But I'm Not Bitter

Generally I was well liked by my teachers from kindergarten to BYU with a few exceptions.

One exception was my jr. high home economics teacher. We met under unfortunate circumstances before I ever had her as a teacher and I can only conclude that this situation made her hate me for my entire jr. high school career.

One day during lunch hour, I was standing outside with my friends. Everyone just hung out on the school grounds. There were fields (not a place you're likely to just stand around in when they're full of snow), limited sidewalks, and road/parking lots. Most kids stood in the road since people generally didn't drive on it anyway. If the odd car came around, we'd move out of the way.


So there I was, standing with my friends. (Refer to satellite image, point A.) A car came around the corner (see my black car on the satellite image?). It went into the first row of parking. (Refer to black dotted line and X.) Several minutes later, another car came around the corner. I expected it to also park in the first row of parking and I thought nothing of it. A couple moments later, I noticed that it was right in front of me because it was headed to the second row of parking. My friends had already moved out of the way, and as the teacher glared at me, I calmly moved out of the way as well. And then I thought nothing of it. Until the teacher marched right up to me, pointed her bony finger, and said, "Next time you want to play chicken, you may not be so lucky."

Whoa. Whoa. I was not playing chicken. I just didn't see her till she was in front of me. And then I moved. I really didn't think it was such a big deal. Of course, she stormed away before I was able to say anything to her.

And then in both 7th and 8th grade home economics, she treated me like crap and I received Cs (and this was in Canada where C = 60-69 %, so basically the equivalent of the American D).

What the...? Me? Cs? In home ec? That's umpossible!

In fact, at the awards ceremony at the end of each year, badges were awarded to everyone in the school for almost every imaginable reason. When the home ec badges were announced, pretty much the whole school was called up individually by name to receive the badge for getting an A in home ec. And I was left sitting in the audience with the greasers and tekkers (a derogatory Northern Ontario term).

Moral of the story? "Next time you may not be so lucky" turns out to be "Even though you almost failed me in my home ec classes, I'm a domestic goddess and professional designer, so take that."

I graduated.

More new after I finish packing and moving to SLC.

(Also, hooray for the new beta blogger and in your face to all the suckers who don't get to use it yet.)

Graduation?

Today is a reading day. I'll finish up a project and attend a study session, work, and likely go to dinner with Sahkmet and Daltongirl.

Tomorrow I will likely work and take my ps100 final exam (pray for me!).

Thursday I will take my English exam, write the last sentence of my undergrad career, work, and go out to a nice restaurant with my family to celebrate.

Friday I will work, attend my own graduation, and pack up my apartment.

Saturday I will finish packing up my own apartment, clean, and move out officially.

So I've been and I am pretty busy.

Which gives me the excuse of referring you to a friend's blog. She recently wrote about something that I've been meaning to write about. It's really a great story, and you would have gotten it here eventually anyway, so read it on my friend's blog. I guarantee you'll love it.

I can tell it's gonna be a good one...

So for those of you who are interested, I did actually take the PS100 exemption exam on Monday. Not because I thought I was going to pass it but because I thought I'd like to know where I stood in my PS100 knowledge and because it would give me an idea of what to expect on the final exam I'll take in a month or so. I got 40 percent. What bothers me about that is that I know that if I had actually followed through with my scientific experiment, I would have had at least 60 percent. But I'm not going to think about that too much. The point is, I'm enrolled in the class and I'm just going to have to deal with it. And I'm going to have to improve my final exam score, because apparently 50 percent is a "pass" for PS100.

Today was my first midterm. Yes, I'm lazy and I didn't study for it. I figured if I got 40 percent on the exemption exam and if I got 70 percent on this section's pretest, then I could pass this test just fine. I walked into the testing center at 4:15 and started to walk up the steps and stopped a moment to look at the testing center hours. Huh. Apparently on Fridays, they're only open till 5:00. And they don't hand any tests out after 4:00.

Yeah. So I got a 0 percent on my first test. Nice.

At least I know that if the grade on my final exam is higher than the other grades (homework, quizzes, and tests) then that's the grade I get for the class. So this means that I have to work extra hard this term to make sure that I pass that freaking final. Because, you know, I'd kindof like to graduate.

Results:

Cost of tuition for PS100: $400

Opportunity cost of not working full-time: $1200

Being able to learn physical science from an instructor instead of not even remotely understanding what I'm reading: $1600






And you thought I was going to say "Priceless," didn't you? Well, you'd be wrong. As wrong as I was to think that I could possibly teach myself all this stuff in a weekend.

Scientific Experiment

Observation: Physical Science 100 is an expensive course when considering the following: Not taking PS100 will result in at least a $300 reduction in tuition. This decreased course load will allow a student to work 40 hours a week instead of 20 hours a week. Thus, not taking PS100 results in a decrease in tuition and an increase in income.

Hypothesis: A non-science-minded student who has not studied anything related to science for the last four or five years can dedicate an entire weekend to reading and studying the Physical Science 100 textbook and pass the PS100 exemption exam on Monday, July 3 with at least 60 percent.

Method: The student will immediately go to the library as soon as she finishes this post, study till the library closes at 10:00 p.m., and determine what progress has been made at that point. If the student is confident that she can make it through all the course work during the weekend (or at least know 60 percent of the course work really well), the student will take the exemption exam on Monday, July 3.

Variables: The student's success will depend on her ability to read and understand a huge amount of information this weekend. This experiment does not anticipate being able to tell what effect the prayers of the student and the student's friends and family will have on her exam performance.

Results: Wait for Monday, July 3.

Duh-roo-ja-mont

As long as I'm complaining about French pronunciations, let me share a couple of beefs I've had with my professors this past term. After taking two lit classes this term, I have come to decide that all professors must take a credibility test before being allowed to teach. This credibility test ensures that the professor knows how to properly pronounce foreign names and terms so that they don't look ridiculous in front of the whole class, or at least in front of those who speak the foreign language where the names and terms come from.

Of course I'm going to have to focus on French here because that is the language that I'm familiar with, and because many French critics and philosophers are cited in our classes. But let me give you a few examples that have driven me nuts over the past two months.

La' Venir:

A professor was talking about Derrida's concept of l'avenir (or "what is to come") in class. She wrote on the board: l'avenir. A couple weeks later, she was talking about l'avenir again, but spelled it: La' Venir. Now, she was notorious for misspelling things on the board all the time (lectures would center around terms like sociolological and intertextextuality), but this was too painful to witness. First of all, if venir (verb meaning to come) were turned into a noun, it most certainly would not be feminine. Second of all, the apostrophe that comes after the La is now meaningless and superfluous. Third of all, and this is picky, I don't think that the French would have capitalized venir. I hoped to share some of my shock with my classmates. I looked around for the knowing looks that we would exchange when we found words like superficialuperficiality on the board but to my horror, I only saw my classmates dutifully writing La' Venir in their notes.

On the subject of Jocks Derrida...

No, I'm serious. My other professor actually called him Jocks. This is the same professor who helped a student who couldn't pronounce a name by stating firmly, "It's Duh-roo-ja-mont." I looked down at the passage the student was reading and found the name Derougemont. Now, I don't expect people to use their uvulas to pronounce the Rs. I don't expect people to say the name with an affected French accent. But at least try to approximate the French pronunciation with an English accent. She should have said "Duh-rou(g)-ma." (I didn't know how else to make the g into the soft French g, so give me a break.)

I know that I have an unfair advantage of having studied the language. I know that it's not the most phonetic language ever. But how can you look credible when you're talking about what Duhroojamont thought about Jocks Derrida's concept of La' Venir? I know that I probably foul up the pronunciation of Nietzsche but if I were going to be a professor and teach his philosophy, I might figure out exactly how to say his name before professing to know what he was talking about.

Underage Educating

So I have this lit and film class. It's English 345. And there's this girl who sits in front of me, and as as I'm bored in class, I have the opportunity to stare at her and wonder how old she is. Now, I don't normally stare at classmates and wonder about their age, but this girl is a special case. It's impossible that she's older than 16. She looks 16. She dresses 16. She doesn't sound 16 when she comments in class, but dammit, she looks and dresses 16!

She wears jeans that she and her friends have written messages on. She wears flip flops that have fabric sticking out all over the place. Nothing is wrong with either of those things, but they're both juvenile. You don't see them on a university campus when EFY isn't going on.

Finally on Tuesday, I asked her how old she was. She said that she is 16. Ha! I asked how she could possibly be taking English 345, because there are pre-reqs. She said that she has been at BYU for three semesters. She started when she was 15. So she explained that she'd been home-schooled and that her family said she was too young to go off to college, so they moved to Provo with her. So yes, she was a Mia Maid when she started school. And now she can date. Oh, and then she asked me if I would please take notes for her in class on Thursday because she would be away at Girl's Camp.

On Thursday, I headed off to campus to attend class and take extra-good notes for my 16-year-old friend. Only on my way there, an old Zone Leader called me and said that he and his wife (my greenie) were driving through town and wanted to get together with me for lunch. Immediately. (When they called, they were about a minute away from the place where I was actually standing.) So I did what anyone would do. I skipped class and went out with my friends who were visiting from out of town.

When I told this to my mother, she was appalled that I would not do my duty towards this sweet 16-year-old. I told my mom that I was offering the youngster a chance to grow up. Fast.

(Okay, so I feel bad, but really. I wasn't going to miss going out with my old mission buddies just to take notes in class. I'm sure that someone else took notes.)

Late, Late, Late

In high school, I had somewhat of a birthday tradition where my father would take me out to lunch. One year, we had our lunch but I was a little late getting back to school and I needed a note to get in. Dad looked around the car for paper and decided to use the back of one of his business cards. Then, in kid print, he wrote:

Cicada was late today because she was at lunch with her daddy.
--Her Daddy

I laughed and told him they wouldn't possibly accept that, but nevertheless, he refused to write me a new note. I brought my father's note in to the secretary. She took it, looked at me suspiciously and said, "Did your father really write this?" I assured her that he did and she allowed me to go to class. While I was in class, she called him at work (his phone number and picture were conveniently on the other side of the note).

"Mr. ---------," she said, "I'm calling with regards to the note you wrote your daughter today."

"What note?" my dad asked. And after stringing her along a little while, he admitted that he had, in fact, written the note. She thought it was funny and asked my father to please, in the future, sign his real name to any notes instead of signing "Her Daddy."

A couple weeks later, my computer ate my homework at 8:00 in the morning and I cried and cried. My daddy (who hates to see me cry) assured me that I could simply redo my homework and go to school late. So I redid my homework and he wrote me a note: "Cicaida is lait to skool today becuase she wuz having problems with the cornputer." He signed his name. I brought it to school and the secretary was thrilled to receive it.

I happened to be late a lot this year, and a couple weeks later, I needed another note. My dad wasn't around, so I asked my mom to write the note. She wrote me a regular note and I brought it to the secretary. She took it eagerly, read it, and said, "Oh. Your mother wrote it. It's a boring note."

Again, shortly thereafter, I was late for school. I had told my mom about the secretary's reaction to her last note, and my mom was offended. My dad was funny and entertaining, but she was boring. So she wrote me a boring note:

This is Cicada's boring mother writing her another boring note, giving her another boring excuse for being late to school.

I brought it in to the office where the regular secretary was gone and a substitute secretary took her place. I gave her my mother's boring note. She read it, gave me the gosh-awfullest dirty look I've ever received, and sent me on my way to class.

From then on, my mom would have my write the notes for her, which she would then sign her name to. I got creative with those, too. I seem to remember one that went like this:

Please excuse Cicada for being late to school today. It is totally my fault and I am a bad mother. She clearly informed me of the exact time she needed to be to school, and reminded me when exactly I needed to leave the house to get her to school on time. But I did not listen to her because I thought that I was smarter than she is. This is clearly not the case.

When I handed it to my mother to sign her name to, she added the note, "Not entirely true, but you get the idea."

Reading Days

I know that I have been a bad blogger lately. The thing is, I'm taking two English lit courses and all of my homework basically consists of reading novels. So every day, I'm doing all my homework away from the computer. I wish that I had access to an outdoor pool. I'm not at all a pool person, but when I get out of class at 2:00 every afternoon, and I walk home in the sweltering heat, and I realize that the only thing I'll be doing for the next several hours is reading novels, I kindof like the idea of sitting by a pool. Well, ideally, a lake. Ideally, I could take all my homework to my old cottage in Canada and do it there. And ideally, there would be no black flies, horse flies, deer flies, mosquitoes, or sand flies. And as long as I'm living in a fantasy world, ideally, I would weigh 130 lbs.

Books I've Read in the Last Three Weeks:

The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
Jazz (Toni Morrison)
Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)
The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse (Louise Erdrich)

While I read the next several novels, I'll try and think of some good stories from my past that I can tell. Family members and friends I've known for a long time could always help me out by submitting special requests.

Is that your final answer?

I had an interesting bird watching final yesterday. It was my final final. The first half of the test was a bird-identification test. The teacher or his TA gave away almost every answer. He'd hold up a dead, stuffed bird and ask what kind of bird it was. Here are some samples. See if you can get them right:

1. This was the first bird that Noah sent out from the ark. [Holds up a very large black bird.] Noah sent a raven out before sending a dove. A raven. Question 1: Name this bird.

2. [Holds up a large raptor (bird of prey).] Some people would describe this hawk as having a red tail. Name this bird.

3. Name this goldfinch. [Holds up an American goldfinch. Puts down the goldfinch, goes to the piano, plays America the Beautiful.]

4. [Holds up a bird that no one's ever seen before.] This is a dipper. [Talks for ten minutes on why dippers are so cool.] Dipper. The answer is dipper. Write down dipper.

5. Name this bird. Oh. It's not on the list of birds you have to know? Well, it's a snowy egret. Name this bird.

6. Name this duck. Don't be fooled. There's something distinctive about this duck. [The duck has a huge bill, so I know it's a shoveler.]

7. [Holds up a new duck.] Name four ducks this is not. Just four ducks that this duck is not. What are four ducks this is not? [He's seriously asking the class now.] I say "Mallard." He responds, "Correct. This duck is not a mallard. This duck is also not a shoveler--" [Here, he points to the duck that he showed in number 6.] "This duck is not a wood duck or a gadwall."

8. [Holds up a meadowlark.] You can find this bird in meadows.

9. Everybody, look up "kingfisher" in your books. Kingfisher. Look at that bird. Isn't that a great bird? [Holds up a bird that is not a kingfisher.] What is this bird? [A student says, "It's not a kingfisher." He says, "No, this bird is not a kingfisher." Student says, "Why did you just show us a kingfisher." He says, "Because the kingfisher's a cool bird."]

So yeah. When it comes right down to it, I'm glad I didn't study too hard for that test. The second part of the test was an essay response to "Why is it so easy to love bears?" I wrote this story and then wrote a few biological reasons they're cool, and started to be very conscious of the fact that the Daltoncrew was waiting in their car outside to take me to the Blog Party, so I brought the essay to a hasty conclusion with the sentence, "They are dangerously cuddly creatures that are just lovable."

And then I gave thanks that I'm not graduating today, because I really don't want that to be the last sentence of my college career.

The Blog Police

I called my mom as soon as I finished my penultimate final today because I had to share my euphoria with someone. I gushed, and told her all sorts of details about every final I've taken so far this semester. I told her that I had one more and I'd be finished tonight. She asked if I'd call her after I was a "free woman." I told her yes, but maybe that wouldn't be tonight. I said I had a blog party to go to.

"Oh, a blog party," she said. "So you don't blog anymore but you go to parties?"

So I miss one day (Tuesday) in the middle of finals week and suddenly according to my mother, I'm a non-blogger? She has such high, high expectations of me...

Don't Be Nice

[Before I get to the point of this post, I need to gush about the fact that I just submitted my majorest project of the semester and it feels so good to have that done! Not only that, but I completed it on time with one minute to spare. I had thought it would be impossible.]

So as I went to submit my assignment today, I rode up to campus by bike. I noticed a cyclist traveling south on 7th East. He was a Serious Cyclist. I know that because he was wearing spandex. He needed to make a left-hand turn at an intersection. He was in the left lane waiting at a red light. When the light turned green, he pulled into the intersection to wait to make his left turn. The first car of the opposing traffic went through the intersection. The next car---the one that had the right of way---stopped and waved the cyclist through. The cyclist shook his head and waved the car through. This continued until the car finally went through the intersection as it should have in the first place.

It really bugs me to see cars break traffic rules to be nice. It bugs me because a lot of the time, they're making the roads more dangerous. Take Ambrosia's last car accident for example. She needed to turn left out of a parking lot. She needed to clear two lanes of traffic to get to the right side of the road. A car in the nearer lane of traffic saw that she had obviously been waiting for a while to get out of the parking lot, so it stopped to let her through. Ambrosia went through and was hit by a car in the next lane of traffic. Now, Ambrosia will be the first to admit that she shouldn't have gone through. But I'm just as ready to lynch the stupid car driver who thought it was a good idea to stop and let a car through when he/she couldn't control traffic in the next lane.

This is a common situation when I take the bus from work to school. My bus stop is across a four-lane highway. Usually, I clear the first two lanes, walk (or run) to the suicide land, and then clear the next two lanes before crossing the rest of the way. Often, a car in the nearer lane of traffic will stop to let me walk across. I shake my head and wave them to keep going. They become more insistent, waving me to cross the street...

...and meanwhile, cars in the lane left of them are whizzing past at body-splattering speeds!

And the people in the car waving me to cross start to get angry that I'm not taking advantage of their kindness. And so I start walking away from the street altogether to communicate to the people that there's no way that I'm going to cross in front of them. And then they flip me off and drive off in a bad mood.

So a message to all the drivers out there: Don't break traffic rules to be nice. Also, I hate you.

Wise Blood

I've made a habit as of late of going to a certain comedy club. Usually I'm alone. This is never so awkward for me as it is for the person who is sitting beside me. As seats beside me sit empty, waiting to be filled, a person will approach me and ask if I'm saving any of the seats. "No," I reply. "None?" they ask. "None," I say.

After an exchange similar to this a couple weeks ago, a high school kid and his date took the seats next to me. After a few moments, the kid turned to me and said, "So. You like to go to these things alone?"

"I am dating one of the guys in the show," I said.

"Ahhh, I see. So how often do you come to the shows?"

"Usually at least once a weekend."

The show started and the boy and his date immediately asked me to point out which one was "mine." I pointed "mine" out. During the evening's performance, they would turn to me to ask me more questions: "Does he look at you like that?" (asked when he was playing a character who was in love with someone else and was giving that someone else loving looks); "Is he funny in real life?" No. Of course he isn't. He's actually quite boring. I only date him for the free tickets to his shows.

Last week, "mine" found me as I was coming into the club, and he seated me up near the front, introducing me as his girlfriend to some people he knew. When he left, a guy sitting in the row behind me leaned forward. "Is he in tonight's show?" he asked. I said that he was and the guy said, "Oh, good. Because he's my favorite." Turning to his date, he added, "He's the one I was telling you about."

I try to bring friends with me as often as I can, but usually, like I said, I go alone. The last two times I've gone, I have brought homework reading with me to keep me busy in line outside waiting to get in, and seated inside waiting for the show to start. Which brings me to my point. Last night, while sitting in the front row, waiting for the show to start, I finished Wise Blood, a book for one of my English classes.

It seemed an odd setting to finish the book. Loud music was blaring in the background. The guy beside me kept jostling me. One guy walked past me so quickly that the book was actually knocked out of my hands. And the book, although it claims to be a comedy, seemed actually quite somber. I am still unsure how I feel about the book on the whole. I know that I enjoyed it, because I didn't have any problem finishing it. This is in stark contrast to the last book I finished, Wicked, which I absolutely hated and which I would leave for months between readings. Like Wicked, I recognize that I didn't care about any of the characters in Wise Blood. I could have been just as happy whether they all died or all lived. I also think that I didn't like the story that much. And yet, like I mentioned, there was something I liked about it.

I'm starting to wonder if the only thing I liked about it was that it gave me a legitimate excuse not to do other homework and an excuse to not talk to the people surrounding me at the comedy club.

I know kung-fu... or karate.

Since I shared a story about spin class this week, and since my springboard diving class is one of my most popular stories, I thought I might share a new story this week about a class that I had the same semester as my springboard diving class. I took karate.

Every Friday we would meet for two hours. And as with spring board diving, I sucked at karate from the very beginning. Our instructor was a Korean fellow who spoke English with a very thick accent. He loved to show the class tricks and stunts and his sense of humor combined with physical antics reminded me a little of Jackie Chan.

One day, I went to class after donating blood. Donating blood had never caused any problems for me before, so I had no reason to believe that my physical performance would be hindered by my loss of blood. To warm up, the instructor brought us through a review of all the kicks we'd learned---ten kicks in all, and we had to do ten reps of each kick, all in succession. In case you can't do the math, that's one hundred kicks all in a row.

I was wearing down at about 50, but I kept on going, kicking more and more weakly as I continued. Although I technically made it to one hundred, I believe my hundredth kick was not more than two inches off the ground.

Then our instructor had us relax and breathe. And that's when something funny happened. I could feel the blood draining from my head, and my vision started to go black. Recognizing this as something that can happen when I get up suddenly from a couch or bed, I waited for my vision to return immediately as it always does.

Except it didn't. I realized that I was standing in the middle of all my karate peers with my eyes wide open, and yet I could see nothing.

Before this point, I'd been debating whether or not it was a good idea to go to the edge of the classroom and sit down. At this point, once I'd lost my vision, finding my way to the edge of the room was no longer an option. So I just sat exactly where I'd been standing.

I could hear the instructor's voice distantly. It was as if I was under water. I was aware of him approaching me. "Are you okay?" he asked. I managed to say "No" before he flipped my legs up in the air so that the blood could drain back to my head. As soon as he did it, my vision started to come back. He send me to the wall.

And I spent the rest of the class with my butt to the wall, legs in the air, relishing both my vision and the blood in my brain.

Before this time, it had been a joke amongst our classmates that our instructor didn't recognize any of us. From that day on, however, he recognized me. As we'd do kicks, he'd approach me, asking, "Dizzy? Dizzy?" One time later in the semester, we had a departmental visitor to the class, and I saw my instructor pointing me out and saying, "She faint! She faint!"

Wherein I Forwent One Homework to Pursue Another

Last night, I put my hair in curlers and went to bed early so that I could get up early this morning and work on homework. I started my homework at about 5:15. At about 6:00, I started to hear birds singing around my house. No, no birds have come to my abundant bird feeder yet, and I'm trying not to take it personally. But I could hear birds singing, and thought about how strange it is that birds are diurnal, and yet obviously get up before the sun does. Everything was completely dark. Still, I wondered what bird was singing so sweetly and whether or not I could add it to my list.

By about 6:40, the sun was coming up, but I was still working on homework, so I continued to listen to the sweet singing melodies while I wrote about the idea of Europe. At 6:50, I could no longer stand it. And so, like a sexual deviant or a pervert, I emerged into the early morning outdoors in my pajamas, curlers, flip flops and with my binoculars. Not that I think that sexual deviants or perverts wear curlers. They might. It's just that you can't help but feel dirty walking around your neighborhood with binoculars in the misty morning.

I followed the sound of my singing bird and realized that it was in someone's back yard. Fortunately, it was in my former district leader's back yard. Though even if he walked out and caught me in his back yard with binoculars, there may have been awkward moments of clumsy explanation. Unfortunately, the bird in question was a robin. A robin? Yes, my disappointment was fairly bitter. Who knew they sang so sweetly? I have only ever heard them chirp.

I spent the next ten minutes walking around other people's backyards, since they all border on mine anyway. There was one tense moment when a police cruiser drove by, but I just jumped into the bushes with the rest of the starlings and sneakily snuck back to my safe little house where no one could judge me for wearing curlers, flip flops, pajamas, and carrying binoculars.

Birds of a feather don't flock to my house.

What gives? I hung up my brand-new fancy bird feeder on Saturday and the birds haven't found it. What does it take to get their attention?

1) By "brand-new fancy bird feeder," I mean "the empty bird feeder that the previous tenants of this apartment made and hung outside the living room window, which has been empty the entire time I've lived here, thus leading one to believe that it was once full of seed and the birds once ate all the seed."

2) I totally researched bird seed on the internet and therefore filled the feeder with black oil sunflower seeds because the internet told me that most birds like that best.

3) The birds haven't found me yet. Seriously. What gives?

Birds of a Feather

So now, if you scroll all the way down my sidebar, you'll notice another new addition: Birds I've Seen. This semester, I'm taking Integrative Biology 134: Appreciation of Nature. It lightens my course load this semester, and it also fulfills my natural science GE, which I need to graduate. On our first day of class, after we all arrived, our professor said, "Okay. Let's go." Someone asked where we were going and he looked at us like we were all stupid. "To appreciate nature, of course." We went to a duck pond.

Though the class is called "Appreciation of Nature," it may as well be called "Bird Watching." The emphasis is on birds since they are the easiest animals to see and appreciate. During the semester, among our other duties, we are required to identify seventy-five different species of birds. Before class yesterday, I spent a couple hours walking around and looking for birds. In class, when I annouced that I had seen three brown creepers, my professor gave me a high five. ("It's not that they're rare," he said. "It's just that no one ever sees them.") I'll be making my own bird feeder soon so that I can get a few birds to come to my house over the semester.

I'll be tracking my progress on my blog---not because I think that all of my readers will be desperate to know my latest progress in the birding world, but because that way, I'll always know where to find my list of birds. And I like to brag.

Fun with Language

Fun with Italian

What you need to know: The Italian derogatory word for homosexual is finocchio. It’s pronounced like Pinocchio, but with an F. The plural is finocchi (pronounced fee-NOH-kee). Strangely, finocchio actually means fennel. In case you don’t know what fennel is, it’s “a Eurasian plant (Foeniculum vulgare) having pinnate leaves, clusters of small yellow flowers grouped in umbels, and aromatic seeds used as flavoring.” These are the little seeds you can find in Italian sausage. The stalks can be eaten like celery except that they taste a little like black licorice. What fennel has to do with homosexuality I don’t know, but it is a fact that fennel, in Italian, is equivalent to faggot.

On to the story: Today I went to the library and saw my last mission companion, studying Italian at one of the tables. She was sharing the table with a guy who was also studying Italian. I sat down with them and pulled out my French homework, studying carefully the difference between dorsum and radix. (See next story.) Suddenly, as is known to happen at tables where all persons speak Italian, a conversation started up. The guy was talking about different places in Italy and asking if there were missionaries in these areas. He asked about Capri, and when he was told that there weren’t, he said (with derision), “Good thing! That place is full of finocchi.”

My mission companion exclaimed, “Oh! I love finocchi! I could just eat them all up!”

Now, I understand that finocchio isn’t a word that they teach you in the MTC. It’s not a bit of vocab you pick up from studying the discussions (though it tended to pop up now and then during a discussion on the plan of salvation). But I can’t understand how she went through sixteen months in Italy without ever picking up on the fact that finocchio had a double meaning.

She finally learned today when the guy and I burst out laughing at the table. “I bet you could just eat them all up, you naughty girl!”

Fun with French

As I mentioned, I was studying for my French phonetics test. Part of what I had to study was a diagram of the sound-manipulating parts of the head. You know---the nasal cavity, the parts of the tongue, the vocal chords, the teeth, and all that good stuff. I had the diagram in front of me at the library. I traced over the diagram and labeled everything on a separate sheet of paper. It was all easy. The lips are the superior lip and the inferior lip. The teeth are the superior teeth and the inferior teeth. The tongue has three parts: the apex, the dorsum, and the radix. All easy.

So I went to the testing center. When it was time to label the parts of the mouth, I wrote down dorsum for the top of the tongue and rectum for the back of the tongue. But something just didn’t look right.

“Rectum,” I thought. “That just can’t be right! Dorsum . . . rectum. Dorsum . . . rectum.” At this point, I started giggling. You know, uncontrollable laughter when you’re with someone else is one thing, but uncontrollable laughter when you’re alone in the Testing Center is quite another. I sat, convulsing in my seat, imagining my teacher opening my test, grading the diagram, and seeing the back of the tongue labeled as “RECTUM.” The more I thought of it, the more I laughed. I erased RECTUM (and did a very thorough job, since I didn’t want him to even know that I had once written it there) and finally remembered radix. I labeled the radix, turned the page, and kept on convulsing.

Its all about learning...

So I went to class today. To learn. And of course, since it's Team Spirit Friday (we don't get casual Friday here---instead, we're all made to wear the same white polo so we all look like lab technicians) I was wearing my nice BYU Independent Study polo.

I went to my editing class, where one of the first things the teacher did was pull out a brand new Independent Study poster calendar. We hand these out every year to every single office on campus, so the campus is flooded with these things. They're quite handy---they display the whole year along with important dates (like holidays! and add-drop deadlines!).

He said, "I found this slipped under my door last night," as he unrolled it. He held it up for all the class to see. "Where is the error?" he asked. "It's the very first word," he hinted.

In the top, left corner of the calendar is the sentence, "Its all about learning." (For those of you who didn't already cringe when you saw the title of my post, there should be an apostrophe in the Its.)

He then went on to explain, as I sunk lower and lower in my seat, "This had to pass by several people here. There was a writer involved and a designer. There was an editor and a proofreader. Several people saw this and yet no one corrected it."

I wanted to scream out, "I had nothing to do with it! I had nothing to do with it! I didn't even see that calendar until right this moment!" Instead I sat low in my seat for the rest of class, hoping the IS logo on my shirt would go invisible.