Maymester

So for the first time I took my first mini-semester in my college career.  The school year has 2 of these mini-semesters; Wintermester and Maymester.  This maymester I took US History Since 1876.  It was a 3 credit hour course that pretty much covers from Reconstruction after the Civil War through modern times.  We only got as far as the end of War World II.  That's fine because there was a lot to cover and little time to do it in.

I will not reveal the name of my instructor on this one because there is really no need to, but may she was an interesting character. She was great when I first spoke to her via email. I asked pretty much what will her class be like and for the most part it was lecture based.  The class was about 4 hours long per day, 11 days long (Monday - Friday) and went for a little over 2 weeks. 

There were going to be no papers, no presentations and no projects through out the semester.  I was sold, but I was still not sure what this complete lecture based meant.  We would start out the class with 2 hours of lecture, she talked and we took notes as well as we could.  There was no PowerPoints and no points placed on the board only the topics she was covering.  Very rarely would she repeat what she said and she spoke pretty fast.  I get it though, she had to cover a lot and like I sad before, we only got up to WWII. 

The last 2 hours of the day we watched a chapter from the series, Band of Brothers (a great show BTW and definitely an owner).  After seeing a chapter we would get a 3 to 6 question quiz and the points would be used to help boost out exam grade.  Oh and we had 6 exams during the semester, pretty much every 2 days.  I know! 

The first week was rough, well at least half of it.  She showed up for about 4 of the first 6 days of class.  One of the days she was 2.5 hours late due to a 4 car pile up that held her back (this was on a test day).  Most of the class left that day leaving 3 of us waiting to see if she was even alive.  She finally showed and was going to still issue the exam to us who remained, but she then discovered that the copy folks didn't prepare the test.  So our day was done, SMH.  The second week went much better, she would show pretty early this time and we and to take 4 exams that week. 

I finished with an "A" in the class and I really don't know how I achieved that.  The great thing was that the exam were done on scantron.  I usually do pretty well on those, especially when spelling was a factor.  I think I have now been exposed to pretty much every style of class room structure except Instructional Television (ITV).  To this day, I still don't know what that is all about and am a bit afraid to try it.  Oh well.  So that was my first mini-semester and I think I can do it again, depending on the class.

On to Summer!  I will be doing 10 credit hours with my second Math/Teach class, General College Biology w/ Lab and US History To 1876.  I know, I took the 2nd part of History already, but I prepared my summer semester before deciding to do the Maymester. 

Onward...........