An unsettling tale...
Unsettling most of all to myself, but the reader may not choose to sympathize.
The Histories:
In the past month, there have been a few interesting, contrasting, and sometimes irritating series of discussion with my mother. These conversations have covered all sorts of topics, none of which have brought my self-esteem lower than the most recent.
The Tragedies:
The last time I spoke with her, earlier today, my mother asked me about the class switch I had mentioned in an e-mail. I was enrolled in a class called Hearts of Darkness: Literary Journeys to the Congo, which sounded plenty interesting and had been highly recommended to me. It turns out that I was not happy with the literature I was reading and I was not prepared to be in a 20+ person, discussion-based class. So I looked at my options for switching. There were two: Chem 107, which is known to have lab well into the night and sounds far too stressful for me after last block, and a music class called Splendor of the Baroque, which is essentially a history class with some basic theory tossed in for good measure. Since I've never studied music (so I lie: I did do a few months of harmonica), I thought I'd give try it out.
So this morning, after e-mailing my professor from Hearts of Darkness to tell her I might not be in class today, I dropped in to talk to the professor of Splendor and decided to sit in and see how I liked it. Well, I love the music, no shock there, and I wasn't aware that it was a history class prior to walking in. So I decided to drop the colonial racism of Hearts of Darkness, and I enrolled officially in Splendor. When I called my mother this evening to tell her how exciting this is and how fun it is to be learning something about music through history, the only comment she had was that she was disappointed in me and disapproved of the fact that I had switched into the class that Ella is in.
The Comedies:
Once I had decided that I didn't like the class I was in I went online and checked out what was open. I ended up with Chem 107, Splendor, and some two block classes that would have prevented me from going to St. Petersburg. Ella encouraged me to visit her class, since I was really not happy with mine, but, having not studied music before, I didn't think I would like the class. Needless to say, I was wrong. The professor is lively and fun (instead of super-intense like the one from Hearts of Darkness and Alexei from last block); the history is not depressing like that of the Congo, but instead full of fun little facts (like that Bach had 20 children: 13 with one wife and 7 with the other); and last, I don't have to deal with 20+ people thinking they're intelligent or clever by saying that one of the chief natural resources to be exploited in the Congo was oil, or that the American Government's tendency to force western civilization onto the unwilling "third-world" is simply part of our culture and that we think people should be just like us. Since it irritates me, allow me to rebuke both those.
1st - The two major natural resources exploited in the Congo during the Belgian colonization, were rubber and ivory, not necessarily in that order.
2nd - I'm not sure if it's worse to say that Americans are racist, and don't like people with different colored skin, or to say that Americans naturally feel like eradicating other cultures. On the one hand, being racist means that Americans mistreat certain people because of the way they look, which means less rights and increased challenge to do something useful with their lives. On the other hand, the desire of Americans to destroy other cultures means that we have to try to convert them and make them think our way, or kill them. Both of those are theoretical situations because I could never agree that all Americans fit in either of these categories.
The Poems:
So my mother called me dumb on the phone today and said things like "I highly disapprove, but it's already done and who am I to judge." Now come on people, this is crap. I don't need to hear this, and I don't apprecciate my mother playing games such as "I'm going to make you feel like crap, even though there isn't a point to it." <-- Compare that to the first quote. Anywho, I don't like feeling as though my mother doesn't trust me to make decent decisions, most of all because I don't know why. This is a continuing trend in the past couple of weeks, and I'm sick of it.
The Sonnets:
(Sorry, he ran out of steam and his room-mate wants to go to bed.)
I will try to not live at home this summer and maybe that will help me, but right now I'm sick of this lack of trust.
/vent
The Histories:
In the past month, there have been a few interesting, contrasting, and sometimes irritating series of discussion with my mother. These conversations have covered all sorts of topics, none of which have brought my self-esteem lower than the most recent.
The Tragedies:
The last time I spoke with her, earlier today, my mother asked me about the class switch I had mentioned in an e-mail. I was enrolled in a class called Hearts of Darkness: Literary Journeys to the Congo, which sounded plenty interesting and had been highly recommended to me. It turns out that I was not happy with the literature I was reading and I was not prepared to be in a 20+ person, discussion-based class. So I looked at my options for switching. There were two: Chem 107, which is known to have lab well into the night and sounds far too stressful for me after last block, and a music class called Splendor of the Baroque, which is essentially a history class with some basic theory tossed in for good measure. Since I've never studied music (so I lie: I did do a few months of harmonica), I thought I'd give try it out.
So this morning, after e-mailing my professor from Hearts of Darkness to tell her I might not be in class today, I dropped in to talk to the professor of Splendor and decided to sit in and see how I liked it. Well, I love the music, no shock there, and I wasn't aware that it was a history class prior to walking in. So I decided to drop the colonial racism of Hearts of Darkness, and I enrolled officially in Splendor. When I called my mother this evening to tell her how exciting this is and how fun it is to be learning something about music through history, the only comment she had was that she was disappointed in me and disapproved of the fact that I had switched into the class that Ella is in.
The Comedies:
Once I had decided that I didn't like the class I was in I went online and checked out what was open. I ended up with Chem 107, Splendor, and some two block classes that would have prevented me from going to St. Petersburg. Ella encouraged me to visit her class, since I was really not happy with mine, but, having not studied music before, I didn't think I would like the class. Needless to say, I was wrong. The professor is lively and fun (instead of super-intense like the one from Hearts of Darkness and Alexei from last block); the history is not depressing like that of the Congo, but instead full of fun little facts (like that Bach had 20 children: 13 with one wife and 7 with the other); and last, I don't have to deal with 20+ people thinking they're intelligent or clever by saying that one of the chief natural resources to be exploited in the Congo was oil, or that the American Government's tendency to force western civilization onto the unwilling "third-world" is simply part of our culture and that we think people should be just like us. Since it irritates me, allow me to rebuke both those.
1st - The two major natural resources exploited in the Congo during the Belgian colonization, were rubber and ivory, not necessarily in that order.
2nd - I'm not sure if it's worse to say that Americans are racist, and don't like people with different colored skin, or to say that Americans naturally feel like eradicating other cultures. On the one hand, being racist means that Americans mistreat certain people because of the way they look, which means less rights and increased challenge to do something useful with their lives. On the other hand, the desire of Americans to destroy other cultures means that we have to try to convert them and make them think our way, or kill them. Both of those are theoretical situations because I could never agree that all Americans fit in either of these categories.
The Poems:
So my mother called me dumb on the phone today and said things like "I highly disapprove, but it's already done and who am I to judge." Now come on people, this is crap. I don't need to hear this, and I don't apprecciate my mother playing games such as "I'm going to make you feel like crap, even though there isn't a point to it." <-- Compare that to the first quote. Anywho, I don't like feeling as though my mother doesn't trust me to make decent decisions, most of all because I don't know why. This is a continuing trend in the past couple of weeks, and I'm sick of it.
The Sonnets:
(Sorry, he ran out of steam and his room-mate wants to go to bed.)
I will try to not live at home this summer and maybe that will help me, but right now I'm sick of this lack of trust.
/vent