Mapping Global Order and other fun school things

This week has been very, very busy.  The school schedule here is a little weird because you essentially have classes in 8 week chunks, plus an exam period, so all of the assignments that would normally be stretched out over a 15 week semester are all now due in the first 8 weeks of the semester instead.  While I appreciate this little help with not procrastinating, it does cut into my "fun" time a bit.  This week was especially busy.  Between last Thursday and this past Thursday I had three papers (about 15 pages all told) and two presentations, plus a bunch of fairly boring readings to do.  This coming week should be easier since I only have one paper due.  The week after that I only have two papers due and a mid-term exam and I will be starting (probably) my second Dutch class, so that week might be a tad busy as well.

This term, everyone in the Master's program is taking one class together, although they are divided up into a Dutch class and an English class.  For the other three terms, there is a little more flexibility because half of the courses we take will be Research Workshops and Thesis Conferences.  Also, I think that the Dutch and English tracks separate a fair bit as well.

I have two courses this term:  "Mapping Global Order--1600-2000" which is about Empires and what they do and how to stop them and how to get rid of the US Empire because it is impinging on the (finger's crossed) European Empire of the EU.

My second course is "Historical Culture in a Globalizing World" and it is about the way people remember things and think about history.  The text for this was actually pretty interesting (it is called "Time Maps") but it is often a bit disconcerting to read through books like this (the author is a Jewish guy who grew up in Israel) to see people trying to figure these things out from an evolutionary stand-point--"When did people first remember that there was a yesterday and expect that there would be a tomorrow?" "When would they remember that they ate yesterday and that they ought to eat something today?" "When would they stop forgetting that they had left-over bronto-burgers going greenish at the back of the cave?"  (Oh, wait, people still forget about the leftovers at the back of the 'fridge so I guess that's going to be never . . . sorry about that Mom.)