An update on my life as a grad student... The last week has been an extremely stressful, hectic one. On Tuesday, I enrolled in a Library and Information Studies (LIS) course, with departmental permission (when you are enrolling in a course outside your home department, you require the consent of the department the course is in, along with the instructor).

Everything was peachy... until Wednesday, when I received a note asking that I drop the course, as it was no longer being offered to non-LIS students. Since LIS had pretty much been a core set of courses towards my thesis proposal, I was more than a little nervous about things.

I spent the next week trying to convince SLIS that, since I was already enrolled in the course, and there was space left in it, that I should be allowed to stay in. However, they would have none of it. As a result, I was left to scramble to find a replacement course. At first, I thought I would take an English course. However, after sitting through the first class, and realizing I'd have to read through a couple hundred pages of theory to catch up, I had second thoughts about it.

I've now decided to take a Business course instead (ORGA 500); it's a course in people management, which is definitely something I need to work on anyways. Funnily enough, the instructor seems happy enough to have me, even though I'm already a week behind.

The HuCo program itself has been very interesting so far; our assignment for Thursday is to have read Neil Stephenson's Diamond Age, and discuss it while we take apart and put together computers. The group of students is a good mix of backgrounds, including 3 from mainland China, language students, a compsci major, and a graphic designer.

Here's a picture of my new home away from home, the Arts building at the UofA.