Today I attended two classes.  The first was a grant writing course put on by the School of Socialwork, and held in the School of Education.  Most of my classmates are education or socialwork graduate students.  They are all very young.  As we went around the room introducing ourselves, each talking about what we want to be when we grow up, I felt the raw energy and the idealism of these youngsters.  They all believe they are going to change the world.  Some of them will.  All of them, in some way, will change the part of the world they inhabit.

My second class is put on by the School of Information as well as the Ford Business School.  The topic is ethics and technology.  Here most of the classmates are people I’ve had in other courses during the past year.  There is less idealism, more cynicism as we listen to stories about “incidents” which revolve around computer fraud, identity theft and more.  The objective of the class is not to learn how to do these things, but to learn how to deal with them, how to determine the undermining issues revolving around them, and how to critically think, review and supply recommendations.

Both classes are going to be a lot of work.  One of them has to go.  I was fooling myself if I thought I could handle 5 classes, work 19 hours and spend 3 hours a day commuting.  Tonight after my 5-8 p.m. class ended and I was waiting in the warm evening air for the bus (which was late) I made a decision to let the ethics class go. 

I think I want to be around some idealism for awhile.