School observations

Community college is an excellent place to people watch. It's like high school, except a higher percentage of students have cars, the books are more expensive, and there's hardly any 10-foot high chain link keeping you in. Therefore you could even people watch without being a student!

Some of my observations this week:

• Similarly blocked class schedules means a constant and predictable ebb and flow of cars in the parking lots. Arrive 10 minutes before class, and you'll be parking on the other side of the school, no matter where your class is. If your class is on the north side of the campus, you'll be in the south parking lot. If your class is in the south side of campus, you'll be in the north parking lot. Do not attempt to spot swap with a student from the opposite side of campus, this will upset the delicate balance of the universe (or at least of the community college) and leave you both spot-less, but not in the clean way.
• No one wants to be at school half an hour early, except the people who park in the side of the school where your class is. The near parking lot will be full by the time you arrive even half an hour before classes start. The parking lot on the opposite side, however, will be empty.
• Emos run funny. This was observed at about 9:25am with a male emo running through the center square of the campus. This could be caused by their funny pants, or by the skateboards in their backpacks. If you are emo, you should plan to arrive in the near parking lot at least an hour before your class (or the far parking lot half an hour before) so that you don't have to run to your class.
  
• My Spanish professor uses a Mac laptop, and heavily recommends Firefox over Safari. When a file looked funny, she claimed that it was due to being in Safari and closed it to open Firefox and start the demonstration over again. Yay! (I'm not a Firefox user anymore, I use Flock, but I like Firefox too.)
  
• There will always be more left-handed desks than left-handed people, and thus right-handed people will have to sit at left-handed desks.
• You have to have a receipt showing that you've paid for your classes to buy a book. I personally think that's ridiculous, particularly for a store in the business of selling books. "How DARE you buy a book that looks interesting and learn stuff without being in a class???" So much for studying to quiz out of stuff. The only possible justification I can think of is to make sure that there are enough books for the enrolled students, but I somehow doubt that the non-enrolled purchasers outnumber the people who forgot their receipts in their backpacks (which are not allowed into the bookstore). The short answer to this: keep 5 more in stock than you think you need, that'll last you until the next edition comes out!

Next time I'll tell you what I've learned that's actually related to my class!

My Spanish class is 5 units, whereas a typical class is 3, so I decided to only take Spanish this time around. It'll ease me into the whole reading and homework routine, and I'm only one PE class short of having a "normal" unit load. I've actually learned quite a bit already, this will help me communicate with my family in Mexico, as well as help my genealogy research, reading documents and writing letters to request such documents. =)