Class Introductions || 2023 Fall Semester

[Elena Galatas]

Salutations, my brave travelers! Welcome to this year's voyage into the various ruins of certain societies!

Throughout the course of this class, we'll be traveling into the worlds of the more popular dystopian universes that have been published in the last decade or so, specifically The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, and Divergent. We're only going to be discussing the first novel in each series, but hopefully this class will serve as an encouraging spring board into reading the rest of the novels. They're all great novels, and I highly suggest reading them. We'll also be discussing the films that were made in respect to each series; though, given how much I tend to ramble on about each one, we won't be going into too much depth in regards to the films.

I've decided to change up a little bit this year when it comes to the forums; instead of having one class topic where each new term new students can introduce themselves, I've decided to create a new topic each term. Granted, most of my travelers don't interact too much with one another (shy creatures, like myself, I've found), but it's a bit easier for me to keep up with conversations if I split the forums up for each semester. In terms of the class, the only slight change I'm making is that I will be submitting points all together now (all as Assignment 1 or 2, etc) instead of separately (Homework 1, Extra Credit 1, etc) like I had been in the past.

All that being said, this is going to be the new topic for this term where you can all introduce yourselves for the first assignment.

[Elena Galatas]

I suppose I should go first for this whole introductory thing. First thing you should know about me? I hate introductions. I'm so freaking awkward, I hate having to write about myself . But anyway.

My name is Elena Galatas. I'm a perpetual seventh year Ravenclaw. I've been one for...a while now. I joined back in 2009, and I've been around ever since. I'll get around to graduating eventually, I suppose. I figure they'll force me to graduate eventually rofl.

Usually I just sort of copy and paste my introduction because it's not entirely different, at least in terms of interests, but my last introduction is quite old so I figured I might as well tweak it and write a new one. As I said above, I'm a proud member of Ravenclaw house, but I'm also a proud member of our house's Quidditch team! You can usually find me playing Chaser, but I'll occasionally be in the roles of Keeper or Seeker if we're lacking players.

Outside of HOL, I'm a 35 year old fandom nerd who lives in northern Tennessee, but I grew up in south Florida; and I know I'm old - please don't remind me rofl! I love pretty much all things fandom, but my biggest fandoms are Harry Potter (of course), Supernatural (or anything Jensen Ackles), Marvel, DC Comics, The Witcher, Doctor Who, and Once Upon A Time. There are quite a few more, but it's late and those are the ones that come to mind first lol. Honestly, almost anything you can think of that's nerdy (not all, but most) I will likely be a fan of. I'm also a complete bibliophile, but right now my TBR list is over 1,000 books, and I'm currently reading about six different novels that are pretty much all different so don't ask me what I read most of . That being said, two of my favorite genres are romance and dystopian literature; obviously since I'm teaching a class on dystopian literature ha. I also have two more classes - one surrounding the tv show Once Upon a Time and one surrounding the series The Hunger Games - that are in the works, but it may be a bit before I can actually get everything set up.

When it comes to a work-life balance, I pretty much just work and don't have much of a life. Like most millennials lol. I work full-time as a resolution specialist in the Group Medicare department for Aetna Health; I don't generally sleep a whole lot during the days that I work, so I tend to catch up on sleep on my days off. If I disappear for a day or two, I'm probably sleeping lmao.

All that rambling aside, I think that's enough about me! You can always ask questions if you'd like to know more, but let's hear about y'all. ^.^