Poll Results, Post the First
So the first post will be about classes and jobs; the post about Japan House will come after we've had our second house meeting where we're going to hash out some issues. (That's why it's not first even though it got the most votes.)
I guess I'll start by saying that I'm dropping my fifth class, American Poetry with Prof. Stitt. It's not that I don't like the professor or the subject. I do, in fact, like poetry very much. It's that I can't keep up with the workload Stitt assigns. He wants us to write what amounts to a mini-paper at least four times a week, and they're due every Thursday. On top of that, he never really taught how to write them, as he wants us to analyze meter and rhyme to a level far beyond what I've ever done before. He doesn't teach anything in class--not a single thing. He's entertaining and has a certain kind of dry humor that makes me giggle for nearly the entire class, but he never teaches a single thing. These two things together have made me realize that there is simply no way that I can keep up with this class, and it's just draining me emotionally and physically, so I'm dropping the class.
Japanese for the first time since 102 is actually enjoyable. There are only two people in the class, myself and Brian Garvy. It's nice because Yip-sensei restructured the class about four times in the first week and half in order to meet our needs and desires. It also means that he's moving a lot slower, which really benefits us because it means we actually get taught in class instead of just going over things and blazing ahead with our shaky knowledge. When we have questions, they get answered and we really understand things before moving on. It's great to have such individualized attention, because things like our pronunciation and my inablity to say more than one "r" sound at a time are getting addressed, and I'm already getting more confidence in using this language. Yip-sensei and I are also getting along without any awkwardness, which makes me happy, too. (In case you missed the fiasco of last year: Yip-sensei used to be my advisor, but we clashed so I switched to Hogan-sensei. This made things a little awkward as Yip-sensei was teaching two classes I was taking at the time and this is first time I've had him as a teacher since then. I was worried about taking this class with just me, Brian and Yip-sensei.) All of this is working out nicely because I'm planning to take the Japanese Language Profenciency Test this December. I'm aiming for level three, which I think I can do if I work at it. On Wednesdays, Brian and I meet with Yip-sensei privatly for half of the class each, so Yip-sensei and I are taking that time to go over the extra kanji and gammar. Overall, I'm pretty happy with Japanese.
Queer Eye on America is the Women's Studies class I'm taking, even though I swore I would never take a WS class. It fulfills both my second IDS requirement and the domestic/conceptual one, which are both really hard to come by, so. I'm taking it. I first heard about it from Prof. Viti over the summer during tour guide boot camp for summer tour guiding. It's really interesting and I'm enjoying it, despite the...ignorance I guess is a good word? of some of my classmates. We're looking at media representations in America of the GLBTQ community. So far we've spent some time defining "queer," gender and sexuality and some of the issues surrounding those terms and what happens when ones gender and sexuality do not align. Now we've moved to media, starting with The Celluloid Closet and moving through The Wizard of Oz to But I'm A Cheerleader. It's interesting, and lot of it hits close to home for me, but sometimes it makes me angry because of the rampant stereotypes and complete ingnorance of some of my classmates. We had to give a fun fact the first day by going around and introducing ourselves. One girl said she "would love to have a gay son."
...what?
My only explanation for this is that she believes the stereotype of feminine gay men shoe shopping with their mothers and lisping. I'm still at a complete and utter lack of words for her and her "fun fact." At another point, we were talking about that woman in the Olympics who is geneticly XY, even though her testes never externally developed. One of the girls in the class said that made her a transsexual. Again: ...what? That does not make that athlete a trasanything! She never knew she was geneticaly male to begin with! You can't be transsexual or transgender without being aware of your gender and sex not matching! And these two girls never shut up and continue to entirely miss the point of the readings and movies, say things that directly contradict the things we've learned, and propogate incorrect stereotypes and basically just make me want to shake them until they develop some common sense. If you know nothing about a subject, shut your mouth, pay attention and learn something. Don't vomit anything that comes to mind. If you don't understand, ask. Don't pretend to understand if you don't; it just makes you look stupid and ignorant. As if that weren't enough, there are a guy and girl in the class who constantly interrupt the professor to argue about every little nitpicky thing that doesn't even matter. Most of the time, he's just using an examplem or making an aside; it doesn't matter. Let it go! You're taking away from the lecture and everyone else's understanding. Gah.
*deep breath*
I do, however, very much like the professor. He's pretty passionate about the subject, which is nice. He's funny, too, both in the sense of telling jokes and just in how he expresses his politics in class. He's extremely liberal, and he calls Gettysburg a very "complacent" campus. He's right, of course: there is very little political activism on campus. He keeps urging us on to be more politically active. It's unlikely to happen, of course, but I do find him funny.
Extraordinary Japanese Fiction is great. The people are awesome, the books are entertaining, the topic is pretty sweet and honestly--what class with Hogan-sensei isn't made of awesome and win? We even get Dan as a TA! Not much else to say, really. It's flippin' sweet.
My philosophy class is fascinating. I'm taking Philosophy and Human Rights with Raj, and it blows my mind every day. The material is completely new to me, and I'm enjoying learning about all of this. Most days, I just sit there and take it in. I've never said so little in a class before, but like I said, everything is new. I like the approach we're taking, that of trying to figure out where we all fall on different issues. Right now we're talking about terrorism, and terrorism and human rights. We've been studying this thing called a War-Law Hybrid Model, which is what America is using against the middle east. Basically, we're manipulating the moral and legal rules/guidlines of both war and legal proceedings in order to do pretty much whatever we want (or whatever it takes, depending on how you want to phrase it) in order to accomplish our goals in the middle east. (Which, again, differ depending on where you stand on the debate.) We're not focusing on what our goals are, or which system is best, or even what we should be doing so much. Instead, we're all talking about wether or not we agree with what our government is doing.
Today, we had the most spirited debate we've had all year. (Not to say that it was really all that spirited, but people were starting to get worked up.) To put this in context: This class is about 2/3 men and 1/3 women, which is completely reverse of every other class I've taken at Gettysburg. Additionally, it's quite a bit of political science, management and internationaltional affairs majors. The guys, by and large, are in favor of what we're doing in the middle east, and think that the terrorists give up their human rights when they kill others unprovoked (as in September 11th). This was when I realized how politically conservative Gburg is. That's a very knee-jerk "Amurricah" type of reaction. They're completely ignoring what we learned in the beginning of the course: Human rights cannot be taken away or given up, and they are an American and western idea that we have insisted upon and coerced the world into following. If we are going to make these legal and moral rules and regulations for the world, we have to stand up and follow them. If we don't, why the hell would anyone else? I'm not saying don't punish those responsible for killing others; do punish them! But we must do it in a legally and morally right fashion. This was the position the girls, all two of us who spoke up, took. It's interesting to see where we all fall on this spectrum, and it's kind of nice to have an actual debate in class. (Although I would never want to have them all the time.)
This class is really challenging me on an intellectual level, and is making me re-look at issues and how I feel about them. It's also making me want to be more involved somehow, although I'm not sure how. I'm definitly taking more philosophy classes next year, and now I'm considering taking Intro to International Relations, too.
So that's classes.
Today, I quit working for admissions as a tour guide and receptionist. I'm still there as a host coordinator, but I know right now I won't be doing that as a senior. I'm also dropping my English minor, in order to avoid another two 300-level classes next year along with with my high-level language classes I'll be taking with my senior capstone and thesis. There are a couple of reasons for all this cutting back. I have a bad habit of trying to do everything, and it nearly killed me last semseter, and I can feel a breakdown coming. It's part of the reason I spent almost on hour on the phone crying to my mother when we've never been close. I will not have another break down this year. I am going to take better care of myself, and that starts now. I'm going to have to let things go, even when I want to do them. I need to focus on my mental health and my major. So I've cleared seven hours from my schedule, more if you consider homework time.
I'm still working 11 hours a week at the LRC, but I can handle that because it's almost no work and so lets me get homework and other things done while I'm there (or rather, "here" because I'm actually at work while writing this). It's nice, and I essentially get paid to do homework and goof off, and it's a hefty chunk of money I can put towards Japan next semester. I'm still working at the Book Cellar, too. (That's not a typo--the store is underground.) It's only one day a week, and marching band keeps getting in the way of a set schedule, but it pays cash and I really need that! lol
And that's jobs.
I've got a counseling appointment for tomorrow afternoon. I'm nervous about it, but I'm going to be optimistic and I think it'll help me out. Thank you for all your well-wishing; I really appreciate it. More posts forthcoming.
I guess I'll start by saying that I'm dropping my fifth class, American Poetry with Prof. Stitt. It's not that I don't like the professor or the subject. I do, in fact, like poetry very much. It's that I can't keep up with the workload Stitt assigns. He wants us to write what amounts to a mini-paper at least four times a week, and they're due every Thursday. On top of that, he never really taught how to write them, as he wants us to analyze meter and rhyme to a level far beyond what I've ever done before. He doesn't teach anything in class--not a single thing. He's entertaining and has a certain kind of dry humor that makes me giggle for nearly the entire class, but he never teaches a single thing. These two things together have made me realize that there is simply no way that I can keep up with this class, and it's just draining me emotionally and physically, so I'm dropping the class.
Japanese for the first time since 102 is actually enjoyable. There are only two people in the class, myself and Brian Garvy. It's nice because Yip-sensei restructured the class about four times in the first week and half in order to meet our needs and desires. It also means that he's moving a lot slower, which really benefits us because it means we actually get taught in class instead of just going over things and blazing ahead with our shaky knowledge. When we have questions, they get answered and we really understand things before moving on. It's great to have such individualized attention, because things like our pronunciation and my inablity to say more than one "r" sound at a time are getting addressed, and I'm already getting more confidence in using this language. Yip-sensei and I are also getting along without any awkwardness, which makes me happy, too. (In case you missed the fiasco of last year: Yip-sensei used to be my advisor, but we clashed so I switched to Hogan-sensei. This made things a little awkward as Yip-sensei was teaching two classes I was taking at the time and this is first time I've had him as a teacher since then. I was worried about taking this class with just me, Brian and Yip-sensei.) All of this is working out nicely because I'm planning to take the Japanese Language Profenciency Test this December. I'm aiming for level three, which I think I can do if I work at it. On Wednesdays, Brian and I meet with Yip-sensei privatly for half of the class each, so Yip-sensei and I are taking that time to go over the extra kanji and gammar. Overall, I'm pretty happy with Japanese.
Queer Eye on America is the Women's Studies class I'm taking, even though I swore I would never take a WS class. It fulfills both my second IDS requirement and the domestic/conceptual one, which are both really hard to come by, so. I'm taking it. I first heard about it from Prof. Viti over the summer during tour guide boot camp for summer tour guiding. It's really interesting and I'm enjoying it, despite the...ignorance I guess is a good word? of some of my classmates. We're looking at media representations in America of the GLBTQ community. So far we've spent some time defining "queer," gender and sexuality and some of the issues surrounding those terms and what happens when ones gender and sexuality do not align. Now we've moved to media, starting with The Celluloid Closet and moving through The Wizard of Oz to But I'm A Cheerleader. It's interesting, and lot of it hits close to home for me, but sometimes it makes me angry because of the rampant stereotypes and complete ingnorance of some of my classmates. We had to give a fun fact the first day by going around and introducing ourselves. One girl said she "would love to have a gay son."
...what?
My only explanation for this is that she believes the stereotype of feminine gay men shoe shopping with their mothers and lisping. I'm still at a complete and utter lack of words for her and her "fun fact." At another point, we were talking about that woman in the Olympics who is geneticly XY, even though her testes never externally developed. One of the girls in the class said that made her a transsexual. Again: ...what? That does not make that athlete a trasanything! She never knew she was geneticaly male to begin with! You can't be transsexual or transgender without being aware of your gender and sex not matching! And these two girls never shut up and continue to entirely miss the point of the readings and movies, say things that directly contradict the things we've learned, and propogate incorrect stereotypes and basically just make me want to shake them until they develop some common sense. If you know nothing about a subject, shut your mouth, pay attention and learn something. Don't vomit anything that comes to mind. If you don't understand, ask. Don't pretend to understand if you don't; it just makes you look stupid and ignorant. As if that weren't enough, there are a guy and girl in the class who constantly interrupt the professor to argue about every little nitpicky thing that doesn't even matter. Most of the time, he's just using an examplem or making an aside; it doesn't matter. Let it go! You're taking away from the lecture and everyone else's understanding. Gah.
*deep breath*
I do, however, very much like the professor. He's pretty passionate about the subject, which is nice. He's funny, too, both in the sense of telling jokes and just in how he expresses his politics in class. He's extremely liberal, and he calls Gettysburg a very "complacent" campus. He's right, of course: there is very little political activism on campus. He keeps urging us on to be more politically active. It's unlikely to happen, of course, but I do find him funny.
Extraordinary Japanese Fiction is great. The people are awesome, the books are entertaining, the topic is pretty sweet and honestly--what class with Hogan-sensei isn't made of awesome and win? We even get Dan as a TA! Not much else to say, really. It's flippin' sweet.
My philosophy class is fascinating. I'm taking Philosophy and Human Rights with Raj, and it blows my mind every day. The material is completely new to me, and I'm enjoying learning about all of this. Most days, I just sit there and take it in. I've never said so little in a class before, but like I said, everything is new. I like the approach we're taking, that of trying to figure out where we all fall on different issues. Right now we're talking about terrorism, and terrorism and human rights. We've been studying this thing called a War-Law Hybrid Model, which is what America is using against the middle east. Basically, we're manipulating the moral and legal rules/guidlines of both war and legal proceedings in order to do pretty much whatever we want (or whatever it takes, depending on how you want to phrase it) in order to accomplish our goals in the middle east. (Which, again, differ depending on where you stand on the debate.) We're not focusing on what our goals are, or which system is best, or even what we should be doing so much. Instead, we're all talking about wether or not we agree with what our government is doing.
Today, we had the most spirited debate we've had all year. (Not to say that it was really all that spirited, but people were starting to get worked up.) To put this in context: This class is about 2/3 men and 1/3 women, which is completely reverse of every other class I've taken at Gettysburg. Additionally, it's quite a bit of political science, management and internationaltional affairs majors. The guys, by and large, are in favor of what we're doing in the middle east, and think that the terrorists give up their human rights when they kill others unprovoked (as in September 11th). This was when I realized how politically conservative Gburg is. That's a very knee-jerk "Amurricah" type of reaction. They're completely ignoring what we learned in the beginning of the course: Human rights cannot be taken away or given up, and they are an American and western idea that we have insisted upon and coerced the world into following. If we are going to make these legal and moral rules and regulations for the world, we have to stand up and follow them. If we don't, why the hell would anyone else? I'm not saying don't punish those responsible for killing others; do punish them! But we must do it in a legally and morally right fashion. This was the position the girls, all two of us who spoke up, took. It's interesting to see where we all fall on this spectrum, and it's kind of nice to have an actual debate in class. (Although I would never want to have them all the time.)
This class is really challenging me on an intellectual level, and is making me re-look at issues and how I feel about them. It's also making me want to be more involved somehow, although I'm not sure how. I'm definitly taking more philosophy classes next year, and now I'm considering taking Intro to International Relations, too.
So that's classes.
Today, I quit working for admissions as a tour guide and receptionist. I'm still there as a host coordinator, but I know right now I won't be doing that as a senior. I'm also dropping my English minor, in order to avoid another two 300-level classes next year along with with my high-level language classes I'll be taking with my senior capstone and thesis. There are a couple of reasons for all this cutting back. I have a bad habit of trying to do everything, and it nearly killed me last semseter, and I can feel a breakdown coming. It's part of the reason I spent almost on hour on the phone crying to my mother when we've never been close. I will not have another break down this year. I am going to take better care of myself, and that starts now. I'm going to have to let things go, even when I want to do them. I need to focus on my mental health and my major. So I've cleared seven hours from my schedule, more if you consider homework time.
I'm still working 11 hours a week at the LRC, but I can handle that because it's almost no work and so lets me get homework and other things done while I'm there (or rather, "here" because I'm actually at work while writing this). It's nice, and I essentially get paid to do homework and goof off, and it's a hefty chunk of money I can put towards Japan next semester. I'm still working at the Book Cellar, too. (That's not a typo--the store is underground.) It's only one day a week, and marching band keeps getting in the way of a set schedule, but it pays cash and I really need that! lol
And that's jobs.
I've got a counseling appointment for tomorrow afternoon. I'm nervous about it, but I'm going to be optimistic and I think it'll help me out. Thank you for all your well-wishing; I really appreciate it. More posts forthcoming.