This week has been full of emotions… haha who am I kidding. No it hasn’t. The only emotion I have experienced is the emotion that many would call “senioritis.” However, my primary vocation and job at this time is to do one thing: graduate. I have quite an interesting class schedule this semester.
- Geography Capstone
- Principles of Economic Geography
- Adventures in Digital Humanities
- Origins of Christianity
- Life After OU: A Survival Course
I have learned many things so far from these courses. Some of them I am about to share with you, along with my opinions of the classes (if there’s nothing interesting).
Number 1 rule about credit cards: Don’t charge your whiskey! #lifeafterou
— Connor Keef (@connorkeef) January 14, 2015
This quote was taken from my Life After OU class, a class which pretty much does what the course title says. The goal is to promote awareness of issues that many students do not know about, such as taxes, healthcare, etiquette, etc. It seems to be a great class so far. Best of all, it’s a 3 hour pass/fail. Yippee!
Next comes from a required reading from my Adventures of Digital Humanities course (a course that is Presidential Dream Course at The University of Oklahoma).
The Internet represents the ascension of yahoos, a victory lap for plagiarists, the end of culture, the beginning of the dark ages inhabited by glassy-eyed chronic masturbators who judge truth by the number of thumbs up, wisdom by the number of views, and knowledge by whatever is most fun to believe … Our task is to learn how to build smart rooms – that is, how to build networks that make us smarter, especially since, when done badly, networks can make us distressingly stupider.
-Prologue, Too Big To Know by David Weinberger, pp. xii-xiii
Hmmm… Weinberger uses some harsh words. But you know, he’s right! Many of us both hate the people that this describes, yet fall into it ourselves. I have been known myself to be proud of the fact that something I posted on Facebook got 209 likes (true story, by the way). Our world is so full of self-gain, it’s hard not to get caught up in it.
Economic Geography is a geography requirement for graduation. The course, taught by Dr. Travis Gliedt, is not the most interesting class it seems I am taking, but will help me understand even more about the geography field.
My Origins of Christianity class seems to spur my interest as much as (or more than) my geography classes (go figure, I’m going to seminary after all I guess). The class is taught by Dr. Kyle Harper, a classical culture historian and Provost of the University. We have assigned Bible readings, including from the Maccabees (!), The Golden Ass by Apuleius, and Confessions by St. Augustine, among others. While it is not exclusively from a Catholic perspective, I feel that this class could deepen my understanding of the roots of the Church.
My Capstone project is Representing China Through Late-Night Humor. The project focuses on popular geopolitics and humor. The importance of this project can be seen by looking at the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris this month. The popular geopolitics field is growing by leaps and bounds and will continue to grow. Expect to see more about this project on my Geography
page.
Overall, it looks to be a fun semester, but a busy one as well. Between applying to St. John Vianney, March for Life (be looking for a new blog post on that soon), presenting at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in Chicago this April, and, of course, graduation, I’ll probably be pretty swamped. I only need to remember this: only 15 weeks keep me from obtaining a degree from the University of Oklahoma. Boomer!
Domine, Quo Vadis? 