I got out of class early ... so I thought I'd run in to school real quick and check my e-mail and whatnot. Apparently, my class going to be on Tuesdays AND Thursdays (THANK YOU, JESUS!). I'm happy for this, why? Because it's such a condensed class that just meeting once a week wouldn't be enough time to cover everything we needed to cover comfortably. So the professor that was SUPPOSED to teach the course moved so ... now we have a teacher. I walked into the class and I saw this pretty thin woman sitting at the desk - and I got this really confused look on my face - more so added to the fact that everyone in the class was being excruciatingly QUIET (ah, my kind of people) and I just thought, standing in the doorway "This is the right room, but, is this the right class? I mean, that doesn't exactly look like a Professor Bill Majors would look." And the lady said to me "Developmental Psych, right?" And I nodded at her and she laughed at me and said "Come on in and sit down. I know, they're quiet. It's scary. You'll help me with that, won't you?" Uh oh. I hope she's not planning on having me talking up a storm or anything. She told us a bunch of stuff though, about who she is and all that, about what the course is going to be. All tests will, blessedly, be open-book except for the essays. I can live with that. But she told us that a lot of her class isn't just lecturing, it's group discussion. Ah, fuck ... what have I gotten myself into? Couldn't I just write a paper or something. Suck. First group activity we have, we talk about Little Miss Muffet and put that rhyme into these six developmental theories and ... yeah, that was fun. I was stuck in the Freud psychoanalytical group - in which I had to put this in tune with the id, ego, and super ego thing. I was about to go into the whole pyschosexual thing, and everyone in the group was listening to me and laughing because I was going in depth about how the spider represented the phallus and how Muffet, in seeing the spider, made the association with the penis - and because she had a bad sexual experience and now feared penises and ... well, the teacher stopped me there and told me that I didn't have to go into the psychosexual stuff yet, that I was getting too far ahead of myself, and that I should just stick to the id, the ego, and the super ego. So, we came up with this little skit that said that the id - which is the part of the brain that makes the body function/survival/the "do it because it FEELS good" part of the brain - tells Muffet to kill the spider, to SQUASH the thing, but the superego - which is the part of the brain that serves as your conscience/Gemini cricket/your morality - was telling her that she shouldn't do that. But the ego - which is the rational part of the brain that makes all of the decisions - in noting that the id and superego were against each other, just decided to walk away. Now, this is how we did the skit - I was the ego, another girl was the id, and another girl was the superego (she had HILARIOUS facial expressions, too). And we started out by the Id girl telling everyone about the psychoanalytical theory and then saying that we were going to portray our findings in a skit (because that's what each group had to do, explain their theory's process). So, Little Miss Muffet sits on her tuffet (whatever that is) and starts eating her curds and whey, when a spider drops down and - FREEZE! Let's see what's going on inside Muffet's head. ID: *smoking* "Woohoo! A spider. Spiders are evil creatures that will bite you! You better kill it before it gets you! Let him feel your wrath!" Superego: *classic prayer-like angel pose* "Come, come now Miss Muffet. You know that killing is wrong. That spider's not going to hurt you if you don't hurt him. Live and let live, Miss Muffet." Ego: *just sits there quietly, looking back and forth betweeen the Id and Superego* Id: "Aw, you know you want to, Muffet! Killing isn't bad. Look, it's a lesser creature. You'll be doing the world a favor by ridding it of just one little spider. No one's going to miss just one little spider." Superego: "Don't listen to her, Muffet. No one has the right to play God." Id: "Hey! I didn't say anything about playing God! It's just one damn little spider." Superego: "And we should let by-gones be by-gones." Id: "Kill it!" Superego: "Let it be!" Id: "Kill it!" Superego: "Let it be!" Id: "KILL IT! KILL IT! KILL IT!" Superego: "Let it be! Let it be! Let it be!" Ego: *covers ears and looks like he's about to go insane from all the fighting; stands up* "THAT IS IT! I have HAD IT! Screw you guys - I'm going home!" And thus, Miss Muffet just left and found a different tuffet to sit on. The end. The class was laughing insanely hard when I came back in. One guy was even on the floor. And as I was taking my seat, one lady mentioned something about "just like a man to leave when there's a decision to make" and the class was howling again. I just sat quietly at my desk, blushing a little. I could feel how red my face was. But at least they got the jist of the psychoanalytic theory. And at least we went first and were the icebreakers. After that, everyone else seemed pretty relaxed about it. Before we'd started, they were all nervous and didn't know what to do. Anyway ... Yeah, that was my first day of class. What fun, huh? Now ...? Now, I'm going to go home and seclude myself. Maybe I'll even go to bed early. Who knows? Take care. Love you all. I'll be back Saturday. Blessed be.