Graduate School... In the Beginning

It is Wednesday...the third day of my studies as a graduate student here at Cleveland State University.
I love philosophy. I am already rejuvenated! I am also already behind on my required reading. But besides my required reading, I have already started a mental list of what I want to read outside of class.
I am taking three 1/2 classes this semester.
First I'll explain the half, because I know that is what you are wondering about.
The 1/2 is part of my assistantship. Since its my first semester, they want me to attend all of the logic courses that I will be tutoring for--I guess so I know what I am in for and am ready for when people ask questions. It looks strangely designed, at least compared to the U of I. At Iowa, we had a 'Principles of Reasoning' course, which was basically recognizing fallacies and basic forms of valid and invalid arguments. Then we had a Symbolic Logic course which was all of the (x)(y)(Fx>Fy)) predicate logic stuff. This course is like half and half. And its arranged on the syllabus that we do the predicate logic before we do truth tables and venn diagrams and stuff. Its weird.
The first real class I am taking is called Analytic/Linguistic Philosophy, which is sort of vague. But judging by the syllabus, it is more of a course on logical positivism (Wittgenstein, Carnap, Russell). My prof was sick for that on Monday, so I'm not sure how that will be.
The second class is Theory of Knowledge, and I think it will be awesome. I don't know much about Epistemology, but its essential problems seem really interesting to me. And I have some prima facie strong opinions about attempts to 'naturalize epistemology', and also contextualism. (I think they are both serious misconceptions). Epistemology is exciting to me because in most areas of philosophy I tend to agree with the majority opinions (ethics, phil of science), but with both epistemology and phil. of mind my views would probably be categorized as 'radical'. I consider this to be good because it makes for the challenge of an uphill battle to formulate good theories. If I can create arguments for my form of interactionism, or my radical skepticism, and these theories can stand up to all attacks, I am in a good position, because in these cases I am arguing against instead of with the leading minds of the field.
The third class is a seminar on Hume and Kant. Fundamental, foundational, necessary. But hopefully it will be fun too.

I love my classes because they are small (12-18 people). There are no strictly graduate classes here, we are in a class with upperlevel undergrads, but I don't think this is bad really, as I once did. It would be pretty elitist and stupid to consider myself smarter than a senior philosophy undergrad, since I was just one like 3 months ago, wouldn't it?
Also, there are only like 10 graduate students here. Isn't that awesome? A small community. I have met 3 or 4 of them, and they seem really cool. Hopefully there will be a lot of conversation between us once I get to know them better. So far its been mostly introductions.

Being in graduate school means something else for the 3 readers of this blog; I won't bore you with politics quite as much as philosophical thoughts. I guess they are both pretty boring, aren't they?
Well, a mixture of different boring elements will be good.
So, expect an entry on skepticism and contextualism in the future, hopefully.

One little piece of news.
Thats the most recent interesting thing I have read.

And hey. I really hate Christopher Hitchens. I really do.