Surprisingly enough, I did get up in time to go to school.

My alarm was set for 9:25. After hitting the snooze button a few times, I finally leaned over, and hit the power switch on my computer, snagging the keyboard and bringing it back with me as I collapsed back down again. My system booted up, and I hit the eight keystrokes required for me to dial into my internet account. I then blearily began looking through my e-mail, gaining consciousness as I went along.

This is how I get up in the morning.

A little while after that, I put some water up to boil, as I got dressed, read some more mail, said my morning prayers, and generally got ready to face the day. I made one cup of Bigelow Lemon Lift for breakfast (I didn't have time for the corn flakes), and a Thermos of Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime for the day in general. (Despite the name, it's fine for daytime consumption.)

Mary Anne is right. Stash Chai Spice rules. Utterly. I've decided to save it for when I really want a lift, or, alternately, for when I'm in a really great mood. It's too good to drink on a regular basis. I'm now trying to hook the rest of my family on it, and it's working. One of my brothers asked me to pick up a box for him.

What's in it? "Blended black teas, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, clove, and natural flavors of cinnamon, clove, cardamom." And, having the box here for transcription purposes, I'm inhaling the scent, and feeling very tempted to go for a cup. But I shall resist.

I walked up the three flights of stairs, and went directly to room 353, where I found... wait. This isn't my instructor. This isn't my class. This is an Essay Writing class; I'm in the Honors Seminar. They switched the rooms on me.

Had I been thinking clearly at this point, I would have checked the door to see if there was a "change of address" sign on it, which is the usual procedure. But I was frazzled. It was early in the morning. I had just walked all the way from my apartment. I was disoriented.

So I glanced through the other classrooms on that floor, and didn't see my instructor in any of them. So I went downstairs to a pay phone, from which I called the English Department. Surely they'd know where the class was located.

"The English Department is closed," said the recording. "Our hours are from 9 to 5, Monday through Thursday, and..." hey, wait. What's going on?

So I tried the main switchboard, which transfered me back to the English Department, which got me the recording again. Joy.

So I ran across the campus to the English Department. Fortunately, its building wasn't far off. Ran inside, and up two flights of stairs, where one of the secretaries informed me that the class had indeed been switched to room... room... umm, actually, I forget the number now, but it was on the first floor, and I've had another class there in the past, so I know where it is. I pointed out to the secretary that the phone system claimed they were closed. She replied that they'd had to shut off the phones, because it was too hectic for them as it was. Oh. Anyway, I went to the new room, and, sure enough, that was my class!

It is a small class. There are eight students. Most of them are seniors; I think I and a friend are the only juniors in it. Plus one older student who's auditing the course.

Some courses hit the ground running, leaving you slightly breathless, but revved up and ready to go for the rest of the semester. Others spend the first day going over the syllabus. I prefer the former approach, and the best courses I've been in have gone that way. This instructor used the latter approach. I'm trying not to hold that against him. It's only a style difference.

I am looking forward to this course. As I think I mentioned the other day, it's on "Ideology and the Power of Culture." We're going to spend the first half of the semester looking into the history and development of "ideology" and "culture," looking at some of the works that developed and defined those terms. In the second half, we're going to use that to look at three contemporary issues: Disney, hate speech, and pornography. For the last of those, we're going to be focusing on feminist debates over pornography, including anti-porn feminists, anti-anti-porn feminists, and pro-porn feminists.

This course was simply made for me. I'm a cultural critic at heart (among other things). I'm fascinated by popular culture, and the ways people relate to it. I'm also a crusader for First Amendment issues, which is very much involved in the questions around hate speech and porn -- when, if ever, does something stop being "only words," and actually inflict harm? And I've long been interested -- and occasionally infuriated -- by various feminist views on pornography; the latter was probably the course's biggest draw, for me. I couldn't pass it up, even at 11 AM.

We're going to be splitting up into three groups, each of which will tackle one of those three areas (Disney, hate speech, porn), lead the discussions on it, and collaborate on a report on it. Naturally, I want to cover the porn, although I could live with either of the others if I really had to. But I'd much rather not.

I think my odds are good. When we all introduced ourselves, I discovered that the vast majority of the class is taking the course either because they're about to graduate, and this is the only Honors Seminar being offered this semester, or because they have no experience in the stuff being covered, and they thought it would be a fun change of pace from the usual subjects, like Jane Austen, James Joyce, or whatever. Only one or two others were already familiar with -- and particularly interested in -- the subject matter.

This class ought to be good. I'm looking forward to future sessions.

We have one 486, and four Pentiums. The 486 is quite obsolete, and one year ago, it's what we wrote and typeset the entire paper on. A couple of weeks into the Spring 1998 semester, we finally got the Pentiums. They have proceeded to be a blessing and a curse ever since.

They crash often. Right now, two out of four systems are functional. (And one of those needs to have a whole bunch of programs and drivers reinstalled.) At the time that I went over, both of those systems were in use. I turned on the 486, and typed in the column in Notepad. In HTML. Experience has shown it to be the simplest way of using that system; word processors simply take too long on it to be worth the bother. Later on, I brought the file over to the other system, imported the text, and voila!

After looking over an article in another section (once a Copy Editor, always a Copy Editor...) I rushed to the cafeteria, got a warm slice of pizza, gobbled it down, and zoomed over to my 2:00 class: 2D Design.

As you might have inferred from the title, this is a studio art course. I was somewhat concerned about it, because I've never taken an art course before, I'm not at all visually oriented, and I didn't know anything about the course, other than its title.

I was reassured to find out that there were only a handful of art majors in the class, and that most of us had never taken an art class before. So I'm in good company, and the course is designed to work with people like me.

It's a four-hour class, ordinarily, but the instructor let us out at 3:00, after telling us a bit about the class, handing out the syllabus, and giving us our first homework assignment. Oh, and after the commercial from the guy who sells art supplies down the hall, and the distribution of his price list.