Yesterday I had a full day of activities. Work in the morning, buying art supplies, reading in the library for an hour, and attending two of my classes at Harold Washington College, philosophy and a cinema class that will focus on women in film.

During my philosophy class, we played a form of musical chairs for about thirty minutes. The entire class, about forty students make room in the center of the class and instructor starts playing blues music as we try to find some sort of orderly structure to move in a circle until we hear the music stop. “I’m sorry, is this philosophy?” When the music stops, my professor yells out a number and we try to find the number of partners to form the right group. We then tell each member of our group, our name, and something about ourselves. When the group is small, there was time for each member to expose a bit about themselves. When the groups were larger, (three or more) some students (like myself) didn’t get to share.

My second class, Fine Arts 104, -World of Cinema: Women in Films, will be entirely on women in film. Now I didn’t realize that it would be when I signed up. While I was sitting in class, I thought to myself, “And you thought this was going to be an easy class.” She hands out our syllabus during the break. It included a contract in the back, with spaces to fill in blanks.

As my day ended, I couldn’t think of one thing from these mandatory courses that would be applicable for the part-time job that would offer me some type of advancement. I suppose I might be popular around the office is I could actually have a decent dialog about women’s films with a office full of women. But will that translate in a higher advancement? What about this musical chair exercise? What was I suppose to be learning there? How to talk to people in a crowded elevator?

It’s time to get ready to repeat the process all over again.