Well, it looks as if I am going to Guatemala in January in order to fulfill my “Augsburg Experience” credit requirement to graduate next year. My student loans will cover the cost, and because the program is subsidized by the Lilly Foundation it is actually cheaper, including airfare, than a normal course. I’ll get credit for an upper division course in American Indian Studies and will have a couple of pre-travel meetings and one after-trip meeting with the group. Because of the bus size, the group will be limited to 15 students, and we are traveling with a professor of American Indian, Film and Women’s studies. We fly out on the 6th and return home to Minneapolis on the 14th.

Luckily, we will have translator for the whole trip so I won’t be forced to depend on my rusty and fading Spanish, but I’ll brush up over the next few months as time permits. I won’t have much time this fall, because my Modern Britain and Ireland class requires voluminous reading and I’m sure my Religion Seminar class (which begins tonight) not only will require much reading, but a lot of time spent thinking and writing as well.

This will also mean that most of the spring term I will only be taking one other class, so it’s a prime time to negotiate an independent study credit in history so that I can graduate with my history minor (I need three upper division classes and only have two). I’ve already broached the subject with the chair of the history department and she teaches a class called “The History of Women since 1870” and we’ve talked about modifying that curriculum or coming up with another topic, something like “The History of Sexuality in the Modern World”.

The only thing I am struggling with is whether I really want a history minor or not. If I could let that go, I could take German I & II in the winter and spring trimesters, and I wouldn’t mind having a year of German language under my belt. If I don’t take German in the spring, it’s pretty slim pickings for courses that I am interested in and I’m afraid I’ll end up taking one “blow it off” class just to fulfill my credit requirement, which isn’t really the way I want to go out.

So, it looks like my last year is off to a good start. If I can just sort out my priorities, it should be easier to set everything else up.