I've decided to go to State. After mulling over all the points you fine people raised, and doing some hard thinking about finances versus extra classes, I came to the conclusion that I can't possibly graduate from a university with a silly name like Notre Dame de Namur. No, wait. I mean I concluded I'd ultimately be happier with less debt load and a slightly longer time commitment. Also, I don't really want to deal with any more Eliot, Pound, Faulkner, Welty, and Morrison than I have to. I'm sorry, I know this exposes me as a boor and a snob and a hick, but I don't like 20th century American fiction (the mainstream, that is; I adore genre fiction like mysteries, romances, and science fiction). I'm not that crazy about the 19th century stuff, either, but I have a lingering fascination with the early Victorians so I can tough that out. Basically, I want to look at how fiction evolved. Maybe once I understand the traditions it came from I'll come to appreciate where it is now.
So San Francisco State it will be. Not immediately, of course, but now I know what I need to take in order to get there. For fall I signed up for Philosophy 103 (Critical Thinking) and Speech 100 (Fundamentals of You Know What). I was getting ready to sign up for California State History (D2A) instead of Speech when I happened to notice some fine print about how U.S./Local Government course (D2B) was designed for people who took all their U.S. History requirements out of state. That would be me, I suddenly thought alertly. What does this mean?
I phoned the Advising Center at SF State and asked about what they require for Section D2. Lo and behold, although it doesn't say this anywhere in the Wuthering Heights Community College catalog, SF State requires both D2A and D2B, and in fact offers them as one class. WHCC, on the other hand, breaks them up and offers them one semester at a time. Gah! I almost fell for it! I'll have to take that class at State itself, perhaps while I take the third science course (one with a lab) which I now need and which I can't get in night school at WHCC. I don't mind, though. I look forward to another science class, and I'd far rather do the History/Government requirement as one class. So that's at least a year away.
Sorry to drone on about college. It's like solving a puzzle in which you're allowed to finesse.
The other thing I did today was go to my first game at Pac Bell Park. I like it, it reminds me of Safeco Field in Seattle on a more human scale. The Giants fielded like inept sixth graders, the Diamondbacks played impressively if unaggressively, and they won despite Barry Bonds' two homers, one of which went into the Bay. The weather was ideal, comfortably warm with a light breeze. We had hot dogs and beer. All was happiness until some moron on the deck above knocked over his mixed drink onto my head. My hair was a matted mess, my clothes smelled like I'd been on a two-day bender, and we had to move seats because the dripping wouldn't stop. It was okay, though. I had a really good time at the ballgame.
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