I would not be concerned about getting a headstart- it will all be explained in class. My university uses its own functional language Opal:
http://uebb.cs.tu-berlin.de/~opal/ocs/doc/html/index.htmlThe reasons were twofold:
a) give students a strong foundation in logical thinking
b) level the playing field so that long-time C/Java programmers don't have an advantage over other students
Sorry for being cynical, but I don't think functional languages have a reason for existence outside of academia & research. Particularly in computer games you want performance and control. Neither of which is provided by functional languages. The one thing I did like about Opal was its support for lambda functions- but that I can get with Boost on C++ as well.
Enjoy the course and the language, but don't expect to use much of it beyond the current semester.
