Classes and Pottermore

Oh, hey, blog. It's been a while. Well, a week, but it feels like much longer since so much happens in a week!

I started classes last week, and I like what I'm taking. Three of my classes are very similar: Intro to Epidemiology; Health, Biomedicine, Culture, and Society; and Analysis and Interpretation of Social Data (aka Stats). Basically 3/4 of my courses are in the areas of medical sociology and statistics, so it blends together a bit, but it also reinforces the material across the classes.

My fourth class is Intro to Theatre Design (yes, the department here uses the pretentious "re" spelling), in which our first 2-hour lecture was over skype and the professor read us the syllabus for an hour and talked about point and line for the other hour. In lab, we moved our pencils on paper in rhythm with six different songs. I'm either going to understand the design process by the end or feel like it was an entire waste of time, but it's a requirement for my minor, so it won't really be a waste of any sort.

Workload seems manageable so far, just a bunch of reading and weekly assignments for stats, epi, and theater. I also have meetings on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays that stand for most of the quarter in addition to a Friday evening commitment, so I'm kept pretty busy.

On Saturday night, I got my Pottermore e-mail just as I was leaving to go see a play. I saw the play (which was funny, but probably not something I needed to see as much as I had thought), then came home, got a bag of jammy dodgers from the vending machine to eat as I watched Doctor Who (what an episode!), and then I spent 3-4 hours on Pottermore.

I finally know what it is!

The site has illustrations and animations for the big moments in each chapter of the Harry Potter books. For instance, in the first chapter, we get a profile of Privet Drive, Dumbledore and the deluminator, and Hagrid and the motorcycle. You can click through the scenes, which makes it more interactive, and at a certain point you get to shop in Diagon Alley, get your wand, and get sorted into your Hogwarts house. There is a ton of new writing from JK Rowling about how she conceptualized characters and places, including new profiles and backstories for most characters.

I'm in Ravenclaw and my wand is 10 3/4 in. Laurel, Phoenix Feather Core, Hard.

Today is awesome because I had a good swim, and am on top of my coursework so I can blog and play on Pottermore. And maybe start new seasons of Buffy and Angel (I finished 5/2 respectively this weekend).