March 31

Today we learned, for the third time, about students in our class who want to study abroad and where they want to go. I'm nearly positive there were fewer students who said they wanted to study abroad this time. They probably figured that they had answered the question enough already. After asking this, she had us say which language we took in high school. A few people said, “French,” and one kid said, “German” because there's one in every crowd. After most of us answered, “Spanish,” she asked if we wanted to know the genesis of the program. I'm not sure why she had to use that word, but she used it several times. It just seems a little odd, and it relates this class to the Bible, which is just weird. Then she put some French words on the board. Apparently, LAS 122 is about “I”, the formal and informal uses of “you”, and “we”. Once she explained it, this made sense. One starts with “I” then branches out to working with people one could address as the informal “you” and working for people one would address as formal “you”, until the whole group of people becomes “we”. Still, French? This program is based on four French words? There's nothing wrong with the language, but it seems like a random thing to use to start a class. Then again, I'm not too surprised. I mean, it is this class.

After getting a brief language lesson, we discussed our service projects again. I do love hearing multiple times about these projects, especially when several people in the class went to the same place. It just seems like there's something more useful we could do with our time...like coloring. That would be pretty awesome. When we were discussing this, our teacher asked how we used leadership. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like entry level volunteering won't involve leadership so much as it will involve grunt work. Then again, what do I know? This class is just like high school, so I definitely know nothing compared to people who organized it. Also, we already knew that working with animals wasn't “humanitarian enough”, but today we learned that working for the environment isn't “humanitarian enough”, either. It's not like we live in the environment and we need to work to keep it livable. No, it's that other thing... I keep thinking that I won't be surprised by the ridiculous things that come from this class, but I'm wrong so many times.