how to spend 13 credits and $7,000 dollars unwisely.

Even though I am graduating this semester, I still have thirteen credit hours to complete, which I am opting to do this summer and get it over with.

The thing is, I have completed all my gen ed's, even a year of english composition classes (why? why should I be forced to write essays in the English Department?) and now I face the difficult task of filling 13 credit hours with useless classes that I don't want to take.

I thought it might be quite dull if I listed what the college says about the courses.

My top runners thus far:

33-1271; Yoga: Beginning Course introduces the ancient discipline of personal development that balances body, mind, and spirit. Students learn a series of physical postures as well as practical methods for relaxation, proper breathing, meditation, and concentration that promote health, alleviate stress, improve skeletal alignment, and increase muscular strength and flexibility. Course also provides an introduction to the history and philosophy of yoga, which students explore through readings and written assignments. Dance Department. 3 credit hours.

51-1310; French I Course for beginners introduces basic grammar and vocabulary to develop proficiency in understanding, reading, speaking, and writing French. Cultural appreciation is enriched through Chicago-area resources. Liberal Education Department. 4 credit hours.

55-4216 Critical Reading and Writing: Short Story Writers Course encourages development of lively, well-crafted short fiction by examining reading and writing processes that guide some of the best examples of the form. Students select from a wide range of writers, representing many different voices, backgrounds, subjects, and approaches, to research ways in which writers read, respond to their reading, and use that reading to generate and heighten their short stories. Students write their responses to reading short stories and discuss the relationship of reading to the development of their own fiction. Fiction Writing Department. 4 credit hours.

51-2213; The Simpsons as Satirical Authors This course will study the postmodern satirical presentations and commentary which The Simpsons has made (and continues to make) through its utilization of the humanities. We will examine how The Simpsons raises and comments on issues of civic, cultural, gender, global and political identities using traditional humanities studies including artistic, film, literary, philosophical and religious critiques. Special emphasis will focus on self-referentiality and how The Simpsons satirizes both itself and its characters as an operative principle and strategy. Liberal Education Department. 3 credit hours.

And, to insure that I get the classes of my choosing, I have to wake up tomorrow before 6 a.m. and wrangle all the classes into my schedule via the online registration process. And who says being a college student is easy?

It should be no surprise to anyone that Columbia manages to make even the most ridiculous concepts of a class sound plausible. I'm not a huge die-hard Simpsons junkie, though I enjoy the show a lot, but I've heard that this class is really great, mostly because you watch clips of The Simpsons the whole time. Oh, what DVD's have managed to provide the educational system. It's really priceless.

My other option that was a lot more interesting and exciting (read: not dull, or maybe it is depending on who you are) was to go to Prague for five weeks with the Fiction Writing Department. Alas, this will only give me eight of the necessary thirteen credit hours and will force me to take two three hour classes in the Fall and perhaps delay my graduation date as a result.

I will just have to pencil Prague into my next bout of travel plans. I am really desperate to be done with school. Especially now, being nearly at the end.

hope I kept your rapt attention,

stine