One down

Last night, nearly the last thing I did before bed ... all my final course work for INT300: Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies went into the course "drop box" online. One course finished so far this quarter. Feels good.For this course, each of us had to come up with a way to organize the degree, articulate the rationale and common thread between the disciplines, and propose a presentation for a final portfolio. I want my final portfolio to be volumes of a little library of books, so I had to turn in my plan for this. (The photos will take you to BookCrafts - "where we do judge a book by its cover" - the slogan alone is going to make them my first choice!)
Here it is:

Composing the Human Experience:
Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies
with concentrations in English Literature & Writing, and Human Sciences

Volume 1 – Plan and Overview
Title Page
Table of Contents
Mission Statement
Degree Plan and contract
Rationales and Evaluations from INT courses
Course Reflections from INT courses
Introduction to the set of volumes
Index of Learning, outlining the set of volumes and their contents in order of presentation

Volume 2 – Liberal Arts Core
Title Page
Table of Contents
Rationales and evaluations for LAC courses, specifically as they relate to INT degree
Samples of work from the courses in the LAC, including PLA work
LAC Bibliography

Volume 3 - Human Sciences
Title Page
Table of Contents
Rational and Evaluation for the concentration
Rationales and evaluations and samples as in Volume 2
Reflective Paper for HS
Human Sciences bibliography

Volume 4 – English Literature and Writing
Title Page
Table of Contents
Rational and Evaluation for the concentration
Rationales and evaluations and samples as in Volume 2
Reflective Paper for EL&W
EL&W bibliography

Volume 5 – Senior Project and Index to the Degree
Title Page
Table of Contents
Rational and Evaluation for the senior project
Senior Project
Reflective Paper and Future Plan for “Composing the Human Experience”
CHE bibliography
Final Index : Chronology of work; Themes, keywords, etc; Instructors

Someday in the not too distant future, it is going to be very satisfying to look at my shelf and see these five little volumes. "That is my degree," I'll say to myself. "Right there in those books. That's what I did."

Record keeping is just about my worst thing, so I'm glad they're making us do it. The only time I really panicked during this course was at the revelation that we had to hand in a contract for keeping on track with the plan.

We were brainstorming ideas for staying on top of such a large project over the course of a few years, and the very organized lady two tables over suggested marking our calendars for updating our portfolios each quarter. I said, "Will you mark it on your calendar to call me and tell me to do it?"

She is a very nice lady. I'll be getting to know her because she took me seriously. And she won't just be calling me. I'll be showing her what I've got so far and discussing changes and tweaks at the end of every quarter. When she gave me her card I saw that she is an executive assistant in real life, so she knows how to keep track of idea people.

And now I'm thinking about book bindings.