God's Gift to Students
On starting classes yesterday, I came across a few truths about UT that I really did not expect to find. One, that the grass is ridiculously comfortable. For years I have watched the students attending the Universities of TV and Hollywood sit on the grass and read, study, have romantic dates, and play frisbee on their pristine grass. This grass never existed in Houston, and certainly never in Beaumont, where it is corse and itchy under the best circumstances. The UT grass, however is amazingly soft and inviting, drawing you to put your back up against a tree and to enjoy the sunshine. Yesterday I became one of those drawn out there and I picked a study tree to do my Arabic homework under.
I also realized how uncomfortable jeans are at UT in the summer. At Lamar, at most you were going to be outside for ten minutes if you were hiking from Cardinal Village IV, all the way to the art building, and hardly anyone ever did that. It was slightly uncomfortable, but it didn't make a huge difference because you were soon in air conditioning and forgot all about it. But at UT, or at least for me, It is much more painful to hike around in pants then in the skirt I am sporting today. They stick, and soak up sweat and are just all over you when all you want to do is to strip down and sit in a freezer. So pants: bad, skirts: amazing.
I also realized that whoever said there were no fake classes at UT was completely full of shit. I went to my Biology course yesterday (Heredity, Evolution, and Society), and it is completely fake. As far as University science experience goes, my two semesters of Physics at Lamar barely make the cut as far as difficulty. I got B's both semesters because I simply didn't put forth the effort I should have. It was pretty fair, the professors understood no one in there wanted to take it or cared about physics, but the professors both didn't care about that and pushed their subject onto the Liberal Arts kids with just as much ardor as the natural sciences. This course I'm taking now, doesn't do this at all. As much as I appreciate the easy A, and the credit towards my degree, its a little disappointing that this is all they think we are capable of. The course is entirely lecture based, with no book, no outside reading, essentially no outside preparation at all besides studying for the tests. We only have three tests and a final, and one of the tests even gets dropped. This isn't too bad, almost a normal situation, until you realize these tests are fill in the blank and matching. So essentially all I have to do is spell correctly and show up to class, and all I have is three classes of homework now.
Arabic I can already tell is going to be interesting. We have class every single day and a few hours of homework for each, but it is really going to be a fascinating process, turning the random squiggles into meaningful symbols in my mind. I started working on learning the alphabet last night, and it is very hard to try not associate it with the English alphabet, even though there is nothing that English has to compare to the sounds of Arabic. Even Ahmed the dead terrorist fails at trying to come up with it, spelling his name "A-c-phlegm..." It turns out the famous Achmed name is really "A-h-phlegm" and that h-phlegm is its own letter. I have a little bit of a head start from years of imitating Zayna, but its difficult to make heads and tails of the letters, especially when they are all linked in a word. Colleen helped though when she reminded me that at some point the English letters were just squiggles too, I just have a feeling that it is going to be harder when I don't have ABC songs, brightly colored signs, and a four year old mind.
The third class I have gone to should be pretty good, if not anything out of the ordinary. Its is the Intro to the Middle East, with a history grad student. We have a couple of quizzes, two papers, and a bunch of lectures. Its a very history based class, beginning with the Pre-Islamic Mid East(the Jahiliyyah) and going through to the end of the Ottoman Empire. It should be interesting if nothing else. We are reading a bunch of primary source documents and a book on the role of women in islam that should be pretty sweet. This is the one that I went to and said eh, its just another class. It should be hard enough to be engaging and easy enough to not be overwhelming, basically your typical good course.
I also realized how uncomfortable jeans are at UT in the summer. At Lamar, at most you were going to be outside for ten minutes if you were hiking from Cardinal Village IV, all the way to the art building, and hardly anyone ever did that. It was slightly uncomfortable, but it didn't make a huge difference because you were soon in air conditioning and forgot all about it. But at UT, or at least for me, It is much more painful to hike around in pants then in the skirt I am sporting today. They stick, and soak up sweat and are just all over you when all you want to do is to strip down and sit in a freezer. So pants: bad, skirts: amazing.
I also realized that whoever said there were no fake classes at UT was completely full of shit. I went to my Biology course yesterday (Heredity, Evolution, and Society), and it is completely fake. As far as University science experience goes, my two semesters of Physics at Lamar barely make the cut as far as difficulty. I got B's both semesters because I simply didn't put forth the effort I should have. It was pretty fair, the professors understood no one in there wanted to take it or cared about physics, but the professors both didn't care about that and pushed their subject onto the Liberal Arts kids with just as much ardor as the natural sciences. This course I'm taking now, doesn't do this at all. As much as I appreciate the easy A, and the credit towards my degree, its a little disappointing that this is all they think we are capable of. The course is entirely lecture based, with no book, no outside reading, essentially no outside preparation at all besides studying for the tests. We only have three tests and a final, and one of the tests even gets dropped. This isn't too bad, almost a normal situation, until you realize these tests are fill in the blank and matching. So essentially all I have to do is spell correctly and show up to class, and all I have is three classes of homework now.
Arabic I can already tell is going to be interesting. We have class every single day and a few hours of homework for each, but it is really going to be a fascinating process, turning the random squiggles into meaningful symbols in my mind. I started working on learning the alphabet last night, and it is very hard to try not associate it with the English alphabet, even though there is nothing that English has to compare to the sounds of Arabic. Even Ahmed the dead terrorist fails at trying to come up with it, spelling his name "A-c-phlegm..." It turns out the famous Achmed name is really "A-h-phlegm" and that h-phlegm is its own letter. I have a little bit of a head start from years of imitating Zayna, but its difficult to make heads and tails of the letters, especially when they are all linked in a word. Colleen helped though when she reminded me that at some point the English letters were just squiggles too, I just have a feeling that it is going to be harder when I don't have ABC songs, brightly colored signs, and a four year old mind.
The third class I have gone to should be pretty good, if not anything out of the ordinary. Its is the Intro to the Middle East, with a history grad student. We have a couple of quizzes, two papers, and a bunch of lectures. Its a very history based class, beginning with the Pre-Islamic Mid East(the Jahiliyyah) and going through to the end of the Ottoman Empire. It should be interesting if nothing else. We are reading a bunch of primary source documents and a book on the role of women in islam that should be pretty sweet. This is the one that I went to and said eh, its just another class. It should be hard enough to be engaging and easy enough to not be overwhelming, basically your typical good course.