Blog Jones

They say that first impressions are everything; scientists even tell us that students’ impressions of a teacher after “five seconds of soundless videotape… matched those given by his own students after a full semester of classes.”

So, today, my first day of classes, could conceivably set the tone for the whole semester. If that’s the case, this semester will be pretty good.

The rest of this post contains my initial thoughts about this semester.

WARNING: The following has not been proofread or edited.
Which means it’s not really all that much different from my other entries.

First, my classes:
Principles of Journalism: My 8:00 class. This class has the dubious distinction of being the first class that I’m aware of to change the book over Christmas break. That annoys me; I had found a really, really good deal on the old book on half.com. Apparently, the… ethically-challenged book publisher decided to go out of print, and the bookstore “couldn’t” find enough copies to guarantee everybody could have a book. (Of course, it turned out very nicely for the bookstore; everyone had to buy the new textbooks from them, because an online order would have taken too long. It makes me wonder if there’s something fishy going on…)

Otherwise, looks like an interesting class. It’ll teach me to write quickly, which I imagine I’ll find useful for writing here. Oh, BTW, on the little getting-to-know-you questionnaire the teacher handed out, I mentioned this website. It’ll be interesting to see if she visits.

Bible Doctrines: Same song, second verse. I have the same teacher, at the same time, and plan to sit in the same chair. Of course, I find out that Dr. Olinger, who I really, really wanted to take the class from, is teaching it at 1, where my only immobile class was sitting. Too bad. At least with my current teacher I know what to expect.

Corporate Finance: I had the teacher for a couple of classes last semester, and he’s pretty good. Unfortunately, I’ve heard that this class is the unnatural offspring of Principles of Accounting and Math of Finance, so I imagine this will be one of my more difficult classes.

Entrepreneurship: Before the end of the semester, I will learn to spell that word. Anyways, I’m a bit nervous about this class. I know that it will be useful; over the course of the semester we will be writing a “business plan” for a small business we might run. That sounds like fun actually; it’s giving the presentation in front of the class that I’m not looking forward to. I hate public speaking. A lot of people I know are in the class, people from my old high school, operations management, salesmanship, just everywhere. The trick will be picking out a group. And figuring out what kind of business I want to run.

Business Statistics: Great teacher; I had him last year for principles of management. I know he’s a pretty funny guy, but when you have him at 8 in the morning, he’s hard to laugh at. Since this semester’s class is at 2 in the afternoon, I expect Business Stats to be a lot more fun. We have a semester project here too; we get to use statistics to figure something of our choice out. I’m tempted to do some sort of campus survey to determine if interracial dating is a big deal to the student body. Or I might do something completely different.

Social Psychology: I’m taking this course because I have to; I need one more psych credit. After hearing the first lecture, though, I’m actually looking forward to it. He seems like a very interesting and entertaining teacher, and the material–basically, how people react to each other–sounds useful. I was worried that this would be something like General Psychology, which I hated with a passion. ::fingers cross:: I think it’s going to be a good class.

As far as non-class things go: I only have to come to BJ on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; Tuesdays and Thursdays I’m free to sleep in (but only a little bit!) and do all kinds of homework. So, the schedule works out nicely.

And, several of the people from my church have returned from a semester-long sabbatical to help a new youth ministry called National Hoops. (Don’t you just love MS Frontpage?) So, that means that there are more people to eat with, which is nice. (Notice how I cleverly avoided ending my sentence with a preposition? In the mangled words of Winston Churchill, “Ending my sentences with a preposition is something up with which I will no longer put.”)

Oh, and today I got to eat dinner with some members of my society; the dinner was supposed to be in honor of our newest freshmen that we picked up at society rush tonight; unfortunately, our new student count is… zero. Not a lot of new students this semester. But why waste the opportunity for a perfectly good dinner? The six of us went to some little Chinese buffet near Bi-Lo across the street from campus. Joy something or another. Pretty good too.

So… that’s probably about the limit of your patience. I think that’s also about the limit of things that I did today. Except for the evangelistic service. Which was good. The evangelist was a Dr. Hall (I believe), who was much better than last semester’s Tom Farrel. (And if Jonas ever read that, he’d gasp in shock; the guy loves Tom Farrel, who’s name I might be misspelling.) Farrel’s a good guy, obviously “on fire for God” as the fundamentalist saying goes, but… I think he’s a bit manipulative. When a preacher says things like “tonight might be your last chance to be saved,” it strikes me the same way as a used car salesman saying “these prices won’t last forever” or “I’ve got a another buyer looking at the same car; you’d better buy it before they do!”

Look, if the Bible says “whosoever will may come,” then it means “whosoever will may come.” God’s not going to turn someone away because they wanted to think about getting saved first. Christ even tells those who would be his disciples to count the cost before making their decisions. If you manipulate someone into walking down the aisle, “Just As I Am” playing in the background, while you say things like “Now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation,” then the potential convert is going to be riding on emotions, not making a rational decision. When the emotions fade, as they must, then the decision will be forgotten. It’s the same way with “camp decisions”–a decision made in the heat of emotions–fear and guilt–without counting the cost. The seed falls on the stony ground, and “when they hear, [they] receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.”

Anyways, how did I get off on that? Anyways, I liked the evangelist.

Now I’m sure to have either tested you patience or bored you and sent you scurrying off to another place. If you’re still here, thanks for reading all the way through. I’ll try to post during the day next time, when I’ll be writing more coherently.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 15th, 2005 at 1:15 am and is filed under Religion, BJU Stuff, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.