I'm liking my class schedule for the new semester.

Monday morning is Mass Media Law and Ethics which should be exactly what it sounds about. The professor is from the university's law faculty and will teach us about what mass media can and can't do legally. She'll also cover last year's new Thai constitution, which was removes many of the old loopholes and makes it harder for businesses and government officials to interfere with journalists.

On Monday afternoons I have a class I think I'm really going to enjoy. Corporate Relationship Management is taught by Dr. Peeraya, a BU and Ohio U. graduate, who has spent the last 15 years helping BU to become the best school for Communication Arts in Thailand. For this class, our professor will advising as our whole class forms a team to plan and run a public relations plan for the college. This means designing media, writing press releases, purchasing advertising, and planning a promotional event: meaning the students are in charge of the schools PR activities.

Tuesday was canceled last week. I guess the professor couldn't make it. Special Topics in Communication sounds very interesting and possibly interactive, but I'll have to wait a couple more days to know for sure.

Seminar in Communication, Wednesday afternoon, is very interesting but I haven't had very good luck with this professor. Last year she gave my group's 30+ hours of interviews, library research, and 20 page paper, a D+ because we didn't have pretty pictures. I'm suspicious of professors who give grades on looks not content, but eh, I'll just try to spend more on leather bindings for my report this term. Seminar in Comm. is 5 seminars that groups from the class will plan and produce. We can contact anyone from the communication arts community: meaning journalists, political campaign managers, actors, advertising agents, public relations officers, and anyone else really. Each group has positions like secretaries, photographers, even caters! My group elected me to be master of ceremonies for our seminar; the last one of the semester.

Marketing Communication, on Thursday afternoon, is hands-down the most boring class on my schedule. Marketing communication is an important skill and should be very useful in a business environment, but something about this professor and classroom makes it hard concentrate. We spent half our first period doing hand counts of what majors everyone was from and whether or not they had ever studied communication. The professor later explained he knew his class was a required Comm. Arts course, but just wanted to make sure they're weren't any Marketing kids there by mistake.

Saturday (today) was a little complicated. My original class, Global Perspectives on International Issues, was pretty cool but nobody else thought so. Having only 4 students enrolled, the class was frozen. But not before we got one lecture out of it. An official (His Excellency) from the European Union spoke to a class packed with "dummy" students about EU-Thai relations specifically economic ones. I'll post the speaker's full title here once I find the correct spelling. The trade agreements and official positions he talked about were rather monotonous; it was the questions period that was most interesting.

The speaker explained the camps on the Thai-Burmese border where the EU spends approx. 40 million Euro a year to house Karen refugees, because Thai politicians want nothing to do with them. "This is a serious human rights violation that Thailand chooses to avoid". I found it most interesting that the EU Commission chooses not to talk publicly about this issue, to protect the image of Thai politicians. Another problem is the instability in Southern Thailand, where native Islamic groups want out of Thai-government rule. "What instability? Everything is perfectly stable." insist Thai cabinet ministers. Very interesting lecture, too bad there won't be any another.

With Saturday free and a 4,600 baht refund to put towards tuition, I popped into the Computer Graphics and Multimedia major's Digital Photography which my pals Ton and Ying are taking. The class was an extra $140, the professor is an attendance Nazi, and the computer lab could have been one of the nicer ones, but I am thrilled I finally get to take a class I've waited 3 years for. The class has no midterm and only final weighted at 10% of the total grade. Most of the grade is photo assignments and projects. We should have a field trip at some point too.

The 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th of this month I may be shooting photos of a corporate seminar for a major Thai Bank (can't say the name) more details later. Mid-February I may have a job on the other side of the lens, as an extra in a Korean war movie being shot in Thailand! Ha. That would be fun.