The Omen (minus Gregory Peck, now with juggling)

I just found this site last night, but I really could have used it the past two years, and especially the current semester. Luckily I save all the emails so maybe if people aren’t posting much on break I’ll relieve myself of my backlog of frustration. I really don’t know where to begin – I unfortunately had a great spring semester class. This is unfortunate because each class after seems like the worst one ever. I thought nothing would beat summer, but the current bunch...In trying to figure out where to begin a friend told me I must post about “the juggler.” As it was the first ridiculous email I received from a student this semester (and perhaps the most ridiculous email I've ever received from a student), I agree that it may be a good starting point, and now consider it a harbinger for the semester.

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Halloo Professor! This should be both a good and a lousy getting-to-know-you email, since it's both to introduce myself and ask a favor before the class even starts ;) I'm a returning student, 28, a full-time circus artist who moved to Hamsterville to take advantage of the immense circus community and artistic economy in the TriHamster Area. As I was moving, my father alerted me to a sudden and unexpected inheritance from a distant relative that would send my little sister and me back to university.

So now I'm back in school, hoping to transfer into a kinesiology program. My desire to study kinesiology is manifold:

• to uncover the mechanics of the human body so as to push the maximum potential for myself and other movement artists
• to figure out how fundamental principles of motion (spin, isolation, etc) apply to the human body, and vice versa
• to help prevent my body from falling apart so I can continue this unbelievable career for as long as possible
• to provide myself a career once my body inevitably does fall apart, likely by vicariously enabling other performers

As my transfer degree from HU is only mostly good in Hamsterville, I'm currently fulfilling IGETC requirements for HSU's Kinesiology department while also finishing up general undergrad requirements that didn't transfer from my CC in Hamster Town (like weird math credits). Sooo there's that. I never knew I'd like science until *after* school (public school, huzzah), which is why I'm taking Hamster Kinesiology now. I just aced Chem 30A (I didn't take 1A because I lacked the math credit, cue sad trombone), and I'm really excited to study HamKin something fierce. I'm always off in the woods marveling about fractal plants and weird molds, so the good news is that you've got an eager student in me...

So that's the good news; here's the sticky situation. As a performing artist who claims the TriHamster Area as a stomping ground, a day's work can often fall 1000 miles from home. For instance - I just finished a term paper for a summer class while touring through the UK, and I'm currently writing from a flat full of fire spinners in Hamster Union while on my way to the Hamster Union Juggling Convention (possibly the biggest juggling convention in the history of the universe). Fortunately, I am often as good at balancing my schedule as I am at balancing objects; I had to miss two weeks of labs in Chem in the springtime due to a booking error between gigs in Hamster Island and Hamster Isle, and still pulled an A in the course.

I don't expect to miss much class at all during the Fall term, since the weekend is kind of my work week when I'm not on tour. However, there's one festival that doesn't fall on the weekend that I'd most like to make: Burning Man. While that may sound frivolous, it's one of the country's most prominent circus conventions, and missing out on it is kind of a bad career move (for instance, a significant chunk of my trailer was filmed there). It falls during the second week of Fall semester.

I'd already expected to skip, knowing that I'm taking a lab class (and probably always will be for as long as I'm in school) and I tend to avoid betting on a professor's tolerance for students trying to balance school with other parts of life. But you seem pretty flexible and hip and all (flattery will get you everywhere, right?), so I'm writing in hopes that there's some way that I can somehow make up or at least compensate for missing the third and fourth days of class. Please don't let me give the impression that I'm unaware of the elaborate setup that lab work entails, or of the scaffolding that will be done on those lessons - but if there's any way I can reproduce results at home or otherwise catch up on the concepts or bust out some extra credit or somesuch, I'm more than happy to do what I can (or a little bit more, since that's the story of the returning student anyway).

If it's completely out of the question, I haven't yet made any commitments to go. But I'm now facing savage peer pressure from my network of colleagues, who will all be operating the most prominent camp of fire spinners there (no exaggeration). I've got an offer to buy a friend's spare ticket, a lucky opportunity on the first year BM has sold out; and if I go, then Vulcantown will no longer have to write the contact juggling classes off its schedule. If the stars weren't seeming to align on this one, I wouldn't be writing, but luck seems to be conspiring on my behalf this time so I'm coming you to with this request for temporal amnesty.

I'll be a little hard to reach in the coming week, but apparently there's wifi next to the juggling convention so I should be getting to email. One way or another, I'm looking forward to class - I'm back from a six-week Hamster Union tour on August 22nd, ready to hit the ground running. See you in a few weeks!