<p>After a long hiatus from College Confidential with the Junior Statesmen of America, I have returned - and Im not sure if anyone has yet to ask this question, but how was the University of Chicago summer school? </p>
<p>Im extremely curious to hear about it.</p>
<p>I enjoyed it.. Academics were great and so was the social life!</p>
<p>That's a very short reply...</p>
<p>There were some people here at the beginning of the summer that were all worked up about it - where did they go!? Where's Nada?</p>
<p>Right, sorry-- I suspect I wrote that in a hurry and then promptly forgot to ever come back to it. What precisely do you want to know?</p>
<p>What the course was like, how difficult you found the work - was it tiring or inspiring? What the professors were like, the dorms, etc. Anything, really. =)</p>
<p>Okay. Well, I was in the censorship and writing course, which (surprise, surprise) focused on just those things. Class was really great-- I attend a very small, very rural high school, so to actually be in a learning environment where those involved were all fully engaged, too, was just absolutely wonderful for me. Every morning we'd attend a lecture on writing technique for an hour and a half, during which our professor (Tracy Weiner) would indeed lecture and lead discussions about the material. Each afternoon, we'd focus on censorship issues; that part of the day was all discussion, so thankfully, like I said, the kids were engaged and my professor is talented in guiding conversation. Really, she's just amazing in general-- very insightful, very willing to help students out, and very funny, too, which is always nice. Three times a week, we'd have seminars after class for another hour and half-ish; in these, our class was broken up into two smaller groups and led by TAs of sorts, who'd help us understand how we improve our own writing in rather specific ways. The first one of these was horrendous-- during these, we'd read each paper as a group and essentially dig out all the flaws and then discuss them-- but after that, I actually enjoyed them and really found them to be helpful. The woman who led ours also is a wonderful person, very kind and funny and talented, so that really helped, of course.</p>
<p>Let's see, workload. We'd have short assignments due twice a week, usually one or two pages in length, and an actual paper due each Friday. We'd also have lots of reading to do every night-- at least thirty printer-sized pages, typically quite a lot more if we were reading from an actual book at the time. This wouldn't really be too bad, except there were always other things to be done-- it is Chicago!-- and the material was very dense, typically, being Foucault, Plato, Mill, and the like. That said, none of it was really unnecessary, and it did get done. Really, we didn't have too much reading compared to some of the other classes: law springs to mind, as one night they literally had like 300 pages of reading, I think, after being in class far longer than we ever were? Something crazy like that, anyway-- enough to stop me from complaining. Nothing was really unnecessary, either: for instance, we were assigned MacKinnon's Only Words, which we all universally hated, I believe, but even that had its merits learning-wise. It was terrible, but it did relate to the course quite well, and spawned not only an interesting and uncomfortable discussion in class that day, but also a running joke about porn in my seminar group that was kind of endlessly amusing at times.</p>
<p>Life outside the classroom was fun, as I had (very briefly) mentioned. We stayed at Max Palevsky Central, which was really nice, and it seemed like whoever assigned roommates did an excellent job most of the time. I wouldn't have picked anyone else over my roommate. Facility-wise, I had no complaints-- the dorms were just as nice as UToronto or RIT's, for example, and waaaaaaay nicer than Vanderbilt or Geneseo's, if anyone is familiar on any of those fronts. The food wasn't awesome, I'll admit, but it wasn't bad, either... I'm just a picky eater, and because of that, mostly ate salad all of the time or ate out, which is happily very easy to do. Our RAs did an excellent job of keeping us busy and engaged in the city: they'd lead trips to places quite often and usually at a subsidized price-- those interested went to Second City for free, for example. There was a curfew as per city law, but as long as we were back and checked in by then, we more or less could do whatever we wished to.</p>
<p>Umm, anyway, anything else anyone would like to know?</p>
<p>Ah, a final note-- for those of us who like their caffeine intravenously, there are sooooo many cafes and coffee shops on campus and in Hyde Park. Like, seriously, sooooo many. I think I lived on tea for the entirity of my course... Personally, by the way, I like the Classics Cafe the best, but I think the same people run the Gargoyle Cafe at the bottom of Stuart, and if you're in the neighborhood looking for some excellent tea and pretty architecture, that's where I'd recommend. Excellent pesto, too, by the by.</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>Sounds wonderful. Hopefully, I/we will be exposed to it full time next year. =P</p>