I met my new French professor today. For the first time, I'm being taught in class by a Francophone (my lab prof is also a native French speaker) and it's very intimidating. Her name, amusingly, is Dr. Mendez. Thankfully, she speaks very clearly and slowly in French. My lab professor, Mr.? Dr.? Maillet speaks reaaaally quietly and mumbles. I spend the entire time struggling to discern what he's saying. Have I bragged about my French lab, yet? In addition to overall small class sizes, I have a French lab once a week. There are five people in it, total. We sit around for the first half of classes, in a discussion led by Dr/Mr Maillet. Basically, I spend the entire time blushing with my inadequate French.
My developmental psychology professor, Dr. Bigelow, is a low talker. I sit in the second row, about five feet away from her, and if anyone so much as shuffles a paper, what she's saying is lost. Today, someone half-shouted from the back, "Could you please speak a little louder?" She laughed, and made a small effort to speak more loudly, but in no less than thirty seconds, was back to her extremely quiet volume.
Professors at my university are awesome. I don't know if everyone has this experience or not, but every one of my classes is taught by a professor. A TA teaching a class doesn't exist here. The professors learn students' names, and almost every professor is heard to say something like this, "Stop by my office whenever you want. I'm almost always there. My door's always open. If you're having problems, I'll help you out. If my office hours don't work for you, call me, and we'll arrange a time to meet. I care about you doing well, I think you do too, and I'll help you." I love that.
Random weather: It seems like everyone's been having an unseasonably warm winter. We were too, and today I walked to school wearing my winter coat, feeling silly for even wearing it. It was a beautiful, sunny day! When I got out of French (one hour later) it was snowing. A lot. Those big, clump flakes that wouldn't have even stuck, except that they were so BIG. By the time I got out of developmental psychology, there were three inches of snow on the ground. One hour later, walking home from French lab, it was raining. It poured rain for the next three hours. Many thanks to Ben and Julie for getting me those Grr Boots. They came through when I was wading through the lake that the grocery store parking was converted into.
