April 21

We heard the last presentation today. Then we swiftly moved into deciding whose cause was best. No, that's pretty much accurate. We're not allowed the just split the money evenly among the various groups. Some group is or groups are going to get more money than others. We're rating the importance of several huge, important topics that are all problems facing a significant chunk of humanity. So...leadership as in dictators? The money split is also based on how much help the money would be and where it's going and such. Those factors make this a little less horrible. Still. Choose which is more important between...hunger and poverty. Maybe you'd rather choose between education and infrastructure, you know, providing clean drinking water, houses and electricity and such. It just seems a little terrible to me to rank which of these are more important than others. But, hey, we're all going to end up being leaders and need to make these kinds of decisions where we can't just give the same amount to all of them. I understand they want us to think about this issue and that's why we can't just split the money, but it still irks me, obviously. Anyway, next class, we'll be able to see which of these categories is worthy of our consideration and which one(s) we should just ignore. Tune in next week to find out!

How much money will we give to the Humane Society? Oh wait, I forgot... They're not humanitarian enough.

April 20

This week, our homework was making a discussion board post. We're going to debate about which of the organizations brought up in our presentations we would fund if we had a bajillion dollars. Debating leads to leadership? I mean, I suppose it kind of can. By this point, I pretty much don't care what they have us do in the name of leadership, as long as it's something I don't have to think about too much. We're so close to being done with this stupid class forever! Anyway, I know you're dying to see their words about what we needed to do.

There's no grammar mistakes! I'm impressed.

It's a good thing they told us to thoughtfully respond to other posts. That meant I put a little effort into what I was typing. This assignment was less annoying than having to read a kascrillion page article, especially if it was dumb and based on faulty research, but it was still more annoying than reading something short and interesting. Anyway, the whole assignment didn't take me very long, so I suppose I've seen worse for this class.

April 14

The homework for this class was watching videos associated with the group presentations. Since they're TED talks, I have no issue with them. The class was just about the same as the week before. I suppose talking in front of a group and putting a project together is sort of working on our leadership. That doesn't mean I have to like it. This project took me back to high school. Again. Ah well. There's just one more group and then we'll be back to our regularly scheduled ridiculosity. Also, the end of this class is rapidly drawing near. Thank the deity of your choice!

I'm more glad about the end of this class than you are to see this baby elephant.

April 7

Today, we had the first group presentations. Each group is expected to take 25 minutes with their presentation. The suggested (or maybe demanded, I couldn't tell) allotment of time is 10 minutes of the group speaking and 15 discussing. Since there's three or four people in each group, I suppose it's not that bad. I kind of resent having to come up with that much to talk about for this class, but I'll get over it.

Other than that, I had no issues with this class for once.

Maybe I have less to complain about because they were staring me down while I wrote this.

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.

March 29

Reflection Paper 3 arrived. I knew it was coming, but that doesn't mean that I want to have to deal with it any more.  Firstly, I have another of my famous edited versions of the prompt. Hopefully this one will be easier to read.

God help you if your project involved animals!

I had to add on a little more BS than usual to meet the two-page requirement. I don't know, maybe this paper won't net me a score of 9. Gasp! Also, do they expect us to say that we wouldn't help out our volunteer site more if we were able? I suppose in my mind it's more of a, “You have a crap-load of money. Would you give some of it to this site?” I doubt anyone will say something like, “No! I hate the place where I volunteered! No money for them!” Most people try to seem like awesome people in hypothetical situations because it doesn't take any effort. Anyway. The end is in sight of this terrible class, so I have less to snark about. Just know that I wrote this paper in one sitting and didn't bother to edit it much.

March 17

Today, my teacher confirmed something I've suspected about this class for a long time. “This is just like high school or a job, you let your supervisor know if you can't get something in.” I'm glad someone is finally owning up to the fact that this class is just like being back in high school. We have contrived group projects, none of the readings really pertain to the class, late work isn't a big deal, we have busy work all the time (I consider all of our homework busy work), and, when it comes down to it, this class's worth will be summed up when I check it off my list of required classes.

Speaking of that, the teacher asked us all to write down our impressions about the walkabout on a slip of paper. She assured us that, probably within a half hour, our papers would be shredded. Excuse me? You're going to read through them once and then shred them? (Saying that she'll read them is kind of a large assumption, but I can be optimistic at times.) I realize you don't care about our opinions, but this is a little much. I hope she takes my honest statement that I don't understand why we went on the walkabout to heart. Because they asked for student input in arranging this class, then ignored it, I doubt anyone will care about my opinion, though.

There was one bright spot to this class: one of our papers and our final reading are canceled. They wouldn't want us to have to spend effort on a class that has no merit close to finals. I'm glad they realize the pointlessness of this class, at least in part.

None of these penguins took this class, and look how happy they are!