Class

One of the most fascinating things about this class to me is the difficulty that comes with explaining it to other people. In most classes any person would be able to come in on any given day, say a biology or music class, and be able to partake in the class without any problem. In this class however, in example when the girl that wasn’t in the class (I can’t remember what her name was) came to the class and upset people by not quite conforming to the methods that the class uses. What was even more difficult than trying to explain this class to other college students was trying to explain the class to adults. I had the best time trying to explain the class to my mother over Mother’s Day. How do I explain Plurk to someone that has only just begun figuring out how to text message? I even logged in to my Plurk page to try and show it to her and she just kind of stared at me with an empty look in her eyes. Despite my best efforts to encourage her to make her own plurk (she finally just got into Facebook, along with my father and my grandfather) she was simply too confused with the entire idea of it. How do I explain that a large part of my grade is writing blog posts that have no prompt and yet is still effective? (Actually a lot more effective in a think-out-of-the-box way or just think damn it). Or the fact that we are doing a book group in which one of the main objectives is to challenge and evaluate each other on a grading scale that we create?
The class in itself has so many layers that in many ways can be hard to actually find a connection between them. Half the time in class I’m wondering what the fuck is going on and how exactly the topic of discussion relates to anything and everything. I think that one of the strongest parts of this class is the way that despite having no idea what is going on, the content that is discussed continues to eat at you throughout the day. I may not know what exactly is it that is hovering at the edges of my brain, but that doesn’t change the fact that in many ways, even when I’m not actually paying attention to it, my brain is still trying to digest the class long after it’s ended for the day. Now how many of my other classes actually do that? Most often when I go to any other class I sit and zone out for a good fifty minutes and then I leave and completely throw every useless piece of information away. Yet almost every aspect of this class intrigues me, mainly because I don’t really get everything that is going on and the fact that I’m really not supposed to simply get everything.
One of the most amusing things about this class is how all-consuming it is. I love that friends of mine who aren’t in the class are conversing with people who are in the class. (Hell, some of these friends of mine, caitliners and rohansignh, I haven’t even seen in years and yet now, despite the fact that I’m friend’s with them on Facebook, I am actually talking to them again). I especially love how Alex (facecrook), who has been a close friend of mine since I was in junior high, not only orchestrates coffee dates with me through Plurk, but actually really helps me to develop my thoughts about things relating to class. I, being a science and math type mind, am extremely shitty at trying to analyze or put any of my thoughts into words, but simply sitting down and talking with Alex over coffee makes a big difference. As I mentioned on Plurk earlier last week, every time Alex and I get together we always spend a lot of the time talking about Prichard’s class. Despite the fact that Alex is not in the class, he reads many of the texts, participates on plurk, and has discussions with people in the class (such as me and Brian) and even sees/talks to Prichard sometimes. Alex is in many ways getting just as much out of the class as any of us are and yet he is not in the class and has never physically shown up to it. Now really, how many other classes can do that with its students?