth 2.5 online credits. Basically, it feels like I'm only part time right now, yet I'm still doing a full time load.

My Effective Living course is, by far, the most interesting. It's basically a discussion class, in one of the most interesting rooms I've ever seen. No tables or desks or those awful hard plastic chairs that all schools are filled brimming with. There's soft, aged desk chairs that swivel and roll and are quite comfortable lined up along the walls of the room, and a bean bag pile filling the center. There's two analog clocks in the room, both of them with the numbers fallen to the bottom of the clock so it's not as easy to read. They say things like "whatever" and "who cares?" on the face of the clock. There's also a huge painting that takes up the whole wall, painted with a pleasing forest scene. And that's just the classroom. In the class so far, we've discussed things like credit cards, what we'd do if the Church wasn't true, the impact of divorce on family life, and a host of other topics. On top of the interesting material, we have a final project due, where we have to basically write our life story. That will be very interesting. But I'm excited for this course.

New Testament class is being taught by an awesome teacher, who's funny and really knows what's going on. He actually was on the team that wrote the new New Testament manual for Institute. He also allows the use of electronics in his class, which is something I've never seen a religion teacher allow without special permissions. Last class, he let us go totally off his lesson plan and talk about miracles, today and in the Bible, for almost the entire time. I think it's really awesome when teachers allow you to do that, because I feel like I get more out of my learning that way.

Last is my Child Development course. I'm taking it because I want to work in Child Therapy, so I need to know what average growth is for a child in order to accurately assess deficiencies and disorders. I also want to learn how to help correct those issues with teaching and training rather than with medications. So, this looks like it will be a good class to learn just that. Obviously it will be merely a basic education, but from there I can gain further information where necessary. The class is a normal, three-day-a-week lecture, and there's not much new or strange about it.

And then, there's my main online class, Research Methods. Oh, I have to take this class with a spoon of sugar, because I dislike the research portion of Psychology. I intend to go into therapy, which is an applied Psychology path. I apply the research other people have done. That's my plan and I shall stick to it. But I have to take this course for my degree, so I shall suffer it and hope to learn something good.

The five class rotation is a study skills cluster, including things like time management, textbook reading, note taking, test taking... I feel like this is a wise class to take, and honestly I should have maybe done so earlier than five semesters down the road. But, better late than never, and I shall learn how to do college properly.