I just finished an intensive one-week three-unit winter-session class. If the plethora of dashes weren't enough, try to imagine running a marathon in an hour. Maybe 1.5 with a foot cramp, but that'd be stretching it. Meet Communication 352, or for the CSULB handbookless*, Storytelling.
What? That's an actual class? Go figure, but apparently in order to be an effective and dynamically cogent major, one must practice their art of reciting fairy tales and producing proper audience utterances of "oohs" and "aahs." Because that's what Comm 352 is, right? Or as a fellow individual noted of intersession courses, PS2 would occupy most educational time.
News flash: Storytelling is the ideology that fueled the creation of acronym FML.
I'm pretty sure I've never worked this hard in a class. Ever. I'm also pretty sure my mind was complete mush by day 3. Coffee, if it had any effect before, was consumed like water. The baristas/baristos at Starbucks were incredibly sympathetic with their offering of free refills every day - maybe because the $.05 change I dropped each time into the tip jar really started adding up. Who knows. However expressive I can be, just know, this class violated all prior expectations.
Day 1: It's never a good feeling walking into a room, sitting down, and the first utterances from the professor is, "This week is going to be hell, say goodbye to your life for the next 5 days. Seriously." After that remark, the class tally dropped from 28 - 20 students.
Day 2: My snacks for the day run out by 11AM. It can only get worse. Oh, that's right, my boyfriend leaves for Mexico.
Day 3: The professor tries to encourage us with some doughnuts, but his nonverbal rhetoric is still screaming, "Your grave plot will be issued soon."
Day 4: A total of 42 hours on campus is recorded to date, not to mention 3 papers, 157 pages of reading, and 2 speeches completed. We're still expected to have a 5 minute story memorized and ready to perform by tomorrow, as well as our corresponding Korean immigration presentation. Our group stayed later to practice, only for our superior to note, "It's my personal opinion you guys stay a bit longer, you need a lot of work obviously." Obviously you would be good at running a concentration camp.
Day 5: We're the last group to present. Right when we are about to begin, campus-wide black out. The professor says he has two options for us: 1, do the exhibition by the illumination of fellow students flash lights. I waited for option 2, but it never came.
Needless to say, there were (believe it or not) a couple positive things that arose from this experience. Besides being 3 units closer to graduation in May, I finally finished off the huge Costco-sized box of FiberOne bars. Thumbs up. Also, I feel that I've reached my quota for the coming semester of work exertion. I now have a week of mindlessness ahead of me before my last bit of collegiate studies begin. There's no time like the present to practice staying in bed all day, at least for the next few turns of the sun.
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* Not a real word, as pointed out by the squiggly** red line.
** Apparently squiggly is a real word?
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