1st week down...4 years to go!

i knew i would enjoy going back to school. i just didn't realize how much! it's funny how much of a difference being ten years older makes. in one of my classes there is another gal who is older, probably mid-thirties, and we are the only two who talk during class! by talk during class i mean engage in the discussion that our professor is trying to get going.

we had our first writing assignment and i got a comment back from the teacher: "excellent! very well written!" go me! i mean, i did win "best writer" in my creative writing class the first time i went to college, so i really wasn't surprised! ha! yeah, right...i was surprised and very excited! although, it was an opinion piece for political science, so of course i didn't have to really think about it, i just had to think about how i would structure the writing. knowing what i wanted to say was the easy part there!

i'm still a little bored with early american history...mostly because i just don't like early american history. i like contemporary (or modern) american history so much more! start me out in 1900 and i'll be good! the only thing i find interesting before that would be the writing of the constitution and the founding fathers, for two main reasons: people today like to paint the founding fathers as virtuous near-saints, and they weren't at all! reason number two is simply the endless debates we could have over interpreting parts of the constitution, like the right to bear arms or seperation of church and state.

the religious right likes to say that this country was founded on religous principles and invoke "in God we trust" and claim that the constitution doesn't have anything in it that would call for the seperation of church and state. the establishment and free excercise clauses of the first amendment says that "congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the fee excercise thereof." i just wonder what the religious right thinks those words mean!

but i digress. anyway, i have had so much fun going to classes and reading textbooks and feeling passionate about school! i haven't really been excited or felt passionate about what i was doing for a long time...with the exception of volunteering at the spca and helping out homeless puppy dogs! let's just hope this fire doesn't burn out anytime soon!