I’m kind of freaked out about French. We’re doing review – today and next class, and then we’re jumping into the new stuff. We did some conjugation of exceptions to the 3 regular verb groups, and negations, and a little bit of passe compose. All of those things are cool, it’ll take a bit of effort, but I’ll not have trouble getting back into the groove of it. What worries me is the little stuff – things like “un” changing to “de” when you negate – I wish I new more about english grammar, so that I could better understand why these things happen – or at least understand the who direct and indirect business. That stuff doesn’t come as second nature to me – simply because I was never formally taught it. If I ever had an english grammar class, I must have blocked it from my memory. I need to discover something that fills in the holes – because I think I need the filling in order to really do this French thing.
Philosophy promises to, if nothing else, be entertaining. Professor does not like when her students disagree with her. It’s interesting to see how each student handles being shot down – some shut down completely, other’s get nasty – it’s pretty entertaining actually. The article we had to read was very interesting. It was about Pacifism, Realism, and Just War Theory. The reading wasn’t difficult – and managed to hold my attention. We were assumed at the beginning of class that the reading would not be getting any easier, and that if we found this reading at all difficult, then we’d best drop the class, because it was going to be too hard.
Math- ok. Pretty boring. Pretty much the same as Monday. He writes something on the board, writes an example to show the new concept in practice, and the writes a problem for us to do. He walks around the looks at every single person’s work, to ensure they’re doing it correctly, and then writes the answer on the board. And then moves on to the next concept. Repetitive… or consistent? I think it’s safe to say this fellow is the least likely of my teachers this semester to throw me for a loop.
Lit is good – No ring today, I wonder why… Somehow I ended up right next to the professor – not a fan of that spot. I can’t pay him the attention I would like to without feeling like I’m staring at him. Anyway. We read William Carlos Williams’ Use of Force, for class. It’s a super short story – like 5 pages. We did what’s called “close reading” – which I don’t actually think is anything special, it’s just a way to convince people to analyze the text more closely. The conversation took an odd turn, in my opinion – it seemed like the whole class was ganging up on the doctor. What I didn’t get a chance to say in class I’ll say here. I don’t think the story is being geared towards any particular person or audience. I think it isn’t being told at all. I think, instead, it is a look into the inner thoughts of a doctor. The things we (people) think are a far cry from the things we say. The way the human mind works is an utter mystery, and it is our moral raising that tells us how to treat these thoughts. The doctor says these things – but he’s not saying them, he’s thinking them. Forcing the little girl to open her mouth, so that he can see whether or not she’s sick, different thoughts are bound to start running through his mind – how a mind runs is not open for judgment – only how a person chooses to act is.
So there you have it, week one – I’m excited for two of them, and can definitely tolerate the other two. Lets hope things continue on in this way!
Kathryn
