How To: Chalkboards

You would think, this being the age of technology and computers and basically mind reading, that a college that charges upward of $45,000 a year to attend and use its facilities could find the place in its budget for upgrading from the typical, probably antique chalkboard to a more user friendly, technologically advanced whiteboard. But no. That would just be too practical.

And you don't learn practicality at college.

You learn other life skills, like the sound [f] is a voiceless labiodental fricative.

Or that sometimes the adjectives go in front of the noun in Spanish, but only if the adjective is not comparative, or if it is subjective to the person describing said noun.

Or that in some Hindu philosophy, everything is the same thing, and everything is different things, all at the same time.

But practicality? Nope. Never. Who would ever need to learn things like self-discipline or efficiency or time management or how to cook something besides eggs, all things that come with learning practicality?

It wouldn't be that hard, college! To teach us how to be practical. All it would take on your part is showing that chalkboards are a thing of the past, and that you understand that having a more efficient writing surface in your classrooms is the PRACTICAL thing to do.

Now, to be fair, I'm not sure if buildings like, say, the science and math buildings, have whiteboards. I don't really have classes in there. But if they do, then I refuse to be fair anymore, because this is going to turn into a rant about why society places higher value on math and science and engineering and "things that take real brain power" than English and history and languages and humanities, even though you better know how to read and write and talk before you know how to do high level calculus if you want to get along in society, but that's besides the point. And maybe freaking out about math getting whiteboards long before the languages even get to know what a whiteboard is is not the best way to draw attention to this strangely inequitable divide that has haunted me through most of my high school career and all of my college career, but you have to start somewhere. But anyway. I was talking about chalkboards.

So, the classrooms I frequent are generally not equipped with such grand technology. I don't know if you remember this (because you'd probably have to be alive during the Middle Ages), but chalk is not the most pleasant of substances. It's all dusty, and if you do it wrong, it makes hideous, eardrum shattering noises. And, did I mention that it's dusty? There's no good way to get it off of your person. Either you leave it on your hands and suffer through having scary, probably flammable chalk dust all over your important appendages, or you wipe it off on your clothes, and then people laugh at you all day because you have white splotches all over your otherwise excellent appearance.

Or, of course, you could just leave the room to go wash your hands, but the bathroom is probably six floors away, because whoever designed the building decided that it was only necessary to have one bathroom in the entire place. (Did I mention that this building was the languages building, not the math one, which happens to have bathrooms galore? Oh, sorry. Off topic again.) But then you waste precious class time. And you're basically paying for all that class time, class time that you had to spend in a bathroom, washing terrifying chalk dust off your hands because your in danger of being too expensive college REFUSES TO BUY WHITEBOARDS FOR YOU.

Is this a sign that I care too much about little things? I don't know. Maybe. But maybe the little things make all the difference.

Here. Advice to the children who are choosing a college right now: Disregard everything else about the college of your choice, and go make sure it has whiteboards in every single classroom. Do it. Do it now. Drive to your college and break into the buildings and check out the whiteboard situation. Once you've done that, then go back to all your other requirements. Trust me, though. Whiteboards can make or break your day.

Just make sure you break them before they break you.

A Life Update

Oh hey. Hey. Long time, no see. Sorry about that.

Do you understand how much busier life is once you're taking 18 credits instead of 14? It's a lot busier. PLUS: the classes are harder and scarier and filled with danger-er. And I had to write about the plague. I think you probably knew that, if you've been reading this blog and its scarce updates. But anyway. All I'll say about that is that I finished it, for now. So there.

In other news, I'm currently on spring break! It's almost spring, so, you know, they can call it spring break. Apparently it's usually next week, in which case, it would actually be spring, but no guarantees that it would actually be warmer. Because this is Minnesota. Gosh.

Anyway, when it was nice out, I got play some sports with some weird siblings I have. We even got all of them involved, at least for a little bit! Except when we were all playing hockey, Dan smashed my thumb with his hockey stick, and basically broke my finger, except not really, but I like to complain. He says he only did that because I kept grabbing his hockey stick and pushing it out of the way, but that's probably not true. He's basically a meanie.

I also went to work. It was terrifying. Actually, not really, but still. I stared at a machine that said, "DANGER: PIECES CAN CAUSE SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH" all day for two entire days. That doesn't make me confident that it wasn't a dangerous job. Plus, all the little tiny pieces of steel sliced and diced my hands. That's probably bad, right? Don't worry. I'll be fine though.

Also! I found out that I got a promotion for next school year! I get to run around and yell at children! And by children, I mean other college students. And by run around and yell, I mean manage in a calm and collected manner, because that's what I said I was going to do in my interview, and they can probably fire me if I do it wrong. But that's exciting, anyway. It means more money for less work, which I could definitely use!

There's a bright red cardinal sitting outside on the tree, and he's being very distracting. Gosh, cardinal guy. Don't you understand I'm trying to write a thing??

In other, other, less important news, I'm currently being addicted to Maroon 5. For some reason. I don't know how long it will be until it wears off, because that's what addiction means, right? That the thing you're addicted to will wear off? Yeah. But--OH NO A BLACK COLORED BIRD SCARED THE CARDINAL AWAY. WHY WOULD YOU BE SO MEAN, BLACK COLORED BIRD? WHY???--their songs are currently playing on repeat on Spotify forever, and ever, ____. (I left that blank there to see if any of you fill it in the same way I do. Hint: It's probably because I went to Catholic school for nine years.)

And now I'm pondering what I should have for lunch.... That's probably the most important decision I'll make all day..... We'll see. Yeah..... Lunch.....

But beyond that, nothing interesting really has happened.... Um.... I guess I'm winning against the girl in my Spanish class who thinks she's amazing at Spanish, and that if you haven't studied in a different country, you can't possibly know anything about Spanish (a comment she's directed at me more than once). So there's some victory in there! Whose essays get used in class as an example of what to do, girl? That's right: mine. Not yours. So.

And on the topic of languages, I think it's now my life goal to learn as many languages as I possibly can. Maybe I'll drop out of college and travel the world to learn all the languages. (Probably not. But it would be a nice thought.)

DON'T DROP OUT OF COLLEGE TO FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS, GUYS. HOW ELSE WILL YOU GET A JOB TO SUPPORT YOUR LIFE THAT ISN'T FOLLOWING YOUR DREAMS?

How To: Self-Induced Panic

I only have a week and a half to write a 12 page paper. And yet, here I am, writing this post instead. Because who wants to write papers? Not me.

Except by choosing to not do things that are important, I kind of limit myself to two states of being: 1. (the rarer option by far) Working on my project, or 2. Panic.

It would probably be a lot easier if the things I thought I wanted to research were actually things that were important in the 14th century. It turns out witchcraft wasn't important. So then I just started looking up random things. Because that always ends well.

And now I mostly just go to bed super worried and stressed about the lack of progress I am making. Plus I should work on all the other things that I should work on, like Spanish and linguistics and religion and actually just writing this post is very very concerning to me I might die. And I have to work.

On the other hand, occasionally it's not my fault that I can't work on stuff. Like when the internet is basically shut down for a day (most likely because of the 500 students trying to do research all at the same time, not to mention any normal internet activity). I was going to research things yesterday. I really really was. But noooooo. The internet was being lame, and I was forced to watch Fringe! Ahhh! Way to go internet.

But because of this strange inability to use the internet, I found a book to read about things, and then I kind of decided on a topic and probably even created a thesis, which was excellent and filled with magic, and then I decided that I was progressing too fast, much faster than was healthy, probably, so I stopped doing research.

One thesis a day is enough. No need to work strenuously.

Plus, there are only so many minutes one can force themself to read about death and people whipping themselves. So, you know, no need to get so macabre.

Ha. That was a joke, because my topic is Danse Macabre. (Yeah, marching band! Yeah!)

The end. Because I should probably go at least pretend to do important things.