School is dumb

So, I fail at consistently posting anything. Oh well.

I finally got around to sending in my mid-program, need-this-crap-to-graduate paperwork and the program adviser emailed me back to tell me that the mid-program reflection for my eportfolio (these mini-papers they insist that we write to prove that we've "learned" things) has to be finished before the paperwork can be filed. Okay. That sounds reasonable. Also, my 504 reflection is too short and needs to be fixed. What?

504 was the first class required of all students. The reflection was written as part of the final exam. We were told that they needed to be a paragraph or two. Now, I'm being required to write 2-3 pages.

Besides the silliness of having me write my intro and mid-program papers at the same time, would it have been too much to ask for the professors of 504 to have mentioned that we needed to write a couple more pages for our reflections? I mean, I don't think writing four 3-page papers (in lieu of, you know, writing a thesis or taking a comprehensive exam) is too much to ask for. I still think it's an incredible silly and pointless requirement for a master's program. But that's beside the point.

The point is that if these reflections actually have some expected page length, then the professors could have mentioned it before I was 2/3 done with this.

Oh well. Even though I have no memory of that incredibly boring week last year, I'm sure I can make up junk about how much I learned and how it prepared me for the program and my Future Profession...

On another note, I have no idea what "multicultural literature" means. I picked up some book at the library the other day. It was about some kid being bullied for being "different" and Buddhism was one of the subject headings. I somehow got it into my head that this book was about some kid getting beaten up for being Buddhist. Or something.

Actually, some kid, Jinsen, gets beaten up for being weird. I mean, he's all artsy and an [oh-so-sad]orphan and just generally weird. However, he had a mentor who really changed his life and his mentor was a Buddhist (although this is all backstory and the mentor isn't around or anything). And the kid is interested in living the principles of Buddhism, which is kinda implied for some of the book and directly talked about for a short section.

Is this book multicultural? I mean, there are cultural misunderstanding issues, which I think can't happen without some sort of variations of cultural. But really, most of the book is about some middle-class white kid getting beating up by the school's rich jocks for acting different. The weird kid isn't even the main character. Everything that happens is filtered through Justin, who learns a powerful lesson to do the Right Thing and tell on bullies...

I'm also wondering if reading a bunch of graphic novels for teens counts as fulfilling my required reading as long as each book is more than 200 pages long...