Classes Next Year

USC is both a very cool and very shitty place. The bureaucracy at the school is unbelievable. I spoke with a TA today who wanted to graduate over the summer and he yesterday found out he needed 4 more units - not required classes, but simply units to graduate. The response for defenders of bureaucracy always point to individual responsibility...well, he should've known what was needed to graduate and so forth. I always find this ironic, that the individual is responsible for everything, yet the institution sets up a variety of rules and policies WITHOUT any RESPONSIBILITY or accountability, no face, no explanation, no nuance, no exceptions, no efficient means for checks and balances.

That was a little bit of a tangent, BUT, my point is about classes next year. I spoke with a prof this afternoon about good classes and what I need to do to graduate and so forth. Advanced directing is offered next semester (only in the fall), it is a class taught by our best directing prof and he makes a point to bring in people from the industry to interface with. We make a 15 minute mini-thesis in this class and we get great contacts and great directing instruction. BUT, if I take this class, I want to devote my time to this class and not prioritize thesis prep or god forbid, 546. And it's only 2 units.

I guess my point is - I may be BETTER off not getting 546 because I get a good class for much cheaper...and I might even be better off prioritizing advanced directing over a thesis - either pushing a thesis until later (which puts me here four years...yipes!) - or not doing a thesis at all or doing a documentary thesis where I'm only going to school part time.

It's going to be an issue about how I graduate or if I do graduate.

The other factor is that the 551 class supposedly has a crappy teacher both this summer and next fall. It could be considered a completely useless class.