I had my first day of corporations class today. A corporation is a bunch of people doing some stuff. More in the weeks to come. :) This is my first class where we don't have assigned daily reading assignments, but instead we have a list of the pages we'll be covering and the thought that we'll be covering 30-40 pages a day, so we should just read ahead as appropriate. Which at first glance seemed kind of strange but after a few minutes of playing with that thought in my head while the professor talked about something I'm sure will be important for the final exam I realized it's really just as sensible as the alternative and usually professors are constantly adjusting the reading assignments anyway, so it's really no different from anything else. The other line on the syllabus I was initially perplexed by was "please do not use email either for appointments or for class questions," which is the opposite of most professors here, who often request we use e-mail for that stuff because it's easier. But I guess with a big class, one could just as easily prefer to have students call or visit rather than be subjected to a constant flow of e-mails. Plus it probably gets rid of the questions that a student could just as well answer himself but since e-mail is so easy... because you wouldn't (or at least I wouldn't) call a professor to ask a question without really being pretty desperate to know the answer, whereas I might e-mail in a moment of frustration, although I probably wouldn't do that either. Maybe I'd send a telegram or something less obtrusive like that. I'd whisper it from the back of the room when other people were talking, knowing the professor wouldn't hear me. I'd write a note but never mail it. I'd leave a message on my own outgoing voicemail message, just in case the professor happens to accidentally call me, so he would hear the question and perhaps answer it. I'd send it to someone else, on the other side of the world, perhaps, and see if that whole six degrees of separation thing actually works. (Okay, time to end this thought experiment that's getting increasingly less amusing, to me and to you.) So maybe it's all moot anyway. (Not moot like a court. Just plain moot.)

Meanwhile, since the class is at 8:30 in the morning, once 10:30 hits, on Monday and Tuesday, I'm done for the day. Oh, except for the other stuff I should be doing.