Frustration

Well, the first week back certainly wasn't what I could have wished it to be.

Here's a quick run-down of my classes:

Discrimination and Inequality. This class has a lot of papers/readings (typical), some of which should be interesting and others of which are just ridiculous. Example: In a reading detailing forms of oppression, it picked marriage as the example to use for exploitation. Marriage. Really. The teacher is ok, at least, and I don't think getting a P should be too taxing.

Integrated Practice. This class is half direct, half macro and looks to be *gasp* actually informative. Unlike last semester, we're learning things we can actually use...in practice. I'm kind of shocked they're teaching us this. Too bad the macro teacher is an anti-Catholic lesbian (nothing against lesbians...I just don't like this one. It'll probably end up being mutual if she keeps making snide comments about Catholics).

Human Development II: Adulthood. More of the same from last semester. Hopefully less reading off the powerpoint slides like we can't do that ourselves.

Foundations of Evidence-Based Practice. This is a class about research and program evaluation. As such, it is potentially useful but dead boring. And also wayyyy too much work.

Foundation Field Seminar II. More of the same again--ie, could be useful and fun but isn't because they give us stupid assignments.

So, overall, more of the same--overwork, unnecessary assignments, and throughout a sense of being a guniea pig as every one of my teachers this semester has said, "We don't really know what we're doing since it's the first time we've done it...". In 2 classes they're trying to incorporate an online component which ends up being way more work than just reading articles and stuff. I wish I hadn't picked the year they decided to completely redo the curriculum...

In addition to all the classroom stuff, my fellow students and I seem to be on increasingly different wavelengths, with my feeling like I'm marooned on an island of permissive liberalism. Our stances on abortion are certainly radically different; it's not a solution for teen pregnancy, no matter what they might think. So, being back is frustrating on many levels.

Including being back at JFS. Admittedly I like it there much more than I like being on campus, but I'm already about 30 hours over where I should be, am having to work a lot of Friday evening events (which, since I've started working group programs for the Arc on Fridays, means I have to cut my work hours), manage two groups and sit on a committee (which usually have meetings Monday night, which I usually use for doing reading), 4 clients, and working on a grant, I am already looking like the living dead. And I've only been back a week. My dilemma now is, do I quit early because I'm so ahead in hours (we're allowed to do that), or do I just keep going and end up 50ish hours over at the end of the semester?

I'm also trying to figure out what classes to take next year (made more confusing by the fact that nobody knows what they're doing because it's new, of course) and where to intern. We have to have it all figured out by the second week in February. Here's hoping I make it that far.