Okay, so it’s not the last midnight, but I saw Into the Woods a few weeks ago, and the soundtrack’s been stuck in my head ever since. The title seemed appropriate because I just finished my last first week of my undergraduate degree. I’m pretty sure that the midnights I saw this week will not be the last midnights I see of the semester, especially since this one is looking to be incredibly promising.

As the newly-promoted President of our student chapter of Society of Professional Journalists, I will be attending a Ted Scripps leadership conference in Atlanta, GA next month. I’m still the Editor-in-Chief of the Western Carolina Journalist, and we’ve got some new stories coming up that are certain to be a whole lot of fun, but also a whole lot of work. That is the way of things, generally.

Now, in addition to these awesome extracurricular activities, I am also involved in some really nifty classes, but I would like to share a story with you folks about a class that I decided was not the right fit for me. It was a technical writing class, which would be a handy skill for a girl in my line of work, so I figured I would try it out and see if the class would work for me. It turned out to be a very bad fit for me, although I’m sure that the format might work for others.

As some of you might know, I am not a fan of group work where there is very little accountability over who among the members is doing the work, and that is where a majority of the syllabus sat. This I could deal with, given good group members. Unfortunately, many of my classmates were engineering students who made it a point to say before the class started that they didn’t see the good in writing, which really just blew my mind, and not in a good way.

Writing’s always been important to me, but so has reading, as all of you should know. Our teacher had an interesting way of taking attendance, which was to ask us a question. Monday’s question was “What was the last book you read?”

Now, usually I would be very happy to answer this question, but at 9 a.m. surrounded by a group of engineers who feel nothing but disdain for writing and reading, I was not about to say that I’d spent the last month reading through the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews, which is kind of a paranormal mystery/romance. I was not going to open myself up to the ridicule that would go alongside that announcement. Not on the first day of class.

So as a string of expletives coursed through my brain, I tried to think of the last book I’d read other than that particular series and could not remember any. I then remembered that I barely read anything last year because of how crazy my life was, so I went with The Wizard of Oz, which the entire class promptly did not care about, because the girl after me started talking about the Fifty Shades of Grey series. I wouldn’t have been the topic of conversation after class, but all was well.

A majority of the engineers after us said that they couldn’t remember the last thing they read at all, which was honestly disappointing to me, but unsurprising. One of them was so emphatic about their disdain for the written word that sunk as far as they could into their seat, spread their legs as far as they can go and ended their statement with a distinctly wet snort.

It was absolutely disgusting, and after I finished laughing about how much work went into that statement, I decided to change my class schedule around a bit. I’m now taking a documentary class, a class on global media systems, a human sexuality class, a senior seminar and an independent study which ought to turn out some really fun work.

I’m really looking forward to the rest of the semester and having some awesome stuff to talk about throughout it! What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard in a classroom setting? Please share!