New Graduate Students

I get to meet with our new graduate students today at their orientation. I'm kind of excited about it. We've got a pretty large class this year--11 students (which is larger than we've had since I've been here). Three of those students are part of our accelerated Master's program, where students take graduate classes during their senior year and finish a bachelor's and master's degree in 5 years. At first, I wondered if this wouldn't be seen as the easy way to get a master's degree, but having watched students go through it last year, I think it's quite a bit tougher than the traditional way. Whereas a traditional student might be taking a minimal load and adjusting to the increased expectation of graduate school, these students are taking 15 or 16 hours as well as completing graduate requirements in some of those classes. I teach a communication theory that is usually the first class that our master's students take. I'm not particularly looking forward to grading that many papers for the class, but I am very excited about the prospects for discussion--from everything I've heard, it should be a pretty lively group.