Online classes

I am taking english online. The jury is still out on whether that was a good idea or not. On one hand, some of the questions I have to answer are completely inane.

Examples:

• Write a very long, dry sentence about a subject you are studying in another class.
  
• Here is a riddle: What has a head upon which many can stand, but which cannot stand on its head? Any guesses?
  
• What is mustard, botanically? Look it up in Encarta.
  
• Open any other novel or short story book, at random, and select a line of dialogue. Copy it into your journal and then add this sentence: "And the moral of that is..."
  
• Name 3 characters from this paragraph (from an article. Not a story. These characters were VERY briefly mentioned), and explain how they are like fairy tale creatures. What do you think a fairy tale creature is?
• Do you like the extended metaphor used in this selection?

But on the other hand, other questions encourage intelligent thought and discussion of the topic at hand. And our reading/listening/watching materials so far include:

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland- Lewis Carroll
• The Little Girl and the Wolf- James Thurber (You have to read it. Here's the link: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/quotes/picnicba.html It's like two paragraphs total. But it's so worth it.)
• Grammar Girl Podcast (yeah, it's about grammar. But so far it's actually pretty clever, and not dull. And it's a podcast. Podcasting in general is awesome.)
• A TED video of David Eggers giving a presentation about his AWESOME writing workshop/pirate supply store/publishing company

So it has its pros and its cons. I'll reserve judgment as to whether I like it or not 'til a bit later.