Snippits of my life.
Yeah, I think you all saw this coming. I really can't be bothered to update all that often, but since stuff is actually happening to me, this entry is super long. Compromise?
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I am back in Japanese--someone else dropped a few days after I was barred from enrolling, so it's been eating up a lot of my time. For example, I am now expected to know both hiragana and katakana, the two phonetic alphabets of the Japanese language. It's been like three weeks, you guys. I didn't even learn the English alphabet that fast.
Again, though, I am super enjoying myself. Maybe everyone in CCS Literature is a super secret masochist, but it is definitely so with me. I bang my head against walls trying to learn stuff in time for quizzes, but when the quizzes are over, I... want to learn the stuff anyway? Like, even if my grade is logged as very poor, it doesn't really matter, because learning the language is more important than passing the class. Let me tell you, this was not the case in Spanish, and Spanish was way easier. It's like I'm responsible, which doesn't make much sense to me.
Also A-sensei remains adorable. Background: "Kasa" means "umbrella" in Japanese. We also have a "Casa-san," or "Miss Casa," in our class. Therefore, whenever an umbrella is part of a practice dialogue, this happens (brackets mean it is in Japanese):
A-sensei: [Right! Now, where is this umbrella!] Any volunteers?
Class: ...
A-sensei: Casa-san... hee hee hee! [Where is this umbrella?]
Casa-san: ...[The umbrella--]
A-sensei: Hee hee hee!
It's pretty great
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Here's what I didn't know: apparently, within the College of Creative Studies Literature major, there are huge divides and social strata. Odd, because everywhere else people are just generally friendly with each other.
As an example of the latter, yesterday I was sitting and eating alone in the Carillo dining commons, and one of the chefs sat down across from me and struck up a conversation. I learned a lot about him--how he recently visited his parents in Mexico, how his five brothers and three sisters all live around Goleta and hang out over the weekends, how he works two jobs just to be able to live around here--and as we were talking, I realized two things: a) once again, I am so extremely lucky to be where/who/as financially stable as I am, and b) once again, everyone is just another person. This man was forty years old, Mexican and a chef, but that didn't stop him from being friendly and curious about an 18-year-old white college student. It was nice, to be able to ask about his life and answer his questions about mine--it's the sort of social scenario that rarely happens because of my own social anxieties... the Berkeley Disease, I guess I could call it. I want to come across as genuinely curious as opposed to "Oh, you're Mexican?! How exotic and exciting! Tell me all about your quaint little customs." It's the difference between being interested and being patronizing, and I can never be sure which I'm being.
To elaborate on the former, today I met with my educational advisor for the second time. His name is J. Donel, and he happens to also be the head of the Literature department in CCS. I was intrigued by him before we had ever met, both because next quarter he is teaching a Shakespeare class I'm going to take and because a lot of people have problems with the way he is trying to change CCS Literature. He is of the "eat your beets" school of thought: students should be allowed the freedom to choose a lot of their classes, but they should also have more requirements beyond the Big Three (Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton). I see where he is coming from, but I am personally of the "write the book you want to read" camp, which revolves around the idea that you cannot "teach" creative writing, nor should you. Therefore, personally, I would appreciate it if requirements were kept to a minimum.
What I didn't know was that the reasont the Literature department is in such disarray is because the man that founded the college--I remember his name as Moloch, but of course that isn't right--hated a lot of the English professors at UCSB, and made his Literature courses more of a reaction to what he percieved as stilted and terrible than, you know, actually a good idea in and of itself. Professor Donel is of the opinion that "colleges should be based on a central philosophy, not an ideology," and a lot of the Literature major remains unchanged and, frankly, incredibly unfocused because that is the way it has always been. Most of the Literature staff are afraid of change because hey, no one likes establishing no-fun rules for themselves.
I don't know where I come down on this, actually. All I know is that I want to start a student forum to get other students involved. This may be my downfall, since that sort of thing takes a lot of time and invites a lot of ridicule, but I'm a college student. This is exactly what I should be doing.
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I am already deciding what courses I want to take Winter quarter, possibly because I am insane, but also because registration opens on October 24th for some bizarre reason. Here they are:
Japanese 2
Shakespeare in CCS
Finishing Writing Projects in CCS (hahaha, this course was made for me)
~*~SOMETHING ELSE~*~
This fourth class could honestly be anything at this point. Looking through the general catalog is like looking through a menu of food from heaven, concieved by God with me personally in mind. Here are the candidates:
Representations of Sexuality in Modern Japan
Queer Textuality
Science Fiction (I am not making this up, this is an actual course I could take for credit, I love college)
Sapphistries
Language in Linguistics
Language in Society
From Ape to Cyborg: New Debates on Human Nature (as in, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: The Class")
Religions in Mongolia
I don't know what's offered every quarter, and I'm sure that I could eventually take all of these no problem, but which one do I want first? Feel free to pick my brain about this, because I am actually having a hard time deciding and it's difficult to see the forest for the trees on this one.
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In other news, I currently have a runny nose. I am praying it is due to staying up until one in the morning for fun. If not, I may end up missing class due to being a sicky, which sucks more than I can possibly describe. Keep your fingers crossed for me!