Pleasant Surprises

My second day of classes was filled with several pleasant surprises.

The biggest was that my medieval music history class looks like it will be engaging and interesting. This is not to say that I was expecting the opposite; rather, I was slightly concerned and curious about how it would unfold. Notation in the Middle Ages is very different. A class on music history could spend a good bit of time on the nuances of chant notation, which could get fairly tedious. Our textbook did not look promising. The master's level classes in music history can be large and filled with memorization of facts as decided by "the experts". And the professor's name wasn't one I'd heard before or seen on any of the "excellent teacher award" boards.

Turns out that the text is meant to be used as a basis for background. The notation part of the course will be cursory. We have an 11 person class, and it will be highly discussion based with room for conversation, questioning, and debate. And the professor? I hadn't heard of him because he's new this year. Young, passionate about the subject area, and with a quirky sense of humor, he seems like he'll be a fantastic teacher.

Hooray!

~Hope