I am too tired to read this through before I post it, so if there is an abundance of mistakes, I blame it on my laziness and unwillingness to edit. After all, I had to edit quite a lot of stuff today (actually, just one paper for English) and am quite tired now. Good grief, this is a long title.

Hey, did you know that I am in college now?
Of course you did!

This morning I started working for one of my professors, Dr. Currence, as a teacher's assistant. So far it has been exhausting (the work is not hard at all, but I have to leave for school at 7:20 in the morning which is basically way too early). I get to grade some papers from other students, and erase the whiteboard, and turn on the projector, and keep the role...so much fun!

School is pretty fun. I don't have to do any math so I basically love all of it (well, I still don't like writing, but I apparently am not the most awful at it, so it isn't as bad as it used to be). I really like my history class, and my history professor is a cool guy. The rest of the students aren't all weird and dumb (well, they are probably all weird, but about half of them are actually smart) like in some of my other classes, so we have some really good discussions about history and how it can relate to current events, which is nice. Dr. Bonner (the professor, who is also really smart and a very good teacher) makes the whole class answer a question every week. Every question is a 'do you think it should be this way or this completely opposite way and why' kind of question. It is cool because it encourages good discussion about interesting and controversial topics.

My French teacher is the funniest teacher that I have ever had. He is from Italy, but his parents came from southern Somalia which is why he speaks French and Italian. I think that he is also a negotiator for the UN (but sometimes it is a little hard to understand his accent, so I am not 100% positive). He is pretty funny; he makes jokes all the time, and most of them I get and laugh at, but some of them I don't exactly know what he said, so he always says after a joke, "It was a joke, you can just laugh. If you don't understand, just laugh, it is a joke". (It is very hard to write in an accent, but imagine someone saying that in a different accent.) He likes to make jokes about the pope, which is always funny.

I am also taking computer science, which has been very interesting. I have learned some programming, made a few small apps, and learning the history of computers, software, markup languages, and programming. This is the class whose professor I am assisting. He teaches four or five of these CSCE 101 classes, each which have probably 1-2 dozen students. With 2-3 assignments per student per week that need to be graded, he needed some more help. He already has one assistant (Mrs. Becky, who has one of the most southern accents that you have ever heard), but they are still swamped for grading. So I get to grade for 3-4 hours each week, and I am getting paid, so that is a plus.

I am still taking piano lessons from Mr. Vitco (my teacher who has actually won an Emmy award for one of the pieces he wrote), and am still trying to learn the entire Pirates of Penzance operetta by ear. Some day I am going to record a portion of it and post it on here, but I don't know when that will be. I am also learning Bach's Goldberg Variations which are very interesting. I am also still learning Chopin's Ballade in A major. This is probably going to be the hardest piece I will ever learn in my life. Look it up, it is so amazing though. Actually, I am just going to put a youtube video here, because you all need to hear this piece (can you believe that I misspelt 'piece' five times just now?).



Is that not just one of the greatest thing that you have ever heard?
Now,  I still can't play the last two and a half pages (the last minute and half of the recording) and it has taken me about a year of practicing (I did take a break for a couple of months, but I needed it, this piece can be overwhelming) to get as far as I am, but it is still really fun to play this piece (which is good, because it will probably take me another year to learn the last two pages, which as you can probably tell from the recording, is the hardest part of the piece).

Well, I should probably start reading some of my art history textbook for class tomorrow (which is some of the dryest reading there is to be read).
Goodnight all.
Joanna :)