Jan-term at Home

Jan-term at Whitworth is nice. You take one course and maybe a PE class and that's all you do for a month. Or you study abroad, which I did last year. It's great for people who don't have the time/money for a whole semester abroad. And if you're on campus, everything's more laid back. You go to class for maybe 3 hours a day, do your homework, and spend the rest of your time with friends or reading what you want to or watching movies or practicing. Whatever.

This semester I'm taking Theology and Film, which is taught by one of my favorite professors. It is NOT just watching movies. We have to write a paper on every film we watch and since we watch a film every other day... Plus we have readings, quizzes, and class discussions. People seem to have this impression that because it's a film class you don't do any work. We've been watching some really dark films. We started with The Station Agent, which isn't so much dark as it is strange. I didn't really care for it, even though I recognize it is well-done. We also watched A Simple Plan which is one of the most frightening movies I've ever seen. Nevertheless it provided a lot of material for us to talk about the nature of sin (especially avarice) and so forth.

I've been REALLY enjoying the snow outside. We have SO MUCH! It's great. There's a dorm-wide snowball fight in like 8 minutes and I was going to participate, but I'm feeling really lazy, so maybe not.

But other than that life has been pretty slow. Our pod has a new member. Since Anna's roommate got kicked out we had extra space. Sally seems really nice and Anna says they have a lot in common. I'm so glad she's getting a good experience with a roommate.

So, as long as I stay on top of my studies I have the chance to do cool things with friends. I go cross country skiing for my PE class every Wednesday and Friday, which is awesome. I've always wanted to live by a mountain. Maybe somewhere in Canada. That'd be amazing. Also, PBS is showing the complete Jane Austen novels on Masterpiece Theatre. Every Sunday at 9:00 there's going to be free amazingness. You should watch it. It is beautiful.