I'm spamming like a madwoman, but I can't help it.
I have so many things to say today!
First, my Tuesday-Thursday classes:
Audiology is way less terrifying than I thought it might be. Most of the terror I was expecting was over two things: the fact that I was not actually signed up for the class when I went to it, and the fact that I know for a certainty that the final exam is a practical one, where you have to test somebody's hearing with the equipment in the clinic, while the professor stands there and watches and silently judges you. However, the professor was very understanding about my unknown registration problem, and told me that all I had to do was send her my student ID number and she'd put in an override allowing me to sign up. The part where she seems like a really nice person also alleviated some of my fears about the practical, although I am still freaking out in a small way.
The content of the class was not actually anything to do with, I don't know, the anatomy of the ear, or anything - it was just an introduction, lots of stuff about what audiologists do and what kinds of positions they can hold. Not fascinating, but the professor's quite funny, so it balanced out.
By contrast, I was not especially worried about World Lit, because I had the same professor for Types of Literature last year, and he was ... not exactly taxing, let's say. And I'm pretty sure I was right not to worry; he was just as calmly rambly as last year. We're supposed to read part of the Epic of Gilgamesh for tomorrow, but I've already read a lot of it - I looked it up after watching "Darmok" once. (I still hear Picard's summary in my head when I read about it.)
I did start out by going to the wrong room, but in my defense, the rooms in Lafayette are stupidly numbered, and I was one of four or five people in World Lit who did the same thing.
And Cognitive Neuroscience was the last one. I am frightened mostly of the massive amounts of memorization that I hear you have to do in Cog-Neuro; I have had the professor for it before, too, and she's very nice and easygoing.
The only goofy thing is that apparently BIOL 004 is a prerequisite for Cog-Neuro, which is why it (BIOL 004, this is) is a requirement for my major. I have not taken BIOL 004, but I was allowed into the Cog-Neuro class anyway, which gives me hope that maybe I can waive the BIOL 004 requirement, instead of having to take it in the spring after having taken the class it's a prereq for. That would be nice.
The other thing, which could totally make a post all on its own, is my roommate, B, who is driving me crazier than usual. I met her in freshman year; she was the first friend I ever made in college. She was my opposite in almost every way at the time - an outgoing, shoe-obsessed, bad-TV-loving, not-all-that-nerdy Republican. (Fortunately, she has somehow transmogrified into a socialist. Ah, the power of UVM.)
We lived together all of sophomore year and the first half of junior year, until she went to study abroad, and will be living together all of this year. And obviously I do like her, she loves Disney movies and she knows a little about Star Trek and she puts up with my dorkiness.
But man, is she driving me nuts this year. She's always had ... certain idiosyncracies, some of which I can tolerate better than others. The tendency to always have something making noise, whether it's the computer playing music or the TV playing something awful (and it's her TV, there's nothing I can do about it), I can live with; her sleep schedule is slightly offset from mine, but I can sleep with the lights on, so that's not a big deal. She likes to talk a lot; she has a tendency to get in a small fight over the phone with one parent, over something that doesn't seem to me like an especially big deal, and then hang up on them and call the other parent to complain. It's not so much that she attracts drama as that she (presumably unintentionally) generates it, by freaking out over things all the time; and she gets herself into romantic difficulties that I cannot fathom at all.
But those are nothing compared to the moments when she seriously uses the phrase "reverse racism" while describing her complete and total certainty that she was rejected from Dartmouth just so a minority could be given her spot. Or when she says things like, while watching The Producers, "Nathan Lane does such a good job playing a straight guy, you'd never know he was gay" - which at least gives me the impression that to her mind, playing a straight guy has to do with something more than being able to competently (okay, more-than-competently, it's Nathan Lane) deliver lines that reference a character's heterosexual relationships.
It throws me off like crazy, because I do like her, and I sometimes enjoy listening to her ramble about other stuff, and then suddenly there will be this mad left turn, and I'm stuck staring at her, thinking, "Jesus, how do you not know better?"
The "reverse racism" thing happened the other day; I shook my head and told her there was no such thing, because racism depends on an entrenched power difference to function. I wish I had had the presence of mind or the wits to keep explaining as best I was able, to tell her that it's impossible to "reverse" the whole thing by giving some members of the oppressed group involved a single advantage under some circumstances, to point her to some of the things I read during RaceFail that helped me start learning how to keep my own ass from showing; but at the time, I think I was just too boggled to form any complex thoughts.
The same thing happened last year when her mother came to visit. I had an enormous Obama poster on my wall that I got from my parents, and she made some kind of comment about it that led to a conversation about the presidential campaign - one where she kept saying things like she didn't like Obama because he was too much of an unknown, because he made her nervous, because she didn't know anything about his background, and I tried to keep myself from yelling at my roommate's mother. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know nearly enough about these issues, and it feels awkward to post about it with myself cast as some kind of white knight when actually it's just that I'm slightly less uninformed than B, but it's starting to bother me so much that I just can't keep my mouth shut.
But enough srs business; M, J, K, Ka, and Q will be here in a few minutes, since they've driven up to visit, so I should hit post on this monstrosity and then go meet them.
First, my Tuesday-Thursday classes:
Audiology is way less terrifying than I thought it might be. Most of the terror I was expecting was over two things: the fact that I was not actually signed up for the class when I went to it, and the fact that I know for a certainty that the final exam is a practical one, where you have to test somebody's hearing with the equipment in the clinic, while the professor stands there and watches and silently judges you. However, the professor was very understanding about my unknown registration problem, and told me that all I had to do was send her my student ID number and she'd put in an override allowing me to sign up. The part where she seems like a really nice person also alleviated some of my fears about the practical, although I am still freaking out in a small way.
The content of the class was not actually anything to do with, I don't know, the anatomy of the ear, or anything - it was just an introduction, lots of stuff about what audiologists do and what kinds of positions they can hold. Not fascinating, but the professor's quite funny, so it balanced out.
By contrast, I was not especially worried about World Lit, because I had the same professor for Types of Literature last year, and he was ... not exactly taxing, let's say. And I'm pretty sure I was right not to worry; he was just as calmly rambly as last year. We're supposed to read part of the Epic of Gilgamesh for tomorrow, but I've already read a lot of it - I looked it up after watching "Darmok" once. (I still hear Picard's summary in my head when I read about it.)
I did start out by going to the wrong room, but in my defense, the rooms in Lafayette are stupidly numbered, and I was one of four or five people in World Lit who did the same thing.
And Cognitive Neuroscience was the last one. I am frightened mostly of the massive amounts of memorization that I hear you have to do in Cog-Neuro; I have had the professor for it before, too, and she's very nice and easygoing.
The only goofy thing is that apparently BIOL 004 is a prerequisite for Cog-Neuro, which is why it (BIOL 004, this is) is a requirement for my major. I have not taken BIOL 004, but I was allowed into the Cog-Neuro class anyway, which gives me hope that maybe I can waive the BIOL 004 requirement, instead of having to take it in the spring after having taken the class it's a prereq for. That would be nice.
The other thing, which could totally make a post all on its own, is my roommate, B, who is driving me crazier than usual. I met her in freshman year; she was the first friend I ever made in college. She was my opposite in almost every way at the time - an outgoing, shoe-obsessed, bad-TV-loving, not-all-that-nerdy Republican. (Fortunately, she has somehow transmogrified into a socialist. Ah, the power of UVM.)
We lived together all of sophomore year and the first half of junior year, until she went to study abroad, and will be living together all of this year. And obviously I do like her, she loves Disney movies and she knows a little about Star Trek and she puts up with my dorkiness.
But man, is she driving me nuts this year. She's always had ... certain idiosyncracies, some of which I can tolerate better than others. The tendency to always have something making noise, whether it's the computer playing music or the TV playing something awful (and it's her TV, there's nothing I can do about it), I can live with; her sleep schedule is slightly offset from mine, but I can sleep with the lights on, so that's not a big deal. She likes to talk a lot; she has a tendency to get in a small fight over the phone with one parent, over something that doesn't seem to me like an especially big deal, and then hang up on them and call the other parent to complain. It's not so much that she attracts drama as that she (presumably unintentionally) generates it, by freaking out over things all the time; and she gets herself into romantic difficulties that I cannot fathom at all.
But those are nothing compared to the moments when she seriously uses the phrase "reverse racism" while describing her complete and total certainty that she was rejected from Dartmouth just so a minority could be given her spot. Or when she says things like, while watching The Producers, "Nathan Lane does such a good job playing a straight guy, you'd never know he was gay" - which at least gives me the impression that to her mind, playing a straight guy has to do with something more than being able to competently (okay, more-than-competently, it's Nathan Lane) deliver lines that reference a character's heterosexual relationships.
It throws me off like crazy, because I do like her, and I sometimes enjoy listening to her ramble about other stuff, and then suddenly there will be this mad left turn, and I'm stuck staring at her, thinking, "Jesus, how do you not know better?"
The "reverse racism" thing happened the other day; I shook my head and told her there was no such thing, because racism depends on an entrenched power difference to function. I wish I had had the presence of mind or the wits to keep explaining as best I was able, to tell her that it's impossible to "reverse" the whole thing by giving some members of the oppressed group involved a single advantage under some circumstances, to point her to some of the things I read during RaceFail that helped me start learning how to keep my own ass from showing; but at the time, I think I was just too boggled to form any complex thoughts.
The same thing happened last year when her mother came to visit. I had an enormous Obama poster on my wall that I got from my parents, and she made some kind of comment about it that led to a conversation about the presidential campaign - one where she kept saying things like she didn't like Obama because he was too much of an unknown, because he made her nervous, because she didn't know anything about his background, and I tried to keep myself from yelling at my roommate's mother. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know nearly enough about these issues, and it feels awkward to post about it with myself cast as some kind of white knight when actually it's just that I'm slightly less uninformed than B, but it's starting to bother me so much that I just can't keep my mouth shut.
But enough srs business; M, J, K, Ka, and Q will be here in a few minutes, since they've driven up to visit, so I should hit post on this monstrosity and then go meet them.