In Continuum.

And so, my very short-lived holidays came to an end, and this is the beginning of a brand new semester all over again. I don't suppose I regret not going to any foreign countries this time around, because the holiday has been well-spent with my friends, Neptina, and myself for the most part. It was great to just hang my head for a while, unscrew the knobs and allow myself to just crumble in a corner of my bed and not worry about anything. But of course, such days never really last very long, and we all found ourselves at the end of it all last night. Some of us probably welcomed it with opened arms, sickened by the mundane nature of the nothingness at home. Some others probably wanted a week or two more to prepare themselves for the new semester. Like, the body clock for example, which I have yet to adjust back properly yet. I mean, I tried to sleep as early as possible last night, but I'm pretty sure that I only managed that after two in the morning despite being somewhat fatigued. The body clock wasn't cooperating, though it's not like I blamed it really. I didn't make an effort to turn it back, and just allowed myself to sleep late and wake up even later on a daily basis. It was my holiday, so I suppose I had to right to do whatever that I wanted.

Anyway, so it is the summer semester, and most of us are not too excited about the syllables. We've gone through two summer semesters now, and I think we pretty much know how it is like for the most part. A summer semester isn't exactly a semester in a year, and students are usually having their summer breaks right now. But this program, being a three year program, we just have to go through with the summer semesters unless you decide that you want to take it off and graduate a full year later than everybody else. It's all up to you really, which is the great thing about this college system thing. But the problem with summer semesters is that you have about three or four modules to squeeze into a tight schedule, and this causes the lecturers to really skim through the courses at a great speed, so fast that we usually cannot catch up. I mean, mid-terms is probably going to be in about three weeks, and that is usually the amount of time we take to get used to a single module. So, time is packed up, and not a lot of us like the fact that things are all squeezed together. To think that one of our modules, PSY 333, has a bad reputation amongst the student body, summer semester of 2009 really wasn't looking up at all.

I missed the first two express buses to school this morning, but made it there on time anyway. First class of the day was PSY333, and I have heard all kinds of horror stories about that course. The same lecturer who taught last semester is teaching us this time around again, and let's just say that the last batch didn't exactly do very well. If Naz scored a B and was pleasantly surprised, you know that the course isn't a walk in the park. Besides, there were a whole lot of people who managed only Cs, which I thought to be pretty uncharacteristic considering how I know them and their academic history. Anyway, I walked into the class without much expectations, since the rumors of my friends dropping the module was circling in whispers. The lecturer stumbled in with a giant suitcase - yeah, those with wheels. She started the lesson without much hesitations, and I must say that she started it off with a good impression. If I hadn't heard the kind of stories that I have about her teaching style, I wouldn't have thought bad about her at all, truth be told. That impression lasted throughout the lesson, and I started to wonder if those complaints were unfounded in the first place, because things really doesn't seem very bad at all.

Maybe it is because it is the summer, and the syllables is a little different from what they had previously. It seems a little more relaxed this time around, and this module seems to be rather specific on the kind of things that will be tested. Of course, this being the first day, it's going to be very hard for me to judge whether or not this good impression will last. I am kind of on the edge about things, unsure of whether or not to think of her as this or that, if you know what I mean. She is a great speaker, and seems to have a great grip on what is going on in the class and what is going to happen throughout the semester. I like that kind of sureness, though we all know that, like all human beings, lecturers like to give a good first impression - they are the most important impression after all. So anyway, I think if anything, she started off good in my books, though she isn't the kind of lecturer to provide notes online or whatever. I guess the old days of typing down notes on my Macbook is going to return for sure, not that I am complaining about that. It's just that compared to the last semester where we had Julie Bowker as our very first class of the summer, this one just paled in comparison. It was Julie Bowker after all, and she is still the best lecturer I've ever had.

Moving on to the second class, Political Communication, the name of the module itself didn't get my juices up at all. I mean, you have a course about communication combined with politics - that's not a happy marriage at all. That's like a house cat married to a camel or something, and you know that the child is going to pop out from that womb with humps and claws. The lecturer came into the class, with his shirt neatly tucked into his pants and hair trimmed short. He seems nice enough, but I still get that vibe about him that makes him somewhat difficult to handle. It's difficult to explain, but you somewhat get that kind of vibe from some lecturers at times, like a bad feeling about things. Perhaps it is something in the air, the way that they talk, or the way that they conduct the class. He's in his mid-thirties, a really young lecturer as compared to the others, and let's just say that his class so far has been rather average for me. As in, I don't see myself being actively participating in the class, or being terribly excited about it either. Dropping it doesn't seem to be a viable option at all, because that'd mean a five hour break on Monday. FIVE HOURS. And it's not like I have a lot of Battlestar Galactica left to watch (one more season).

Now, the last class of the day, this is when things got a little more exciting. When we heard about the lecturer, I remember something about how he was supposed to come to Singapore for the spring semester this year. Everybody went online to look for his name on Ratemyprofessor.com, and his ratings were pretty damn high with good comments at that. Anyway, so everybody wanted to be in his classes in the spring, only to have him pull out in the very last minute. So this time around, he finally made it to Singapore for the summer semester, and we are just glad to have him around - though we have never actually had a class with him before. Anyway, Lance seems to be a tremendous lecturer, and Jody immediately fell in love with him after approximately five minutes of talking from him. The girls started saying how cute he is, and I suppose I can see why. He has that dorky thing going on for him, that somewhat geeky cute that some girls seem to adore, and I agree. But of course, I was there for what he had to offer as a lecturer to the students, and let's just say that I enjoyed whatever that happened in class so far.

First of all, here are three observations that I made about him that makes him a potentially awesome lecturer. First, you know that a lecturer is good when he apologizes for ending the class early. It was about fifteen minutes before the class was supposed to end, but he has already finished whatever he wanted to go through for day one. So, the first thing he did was to apologize for ending early, something which I haven't really heard before. Lecturers usually apologize, if they do so at all, if they go overtime - never before they are supposed to end. Secondly, You know that a lecturer is good when he offers to buy back the textbooks that the students bought for a course that does not need them. You see, not every module requires textbooks, but the school seems to want the lecturers to have them anyway. So some lecturers are forced to pick a book for the students to buy, although we sometimes don't need them at all. That is also the reason why most of the students have yet to buy our textbooks yet, though some already have. Lance's class, according to him, doesn't really need a book. Four girls then mentioned that they've already purchased the textbook, posing as a major problem. He asked if they could go to the college bookstore to return them, and they said that they couldn't return the books. So, what he offered to do was to BUY BACK their books. How AWESOME is that? And he understood my "that's what she said" joke. That makes him a good lecturer in my books.

Anyway, so that is the rough break down of the lecturers so far. Of course, from experience, you know that things are going to change after a few classes. Sure, Lance also made us play some games around the school and rewarded us all with highlighters. That is a bonus, but that doesn't mean that we are not going to have a watchful eye over him for the next couple days. Until then, I am just glad to have most of my friends all taking the same classes as myself. So Mondays involve the bunch of us going from one class to another - together. I love that, even though it is a nine to five day, it doesn't feel half as tiring as it would have been otherwise. This semester is looking to be somewhat enjoyable and hectic at the same time. But then again, it's not like we haven't survived a similar situation or worse in the past. I'm pretty sure we are going to pull through this time, especially with the lack of lecturers like, well, let's not name names here any longer. We all know who we are talking about, so there isn't a point to regurgitate. Speaking of which, I recently heard that one of our former lecturers, the one who got tangled up in that petition issue, is now a hobo - or looks like one. I can totally picture that somehow, and I feel really bad about it for some reason. OK, not really.