Well, yesterday was the last day of my third week of English Composition 1, my first-ever College class. It's only a 6 week long course, so it's now half over. Wow.
So far I've turned in two essays, each worth 20% of my final grade, and there will be a total of four, with the remaining 20% made up of daily assignments. The first one was an essay summarizing an article in a recent Time article, and the second was to write a profile on someone I didn't know very well. I chose to interview and write about my neighbor across the street.
When I took my rough draft for my first essay in, things got a bit rough. The teacher took one look at it and said, "Why didn't you do the assignment I gave you?" The problem was I didn't realize he had given us a outline of exactly what he wanted and I hadn't read it. He gave me feedback on what I had done wrong-- quite a bit, it would seem --and with one day left until the essay was due, it was tough. I rewrote most of the essay, keeping only small things, and finally the next day I turned it in to be told that I had "achieved perfection". Needless to say, I got an A. I haven't received my grade for the second essay yet, but I'm hopeful.
The teacher is nice. I like him. I think I'm the only one in my class who does, however. He's tough, he's certainly not an easy teacher, but he's fair. I hear the other people in the class complain about him daily, but I really do think he's a good teacher. I've learned a lot from him. Personally, I'd rather have a tough teacher and learn a lot, than have an easy teacher and just skate by.
What really surprises me is the lack of ambition toward actually succeeding in the class some of the students have. One guy came in the first day and said, "I'm going to be a basketball player, I'm just doing school to pass the time, and I'm shooting for a D in this class." It just blows my mind that anyone would ever act like that.
For the most part though, the people in the class have been very nice, although I don't think some of them know quite what to make of having a yet-to-graduate homeschooler in their college class. There's one guy in the class from Turkey who said, upon finding out I was homeschooled, that he didn't understand homeschooling, since in his country it was illegal.
With three weeks left and, so far, an A in the class, I've been enjoying it a lot. I'm excited to continue.
