Two Days In

School started on Thursday again for me. I had two classes that day and they are going to be my two hardest I believe. My Archeology Theory class is the history of the field and what social trends and changes in science caused things to evolve. There is a tremendous amount of reading required and we have to write 2-3 pages on each article we read. My History 702 class is on American history from 1789 to 1877 (Antebellum era), but is not a typical survey course where we go in depth about historical events and memorize times and names. Instead we will be focusing on labor, especially slavery and the economy, and discussing how the things we read fit into the historiography. This class also has a lot of reading but fewer papers.
Friday I had my History 720 course, which is a methods class where they teach us how to be historians and give us exposure to the various careers and interests. There is a bit of reading in the beginning and a few papers throughout, but for the most part it is a discussion course.
I still have yet to attend my American Architecture course, which will be on Wednesday. I am really looking forward to this course. There is going to be a bit of reading and memorizing styles, but this will be the most practical course for my degree.
All of my professors are extremely helpful, friendly, and informative. Only one of my professors is intimidating, and I think that stems not only from the fact that he is the only one I didn't have contact with in my undergrad degree, but also from the fact that he is known as a major player in the academic world for the history of slavery.
Right now I also have two jobs. I am working my assistantship at the State Parks doing historical research for new information kiosks at some of the parks. Later on I am also going to get to go on an archaeological dig (finally) and do some preservation work. I have also kept my internship doing GIS (mapmaking) at Richland County. This means I am working 34 hours and taking four grad courses. I am going to try this for at least a week to see if I can handle it. I am not so sure about it, but I won't know until I try. I can always leave my internship at GIS, and they have told me that they would be willing to take me back in the Spring if I was interested. So we will see how well I handle it, and if it fails I will at least be able to fix the problem and not hurt my grade because it will be early enough.

On another note... the lovely football players are already at it. USC is getting quite the reputation for having football players that are always in trouble. In the last two years they have had several arrests for fighting (at games and in public), vandalism (of their own office and vehicles), gun charges, drug charges, etc. Yesterday the quarterback and two others were suspended from the first game for not attending the summer courses they signed up for, which caused them to be put on academic probation. The new graduate students and I were talking about this today and I mentioned how it will be like this all year. Right after saying that I saw the news headlines and it turns out another player was arrested this morning for bringing a weapon on campus. It was unclear whether the firearm was unregistered or not, the press made it sound like it was.
Two days in and we already have four players suspended. I think that is a new record, but not one we should be proud of.