Junior Boys - In The Morning / Daft Punk - Technologic

I don't know what happened to me between the last fourteen years of my education and this semester, but all of a sudden I'm making it to my early-morning class consistently on time. Every time the fifth alarm on my cell phone rings at 8:30am I'm certain I won't think consciously again until I awake with a start four hours later, but then I surprise myself by dashing down the stairs and making it. And staying alert and interested throughout 90 minutes of lecture.

I'm sort of scaring myself.

What brings me to Annenberg two 9ams a week is a class called Communication and Persuasion, taught by Professor Cappella--yeah, I'm trying to learn their names now. *(When I took Physics I didn't realize my prof was Hollebeek and not Fortune for, eh, a month or so...) This is a boring topic for someone completely uninterested in advertising, politics, or anything that requires this manipulative skill, but the lecturer makes it interesting in the way he speaks and presents his points. I've had too many teachers (unfortunately in compsci, math, and other technical fields) that don't speak well or don't engage their class in the topic, and because of this I inevitably lose interest and stop attending class at all. And he's very clear, which I realize is important when I place him next to my engaging but hard-to-follow World Film prof (he throws in so much film jargon that goes way over my head). He's making me freakishly excited about formulating a Health PSA to practice persuasion techniques; he even makes me want to raise my hand in a big lecture class. He shows the Colbert Report and Blagojevich interviews in class that are entertaining yet intregal in my understanding of his examples. This is really a good teacher. For once, I feel like I'm doing good in spending (as my one-time Biology prof informed us) the $4000 we do per class at Penn.

Rediscovering Van Pelt in between lectures while rediscovering So You Think You Can Dance music from 2007 while avoiding Physics. I haven't been a good student since college, a straight-A student since 9th grade, a top student since 6th when I moved from near-rural Massachusetts to the Three Village School District. I know grades are all relative, but I wonder if I can make this education worth it after two years of slacking off.

Listening: Junior Boys - In The Morning (this song is so hot, in a sleazy way) | Daft Punk - Technologic (after the Humans are Dead robots will go clubbing to this song)