Huzzah! Today was a GREAT picker-upper after yesterday’s Day of Disappointments (did I mention that in the second class I went to yesterday, a million waitlisted students showed up and the professor said he couldn’t let in a single one of us?). 

I had my first scriptwriting class! The professor seems good, and there are tons of nice people and nice vibes. The sense I get is that scriptwriting will consist of a good combination of things I already enjoy and new challenges. We started off the class the standard way; getting to know each other and talking about the course requirements and expectations. Then we watched a really good short film whose title was something like “Dispassionate Moments,” which consisted of very brief snippets of random peoples’ lives, narrated by a British man with a soothing voice. The moments captured were both ordinary and incredibly intimate, like a man seeing dust particles and reflecting on how when he was a child his mother told them they were fairies. We talked about the film for a while, and then watched another short film which was more recent. It was part of a series of short films from around the world all relating in one way or another to 9/11 (the film was called “1’09”01 September 11”). Surprisingly, this particular short was a humorous satire and took place in Burkina Faso. After a coffee break, we reconvened in a computer lab to begin learning about the scriptwriting format and looked at some samples. The homework is going to be a combination of scriptwriting and reading and responding to fictional short stories (in regular prose).

After class, I went to meet with an academic adviser to fix my scheduling woes. He was incredibly helpful, and I feel so reassured. I’ve got a lot of professors to email today, and lots of options for classes, so it’s all going to be okay. PHEW!

It feels wonderful to be back at school, attend classes, and not have to freak out as much about my schedule. All good things.