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ltgmarsBack at school, by the way. Four days in and I'm simultaneously excited for my final(!) semester of college (whaaaaat) and scared for my life.
Fourth-Year Japanese: I am 33.3% of the class this semester. It's going to be an adorably intimate class (holler). Also, we're reading Murakami Haruki. In Japanese. :|
Second-Year Chinese: The usual madness. I love it to bits but I failed at "keeping Chinese warm", so I have some catching up to do. Liz ended up not going abroad, which is at once heartbreaking and thrilling, because I can't help but feel sad for her when she was so ready and excited for it, but at the same time, I am swimming in warm, fuzzy thoughts about how Liz has not left me.
American Politics: Difference and Discrimination: My first ever PoliSci course! We're going to be looking at the US political system and specifically how it relates to marginalized groups -- racial minorities, the poor, homosexuals, etc. It seems interesting so far. I just wish we had a zealous and vocal conservative in the class to shake things up. I keep finding myself agreeing with all of the progressive and socially liberal things people say in class, and I just want someone to really argue with (and complain about outside of class) for a change, instead of having people mumble through hypothesized counterarguments that they don't really believe in.
Lesbian Immortal: It is what it is, yo. English class at Bryn Mawr with someone who is apparently a phenomenal professor. (She's Bri'ish and awesome.) I like her already, and I can easily see how effective she is as a professor -- she framed the course really well within the history of queer studies and articulated the trajectory of the question we're asking within the class (as well as how we're going to try to work out the answer) really well. I am so. excited. for this course, but it'll be a good deal of reading (which I'm slow at) and a kind of academic work (analysis of literature and poetry) that I'm not great at. But! I hope to learn a lot. m(_ _)m
And then, of course, there's the ever-lovely Honor Council, orchestra and chamber music, and an extracurricular reading group about the Criminal Justice System.
It's going to be a freaking fantastic last semester. I will be sleeping all summer to make up for it.
Fourth-Year Japanese: I am 33.3% of the class this semester. It's going to be an adorably intimate class (holler). Also, we're reading Murakami Haruki. In Japanese. :|
Second-Year Chinese: The usual madness. I love it to bits but I failed at "keeping Chinese warm", so I have some catching up to do. Liz ended up not going abroad, which is at once heartbreaking and thrilling, because I can't help but feel sad for her when she was so ready and excited for it, but at the same time, I am swimming in warm, fuzzy thoughts about how Liz has not left me.
American Politics: Difference and Discrimination: My first ever PoliSci course! We're going to be looking at the US political system and specifically how it relates to marginalized groups -- racial minorities, the poor, homosexuals, etc. It seems interesting so far. I just wish we had a zealous and vocal conservative in the class to shake things up. I keep finding myself agreeing with all of the progressive and socially liberal things people say in class, and I just want someone to really argue with (and complain about outside of class) for a change, instead of having people mumble through hypothesized counterarguments that they don't really believe in.
Lesbian Immortal: It is what it is, yo. English class at Bryn Mawr with someone who is apparently a phenomenal professor. (She's Bri'ish and awesome.) I like her already, and I can easily see how effective she is as a professor -- she framed the course really well within the history of queer studies and articulated the trajectory of the question we're asking within the class (as well as how we're going to try to work out the answer) really well. I am so. excited. for this course, but it'll be a good deal of reading (which I'm slow at) and a kind of academic work (analysis of literature and poetry) that I'm not great at. But! I hope to learn a lot. m(_ _)m
And then, of course, there's the ever-lovely Honor Council, orchestra and chamber music, and an extracurricular reading group about the Criminal Justice System.
It's going to be a freaking fantastic last semester. I will be sleeping all summer to make up for it.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 21:19 (UTC)I am taking Women's Studies online this semester. I have learned a lot so far- definitely an eye opener. Hopefully I will be able to keep up with the work.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 21:37 (UTC)Ah, that class sounds great (as does Women's Studies in general). Have fun with it!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 06:33 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 00:17 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 03:59 (UTC)Alex is now going to St. Mary's, I think we shall conduct a study and deliver our findings to you...
for now, though...
Students can take classes at either college (one per semester, I think, maybe more), and have access to all the various facilities of each place...
Socially...that is a rather tough question. Theoretically the relationship is equal, but from observation (both on campus and of the flocks of students scurrying along 933 every Friday and Saturday night), I'd say the relationship is a very...social and uneven one. There is a tendency of amongst ND guys especially to view St. Mary's as nothing more than a pool of potential dates (of course, I'd imagine the reverse is also true, but I'll have to ask Alex about that).
And then there is Holy Cross, the (and I think I can say this after a year there) mutant lovechild of the two campuses.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 14:07 (UTC)How do you do 2 language classes at the same time?! o__O Seriously, WOW. I would get so confused. Right now I still get confused between Japanese and Spanish haha. And only 3 people in the class? That must be pretty awesome. My class has 8 and it's in danger of being canceled for low enrollment >.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 00:19 (UTC)Juggling Chinese and Japanese isn't as bad as I expected it to be. It helps that I've been taking Japanese longer and that having that knowledge actually boosts my ability to learn Chinese. If I'd tried to start them at the same time, I'd probably be failing a lot harder than I am now, heh.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 00:21 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 04:16 (UTC)Ahh I'm guessing the kanji part is similar? And yea that makes a lot of sense. If you start learning more than one language at the same time, that would just be too confusing.
If you can do it, I should be able to do it too! I really just need to be motivated to study XD
no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 04:31 (UTC)I ate dinner tonight.
In Chinese, that would be constructed with the time at the beginning, then subject, then predicate, then object:
今天晚上我吃晚饭。
Tonight I ate dinner.
(It might be subject before time, but certainly not time at the end like it can be in English.)
And in Japanese, the word order can be pretty loose, but more likely than not, it would also have the time at the beginning:
今晩、私が晩御飯を食べた。
Tonight I ate dinner.
The object/verb placement is different, but there are some similarities. The main thing to remember is how variable word order is and where there might be differences; remembering that has helped me to at least be able to construct sentences in Chinese more successfully (and less "Chinglishy", as my professor would say) than maybe I would if I didn't have the background in Japanese.
Also, YOU CAN DO IT! :D :D :D! Hopefully your Japanese professor shows up next week, ahaha. ._.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 04:54 (UTC)Both looks so complicated considering they're just simple sentences o___O At least I can tell Chinese and Japanese apart now xD I've always wanted to learn Chinese too. But I figured I'd try to study more Japanese first, and THEN start with Chinese.
Ahaha thank you! Ganbarimasu~! Yea I really hope we'll have the class next week haha.
hayashi rice desu
Date: 2010-01-26 01:33 (UTC)i hated kanjun's character in this (terrible casting, bleh) but heh.
Re: hayashi rice desu
Date: 2010-01-27 01:10 (UTC)Look at him. D'aw.
Mm...
That is all. Hello. It seems like you're busy. Me, too.
Soulmates? :D?
Miss you. ♥
Re: hayashi rice desu
Date: 2010-01-27 01:13 (UTC)BUTTFACE. i look forward to talking to you this weekend, hotdog.*
* c wut i did there?
Re: hayashi rice desu
Date: 2010-01-27 01:40 (UTC)Also, we've talked about it before, but since you brought it up recently -- I downloaded the first few manga books of GANTZ to skim through to see if it was as bad as "they say" (since I've only really seen an episode or two of the anime and decided pretty early on that I wasn't going to like it), and it's actually, literally, the most disgusting thing I've ever read. On about 20 different levels.
I mean, obviously the movie versions are going to be cutesified, and there won't be the blood and guts and rape and all that, but it's been continuously disappointing (soul-crushingly so) that Nino has chosen to associate with something so awful, and my skim-through just reinforces that. My hope is that he hadn't actually read the series when he agreed to do the movies.
Also, ALSO -- CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH I HATE SEEING THOSE SHO AN-AN ICONS ALL OVER THE PLACE? No one wants that. (In more fun news, I sat Gabe and Harrison down to look at the pictures because I'd mentioned them to Harrison a few days before they were released, and Gabe's face, Gabe's face, ahahahahahaha. I have a picture of it. I will show you sometime.)
Lookit, we haven't talked in so long a time that I had two -- two -- things to complain about. That's a lot of pent-up irritation, coming from me.
This weekend is going to be magical.
Re: hayashi rice desu
Date: 2010-01-27 01:50 (UTC)P.S. I CANNOT WAIT TO HEAR ABOUT GANTZ I AM A MASOCHIST D:< AND DON'T FUCKING KID YOURSELF INEZ, OF COURSE HE READ IT. HE IS AN OTAKU AND LOVES MANGA AND HOLDS MISOGYNISTIC VIEWS ABOUT WOMEN. COME ON.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 17:40 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 17:55 (UTC)This afternoon, I will have gotten my thesis bound and will be preparing for my presentation tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be done later tonight?
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 18:09 (UTC)how much $ to get it bound? it's like 10000000000$ here at the library, true story. just send me a message of call me when you're done~ it's thunderstorms all day here. sigh, gloomy :'(
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 18:53 (UTC)I was talking to Harrison the other day, and he said that boy bands are blank slates of "perfect boyfriends" onto which women (and men) project their fantasies, and I was like, "They're not perfect, you know." It's frustrating that people can't seem to accept that they aren't 100% perfect. Wnd when they realize that they aren't perfect, that they subscribe to some really hurtful ideas sometimes, and that their talk of it like it's "the usual" makes it that much worse, the fangirls shoo it all away and chalk it up to their being entertainers or their being "real men" or whatever, like that makes what they say forgivable. It's really annoying.
It's times like these I think about what it is that makes me like them. I think part of it is that it's this kind of "despite it all I find them entertaining" thing, that while what I enjoy about them doesn't make up for the attitude that they're making acceptable in a society that doesn't need it, there is that give-and-take there. There's this defense mechanism, even, that people have (myself included) that involves clinging onto what you like about people as if that remedies what you don't like about them, because you don't want to not like them.
That's probably it more than anything else -- I don't want to not like Arashi. For some people it translates into not "seeing" it, or ignoring it, or chalking it up to being "real men", and maybe I fit into that category, too. For whatever reason, I take the good with the bad, and I fume and snarl and roll my eyes and shake my head, but in the end I forgive them because I like to watch them together; I find their interactions endearing; I laugh when they make fun of each other; I believe they know how to entertain. And every once in a while they say something of substance that I like, that's progressive and fresh and touching. That's what I cling to, a charm in their realism and their friendship, that ends up making it easier to take what that realism translates into sometimes.
I STILL LOVE YOU, even though I'm one of those brainwashed fangirls, ahahahahahaha shame.
I went to Staples, and they said it's $3 per book. I'm binding three copies, so $9? A drop in the bucket compared to my education, perhaps, and compared to the pairs (plural) of shoes I just bought at DSW ohgodwhydoIdothistomyself.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 19:21 (UTC)don't feel bad about what you like! you've only known me for a year, but i go through definite phases of enamoured. it's just arashi's time to step back, i think. although i do feel a lot of theings they say are ugly.
i want you to continue to be happy. more fans should be like you - rational. but they aren't. the increased talk of 'they're real men!' that i saw is a big turn off for me as well.
btw try to remind me to tell you about my decision to change my study course :D SINCE I KNOW YOU WANT TO KNOW VERY THING ABOUT ME.
edit: lol 'theings'.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 20:51 (UTC)I appreciate your critical eye, really. Since we started talking, I've come to look at things below the surface a little more thoroughly. My mother has this attitude of "what's entertainment is entertainment; why should we criticize it or analyze it?" which she brought up pretty vocally when I was talking to her about the racist/white guilt tones of Avatar. I definitely get the feeling that I used to be more like my mother in digesting things (and I still am, to a large extent), but I've really become able to see things that I didn't used to (or just ignored) since we met. So keep on phasin', girl, because -- dare I say it -- it doesn't faze me, ayukyukyuk.
So, um, yeah. I'll ask you about all kinds of theings tonight. ♥
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 18:59 (UTC)I like it. ♥ I wish I had it in me to try it sometime, but I like getting along with people too much, ahaha.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 19:17 (UTC)(hug) i love you, hotdog <3