nine books. when you are assigned nine books for a measly 4 unit course, then you know you are fucked. up the ass. sure, sure, the class fulfills three (or four, depending on your major) of the core requisites which sorta lulls most people into thinking, "hey, three birds with one stone---sign me up!" but really---they make you work for it. id be happy to even pass the class (and i know ive said that about every class ive ever attended, but this time...im serious. really). humanities tutorial, or 'humtut' as its affectionately called by the professors, is essentially a greek philosophy, literature and creative writing class all rolled into one. among the assigned readings are works such as the oresteian trilogy by aeschylus, four plays (the clouds, the birds, lysistrata, the frogs) by aristophanes, the oedipus cycle by sophacles, three tragedies (electra, the phoenician women and the bacchae) by euripides, the illiad and the odyssey by homer and various supplemental texts (greek philosophers from thales to aristotle, greek philosophy from thales to aristotle and...the random house handbook). and to complement the inordinate amount of reading we must accomplish over the course of the semester, we've been assigned an equally recrementitious amount of writing. there are 4 papers (at 4 pages each) due over the course of three months (two in october, one in november and the last in december). being no stranger to essays, i was initially confident in my abilties to pump out the required papers in the alloted amount of time. so long as i was given a prompt. ehh! denied! being an honors level college course, our professors believe in independent, creative thinking. so we were informed, much to my dismay, that each of our papers must prove a thesis of our own origination. now, anyone who has worked with me knows that as far as my thinking process goes, i am very much "inside the box." i have no talent for innovation, design, or anything even remotely approaching 'creative' (look at our site. its a bunch of rectangles. fucking rectangles!) so to have to write four completely original papers that somehow incorporate greek philosophy/literature (which i find as interesting as a sack of potatoes) is cause for much distress and anxiety. and if that werent enough, we are also required to participate in nightly seminars to further discuss...um...i dunno...stuff...and to sign up for the humtut mailgroup where we must post a substantive message at least once per week.
shit. the more i think about it the more sensible it seems drop the course. i have five other classes that will suffer because of my involvement in humtut. and if im unable to maintain a certain gpa, i may lose my scholarship. why the hell would i want to risk that?
then again, if i quit now then i will have proven myself to be a worthless failure. there is always that pride factor that tells me to "gut it out," even if i dont want to.
im torn. im not sure whats the best way to go about things, whether i should go balls out or play it safe---especially at this stage in the game when im actually paying for my education.