Course hopping. Weather forecasting.

At the very last minute, I changed my course load for the quarter.  I dropped counseling to take Native American Psych Values.  Counseling will happen again.  I told myself that whatever I had to do, I'd take the NAPV course the first chance I got.  It's a selected topics course, meaning its one of several Psych 410 courses.  Funny thing is, my other course, human sexuality, is also a Psy 410 course.  My DARS audit is showing that these indeed will count as separate courses.

This class looks like it will be a challenge to my last quarter of classes.  Much less based in science, more in sociology.  The instuctor is also a heavy believer in concepts that lie outside of science - generations of wisdom passed down, before a world where we are told what we can and cannot take as truth.  I like the contrast.

I'm not sure what my drive is behind this decision.  I think that part of it is that I feel like I better identify with a traditional (native) culture more than the reigning one.  It's easier for me to give thanks to plants and animals and see them as part of a collective conscious than it is to pray to some invisible man in the sky.  It is easier for me to recognize time as cyclical and to make changes based on that recognition - instead of waiting for some event to fall into my lap, I know it is up to me to make something extraordinary out of each day.

With that, I'll leave you with a fabulous story told by my instructor today.

A farmer is gearing up for winter, collecting and stacking hay for his animals.  He wants to know how prepared he should be, so he asks around and is directed to speak to an old native man that lives on top of a hill.  The farmer goes up, and asks the native, "how bad is the winter going to be?"  The native looks around, out the windows, and sighs, "it's going to be a pretty rough winter."

The farmer thanks him and promptly runs back to his farm and begins stacking more hay.  He is not sure he has enough, so he returns again to inquire about the upcoming winter.  "I need to know, how bad will this winter be?"  Again, the native takes a moment to look outside.  "It's going to be pretty terrible."

The farmer returns to his farm and stacks as much hay as he can fit.  Still worried, he decides to go one more time and ask the native about the winter.  "Are you sure this is going to be a rough winter?"  The native again looks outside.  "Oh, yes, the worst one yet."  The farmer is amazed.  "How do you know all this?"  The native simply responds, "Well, I look down there at that farm and count the stacks of hay - the more bales of hay, the worse the weather.  The farmer that lives there has been creating a large stockpile over the past few days, so I think it will be a very difficult winter."