So I finished my second semester at college, woohoo. I did pretty well, and even pulled my D in math up to a B. I… don’t have much to say about being back in school strangely enough. It’s a fantastic opportunity that I’m thankful to have, but when I think about what to say about my experience I don’t have much to offer.

Anyways, since I’m not taking any summer classes I’ve decided to get myself prepped for next semester with some study. There are two classes I plan to study for specifically for next semester: Philosophy and Japanese. Philosophy is really something I’ve looked forward to for a while now. Last semester I picked up Aristotle’s Poetics, and while I started to read it I haven’t had much spare time to finish it. I’m not worried that I’m going to do poorly in this class or anything, but I have had this university-level-course-in-a-box thing called The Birth of Western Philosophy: Plato and Aristotle, and I kind of feel like if I don’t use it now I won’t have a need to after next semseter. I broke down the lecture and reading schedule for it and if I do two a week I should be able to get the “course” done in seven weeks, at which point I plan to finish reading Poetics.

Japanese, on the other hand, is freaking me the hell out. It took me five years of Latin classes to finish up Latin 2 in high school (6th grade through my Junior year). I’m terrible with foreign languages. My degree program for UIC requires four semesters of a foreign language. Japanese is the foreign language I’m most familiar with, and also the one that would help me in my career the most. So, for lack of another language option that interested me (French was my back-up) I’ve bit the bullet and registered for Japanese. So that I feel as comfortable as I can going into next semester I picked up that crappy looking My Japanese Coach DS game app. Hopefully it will prepare me enough to get the edge I’ll need to pass the class. As a long term goal for my Japanese study, I hope to be able to watch a Kurosawa film without subtitles. If I do well enough that will be my treat in about two years.

I also plan on doing a bit of reading I have backed up:

Beneath the Wheel - Hermann Hesse (Mostly done, but I ran out of time before finals to finish it)
The Waste Land Prufrock and Other Observations - T.S. Eliot
Poetics - Aristotle
Trigger Happy - Steven Poole (read it a few years ago, but want to read it again)
At least one play by - Shakespeare (I’ve read a few, but have been meaning to read more)

I also will hopefully get Issue 9 of The Gamer’s Quarter finished so that I can be done with that project. Not that I’m eager to kill it, just that I feel like I’ve let a lot of people down taking this long to release it. I also want to make some  progress on a writing project I’ve been mulling over for about a year now that goes back even further. I’ll talk about that more if anything happens with it.