Because I’m in my second year as a graduate design student, half of my course load is taken up by my thesis project and paper (note to self: start working on those). The two classes I’m currently signed up for are Social Web with Jason Hong and Robert Kraut, and Designing for Service with Shelley Evenson.

About one minute into the social web class this morning I decided it wasn’t for me. It felt like covered ground. And there was some Drupal component, which really turned me off, having developed the International Transplant Nurses Society site with said open source CMS. So I plan to drop it.

For the service class, we’re first looking at redesigning the TSA security experience at airports. And then we’re doing a project with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. We will get more info on the latter project next week. Shelley managed to pull out her iPhone during the lecture as a prop, which made me laugh (inside).

To make up for the dropped social web class, I’m trying to get an independent study rolling with Kristin Hughes, Stacie Rohrback, and Dan Boyarski working on strengthening my composition and type skills. If that fails, I may take intro to industrial design fundamentals (a mini) and Performance Text, a mini with Kristin Hughes the second half of the semester.

Or I could take Design Methods with Richard Buchanan. But 8:30 am, Friday?