Wednesday, September 17th

My life, Fall 08

The world is, in general, very good. I am as busy as humanly possible (well, almost at least), but I like being busy. I am doing a ton of work, but it'll pay off in the end, and I like everything that I do, so its all good.

As promised, an overview of life in general: I am taking five and a quarter academic classes, a full credit of music, and am working two part-time jobs this semester. Details are as follows.

Japanese 51A: Its an early morning class, and starts my academic day Mon-Thurs. The teacher who teaches my section is not the main teacher, which is unfortunate, but I like her a lot. She's very fun and understanding and does a good job of not making you feel too stupid when you forget things. The work load is moderate, for a foreign language class, and I've even had a few days without any homework at all. These days are very exciting, even though they are often coupled with new vocab to learn or a presentation, &c.

Jane Austen: Well, I love Jane Austen. I relish the time spent doing the reading for this class. The class itself, however, is a little intimidating. Its almost entirely upperclassmen, most of whom are english majors. But, I've talked to the teacher, and she understands the situation and is willing to work with me on it. Some of the students have also allayed my fears by telling me that the reason that this class is mostly upperclassmen is because its an easy, fun class. Exactly what I need. The conversations are very stimulating, and I love to listen and contribute. Most of our grade is on three essays, the first of which is coming up. I'm going to work with the professor on it, because I'm a little uncertain about what exactly she wants, but the topics look interesting, so that's good.

Intro to Archaeology: A breadth requirement, you know, but a good one. Its fulfilling my Area 2, and it so far its been a lot of fun. We do a lot of reading from the textbook, and I have to struggle every week to get through it...oh, yeah, and I don't have a textbook yet because stupid Amazon has taking almost a month to ship it to me. That's right. Anyway, we write a lot of short papers, and get to do some really fun things: we went to see the terra cotta warriors last saturday, and we practiced flintknapping (making stone tools) on monday. I got lost and couldn't find them, so I have to go to remedial flintknapping for failed cavemen tomorrow. Should be fun.

Topics in Contemporary Fiction (Hollywood and the Novel): I love this class. We read novels, then their screenplays, and then we watch the movie. For some reason, though we had, like thirty people trying to add the class, the class is mostly freshman and sophomore, which is nice because I have the confidence to speak up. Both our midterm and final are creative pieces (screenplays), and the professor is the same as my creative writing class last semester. I really only took the class because of her; the topic hadn't been entirely settled when I enrolled. Its a super amazing class, and I look forward to it.

Music Theory 1: It may sound boring, but it is so much fun! We meet every day, as we have an hour lab twice a week in addition to regular class, but I never mind going to class. The teachers (both of them), are very nice, very fun, and just great at what they do. It may help that I sort of love music. This may be my favorite class this semester, which is amazing cause I'm taking some great classes. I can't wait to start the composition aspect of this class, it should be awesome.

Intermediate Japanese Conversation: Okay, so this is only sort of a class, but it does meet two hours a week. There are only three of us and Miki, the language resident, but its fun and relaxing. We sit around and talk in Japanese and watch movies about culture and play games and such. Its good, and its nice to know that I have at least an hour of forced relaxation planned into my schedule on Tues/Thurs.

As for the music, I'm taking voice and guitar lessons, and singing in the choir (I'm the soprano section leader).

My jobs are pretty simple. I life guard Monday and Wednesday mornings from 6:30 to 8:00 AM, and I'm a choir manager, so I set up chairs, sharpen pencils, and catalogue music for 4 hours a week (including rehearsal times).

I go to Oldenborg for lunch three times a week, work as the webmaster for NSCS and Glee Club, and go to church. End of Katie's obligations (well, I water my plants, but that doesn't really count).

So, that's my life.
[karma: 6 (+/-)] Katie on 09.17 at 10:03

Monday, September 15th

Sophomore beginnings

And so sophomore year began remarkably like freshman year had. I moved in, I went to church and classes, I lay down a small fortune for textbooks, and life went on.

I love all of my courses this year, this is by far my best semester for classes, but I'll bring those up at a later date. I also love my room: more later.

What I really wanted to talk about was my field trip to the Bowen Museum this saturday to see the largest traveling collection of terra cotta warriors to ever leave China. It was amazing! The level of detail in these full size statues is phenomenal, each individual hair had even been etched into the clay. No two faces were the same, each was as unique as an individual human being's, yet they weren't mere replicas of real soldiers, but were each the unique figment of thousands of craftsmen's imaginations.

The opulence and scale of this project is just mind-blowing. There are about 7000 warriors. There is a miniature model of the emperor's palace and city. There is a river of mercury leading into a mercury ocean. There is a clay zoo. Its all just breathtaking.

And yet, it really makes you wonder, "was this worth it?" And the answer has to be "no." No, it wasn't worth thousands of people dying, it couldn't be, no matter how you justify it. No matter how much we love having this archaeological record, no matter how beautiful it is, no matter how much we can learn from it, the price was too great, even though it was paid for in lives long forgotten.

That's something to keep in mind when you consider the price of knowledge. How much would you pay for information? These warriors represent a wealth of it. We have learned so much about the past from their existence. Yet this wealth is not as much as the lives lost. In modern times, we've managed to put a price tag to almost everything. We're a consumer society, there's no shame in that. But, we have difficulty assigning values to a few things; knowledge and life are two of them. Yet, is it possible, that these two can be put on a scale and weighed against each one another? Can two things that, more or less, despite many attempts, can't be bought be measured and valued against each other?

If you were to try, I would be very disappointed if life didn't constantly prove the heftier. I know that regardless the immense knowledge place in one dish, the contents of thousands of libraries, the secrets of the universe, in my balance, a single life on the other side would tip the needle in its favor.

I would like to say that I have enough faith in humanity to view this as a given, but I'm just not sure.
[karma: 1 (+/-)] Katie on 09.15 at 10:19



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