Sooo…life.

I am nearing the tail end of my 6 week summer course – GIS, GPS and Computer Methods and while I am iffy on the class, I seriously love this 6 week format. We have class twice a week and it is supposed to be for 3 hours, but my professor somehow never got that memo, so we’ve been getting out after 2 hours. It’s 6:00-9:15 but the latest I have ever stayed was 8:45 last week. He even cancelled our last class because he realized he didn’t need to go over one lecture. So I basically have two more classes and then I’m done. Awesome. That also means I have less than a week to finish this final project…but whatever.

My partner and I are doing some mapping of Pittsburgh bridges. It’s kind of neat, but nowhere near as cool as my project idea. I wanted to map out the Ludacris song “Area Codes.” It would be brilliant. We could map the area codes in relation to the places he has gone on tour in the time since the song came out and it would be hilarious. I ran the idea by my partner and just got a blank look in return. Turns out she had never heard the song. Never! What!

So we came up with something else and then the next week she told me she had gone home and downloaded the song, haha.

My friend Chelsey had a good point in that she (my partner) probably wasn’t alive when the song came out. Too true.

I was taking this GIS course in hopes that maybe I would love it and I could go for the GIS certificate. I hear it’s a pretty in-demand field right now and sounded pretty cool. But the class is….kind of a bore. I think I blame the prof more than anything. We spend an hour being lectured to and then he just sets us loose to do something in the program. Which he never showed us how to do….so we sit there and fumble around until he guides us through in like 5 minutes and I feel like I have learned nothing, because I haven’t. Also he goes entirely too fast so he has to repeat every step 4 times when he could just SLOW DOWN and solve that problem.

So I think I might not want to go through with the certificate. I also couldn’t finish it in the time I want to have left at Pitt…and it would involve an internship which does not jive well with having a full-time job, so….blah.

But! That frees up the classes I have left to take. After this summer class ends, I need 3 more classes. One of them has to be an Anthropology class, but it is not offered at a time I can take in the fall, so I have to hope that it will be offered in the spring when I can. If not, my advisor is going to have to actually advise me for once and figure that out. That frees up two fall classes for me. I was going to take Cultural Resource Management but that feels like a waste if I’m not trying to go in that direction. Again, not enough time left at Pitt.

So I think I’m just going to take two blow-off classes, if I can find them. Ideally, they will both be online which will solve my issue of missing 2.5 weeks of class when we go to Hawaii. Right now I’m on a waiting list for Russian Fairy Tales and some Intro to Sociology class….but if I can find something that sounds like more fun, that could change.

Pitt Alums…easiest/best class you took? I probably won’t be able to fit it into my schedule, but maybe! Any suggestions are welcome!