I feel like my brain has been violated. Like it went to work today and was sexually harassed by its boss and has no idea how to deal with the situation.
Let me give some context: the first two weeks of classes we're allowed to take whatever classes we want in order to test them out, so naturally almost all of us are choosing to take a few more than we need, at least for now. I'm taking eight or nine.
I got up at six, went for a run, got ready, left my dorm at 8, walked over with a few people, got coffee number one, tried to talk to the history department people to see if I could sign up for classes, failed to talk to the history people to see if I could sign up for classes, went to class at 9:45.
Comparative political systems. Great class, surprisingly I understood most of it just fine. The professor asked the international students to raise their hands, "okay, French students make sure to help them," he said, "and I will try to talk slow." There was a French student I knew, and a bunch of other really great people I talked to during the break. But the prof also told us the class would be difficult for international students, and it's a three-hour long lecture. And it overlaps with another class I was planning to take, which would probably count towards my major, something about populations and health.
So I left early and headed over to that class. The seats looked like they had come out of a church, the desks were covered in graffiti, some (pretty impressive) carvings of Lenin and Stalin along with the communist symbol, an all-caps HELP, a poem, etc. etc. All in all, signs that the courses taught in that class are painfully dull. And dull it was.
We looked at a map. For two hours. A map of the world, and the more populated areas were represented by specs of yellow. Where is there more yellow? Why is there more yellow? This is the population here, this is the population there. What about the peripheries, why is there more yellow there?
Why, bald French man who pronounces his T's in a way that makes it hard for me to understand you, why must you do this at us? Stop, please stop.
Before the class started he pointed at our bench (i.e. the bench that us four Americans were sitting at) and asked us our names, where we are from.
"Ola"
"Encore?"
"Ola. O-L-A."
And he just sort of waved his hand at me, which to my knowledge is the universal sign for "eh, screw it, it't not worth it," turned around and kept going. Uh...okay. I don' really like my name either but at least I respect it.
In conclusion: boring, not worth it, and, although I'll probably regret it when I get back to the UW and have to take more classes to finish up the major, I don't think I'll take it.
Next: go to Andree and ask her how to sign up for the Comparative Politics class. I went with a friend and sat in a chair. Andree comes out, takes one look at me: "Here we go again, what do you need this time? You can't come see me every day, as you can see we're too busy," and she quickly speed-walked out to go to the bathroom or something.
I did say Andree and Judith are blunt, didn't I?
But we waited and waited, talked to a French-speaking Canadian, waited some more, finally got in only to be told that we can't do it online, we need to talk to the professor whose class we had rudely left halfway through. Okay Andree, sure, why not. I'm not really expecting anything to work in a civilized fashion here anyways.
Then I ran over to the international student common area, where I was supposed to meet a girl to discuss plans for our week off an hour before (sorry), didn't get a chance to talk, walked to get a sandwich, the place was out of sandwiches, so I got some weird pastry thing with tomato sauce and onions in it, then headed over to our next class.
Next class was a grammar class, one of the classes reserved for English-speaking students. It's in a portable which slightly resembles a port-a-potty if you look at it from afar, and it conducts heat like crazy.
One good thing I have to point out though, before I continue on with my little rant thing, the class is right next to a fig tree, so I ate those, which was great. That's one thing I miss about home, being able to go for a walk and just pick fruit wherever I go.
Moving on: we sat in the class for an hour and a half. I was dehydrated, and at this point I was so sick of classes I wanted to punch someone. But alas, it was not over, I still had a history lecture to go to. Now, at this point I became convinced that having people talk at me in French while I sat and listened was some sort of modern form of torture.
I walked in a little late to the history class because here, all the classes end at the same time as all the classes start, because apparently the French have mastered teleportation.
Within the first minute I gave up. It was at this point, an old man standing in front of me, spelling the names of all the books we would need (because why email a list out when you can recite it all for half an hour), that I felt my brain turn to mush, and I kept looking over at the other girls from my program taking that class and laughing a little bit, because I'm pretty sure if I didn't laugh I would cry. To be honest it stopped feeling like reality, I thought I was dreaming.
I couldn't really leave, that would be rude, so I took out my tablet and read my book with the sound of the prof's voice in the background.
And then I got out, and I was free. And now, I feel like I need to sleep forever. Today...what the frick just happened?
No comments:
Post a Comment