Recently I met my Foreign exchange conversation partner, from a little country known as The Democratic Republic of Congo (or Congo for short). His name is Fernand. One of the first realization I encountered while meeting Fernand was that communication was going to be much harder than I had realized. I was told that our conversation partners were pretty skilled in their English, and that these conversations were more about teaching the students about American culture and our version of the English language from the perspective of a young, cultural college student. Sounds easy enough. Well, English is English right? Not so much. There are two little things called dialect and accents. Fernand, a recent English speaker form Congo, presented a tough challenge. About every other word I struggled to understand entirely. Sentences soon lost me and the challenge continued. If that didn't muddle up the conversation any further insert my dialect into the conversation. The difficulty in understanding me occurs not with my accent but with my rate. Elderly individuals and anyone who is not a pro-English native have difficulty understanding my rather fast words. So here we are, two 20-something year olds struggling to have a basic conversation with topics including favorite food, the weather, and other simple topics that actually made it across and easier to interpret. And then when English seemed rather dull, here comes the French. When Fernand discussed how he knows English (somewhat), French, and Swahili, I made the poor decision of mentioning that I somewhat knew French from studying it for 8 years. The part I did not mention however is the fact that I have not used my French skills in over two years. To put it kindly, what was about to follow was pretty rough. Since we had a difficult time corresponding back and forth in English, Fernand thought that it would be so much easier to converse if we decided to converse in French. After all, French is French, right? Yet again, very much NO. After it took me a solid 15 seconds to remember how to say "what would you like me to say to you in French?" in French, we both agreed that the French was a bad idea. Once the conversing between the two of us became a little more doable the discussions led me to this information: American food is gross (according to Fernand), Texas is very hot (in comparison to Congo), people here walk very fast (again, according to Fernand), and finally the people of Congo have strong family connections. The next conversation, now that we've already met, will hopefully be able to begin on a stronger note then this one. Now that we've both been able to rasp the other person's dialect a little better, there is only room for improvement.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Comics
For a class project, my friend Rachel and I came up with three comic strips (and when I say 'came up with' I really mean 'googled'). Each of these comic strips for the most part finds a way to utilize exaggeration as a means to create humor as well as incorporating other humorous techniques.
The First Comic Strip:
Non Sequitur
The Second Comic Strip:
Calvin and Hobbes
The Third Comic Strip:
Foxtrot
The First Comic Strip:
Non Sequitur
The Second Comic Strip:
Calvin and Hobbes
The Third Comic Strip:
Foxtrot
Thursday, September 12, 2013
What I've learned Thus far (Weeks 1-4)
What have I learned?
I am a junior at Texas Christian University, half way finished with my Undergrad education. Le Fin. As a teach pointed out recently, being it the end of the fourth week of the semester, I am now 1/4 done with the fall semester. Sad day. Well when thinking about the first fourth of my semester, I will now summarize what my junior year has taught me thus far.
Week 1: A Calm Transition
- Week 1 primarily consists of syllabus week. A week where teachers give summaries of course goals and objectives. This week's main lessons are learning to wake up yet again everyday to an alarm, and deciphering the approximate time to leave my apartment to make it to class, as this is the first year I've lived off campus. One of the best things that everyone learns this week is discovering how his/her friends and associates and such forth spent their summer. Walking around campus, trying to figure out what is different, and what remains the same, these are my favorite lessons that one learns the first week of school. This is not to say that no learning takes place in the classroom. No, being the fact that yes, we are in college, I certainly did have studies and work to do pretty much everyday of that week. But small in comparison, so thus this week is all about life lessons 101, which I will now elaborate on.
Allison's Life Lessons 101: (Junior year edition)
1) Never buy milk, fruits, veggies, and breads (basically anything fresh) in large quantities when feeding for one person, you will lose money
2) Remember to turn lights off now that electricity price is variable to change per month unlike dorm life
3) Pretend you lost your key card to get into the Bluu, now that you no longer have a meal plan
4) Never step out into the hall briefly when your door automatically locks on you
5) A free meal is never a bad thing when you have to start buying your own food
Weeks 2-4: Acceleration
- Week 2 is when suddenly everything goes fast, and you know that yes, summer is indeed over. No more syllabus discussion, no more early dismissals. It all finally kicks in: 1 week down and 15 to go. My first class of the week is my final core credit "Sophomore Comp." The first thing I learned from this class is when you put off core credits until your junior year in college, you soon feel old when you realize you're the oldest one in the room (with the exception of the professor, obviously). Secondly, I learned that I'm apparently very intelligent when it comes to movies. Not entirely sure what use this provides me. But as a 'competition' in order to determine the order we pick our Rhetorical topics, we were quizzed with movie trivia. The number of people who have no idea what the movie "Back to the Future" is slightly disappoints me. On a more serious note. We spent the second week in my Comp class primarily discussing the three main literary devices: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. I can't claim I haven't heard of these and discussed them previously, because frankly I have. However, I do think it was interesting applying these concepts to movies. I don't spend much time thinking about movies in a literary sense, so it was a useful practice to discuss. Later on, I got to use first person in a rhetorical response. The main lesson I have learned thus far from this class is to be concise. I am not the type of person who can write a 500-700 word essay. I find that much more challenging than if you were to assign me a 10 page paper. I am naturally a lengthy writer who likes to flourish things and find different prepositional clauses and such that sound nice and flow-y in my head. Unfortunately, this more then triples my desired word count.
- The second class of the week is my math class: Linear Algebra. The plus side with this class is that I have a class with this professor before; therefore, I have already mastered the art of understanding his very strong Chinese accent. Check. The other plus side with this class is, like all math classes, starts out with a bit of review to refresh on the knowledge you've learned previously. Check. And finally, this class is structured in the sense where you get small homework assignments every day, followed by the test. And then repeat. Check. For those who do study math, for a little brief overview, linear algebra consists of matrices and transferring vectors between different coordinates. As one would imagine, it clearly gets more complicated than this. This class, as all math classes are, is pretty straight forward. You understand the concepts, you get the problems right, thumbs up, good for you. You don't quite know what you're doing, you get the homework problems wrong, go study. The end. Nice and simple. you never have to question whether or not you'll do well. You pretty much always know.
- The third class I have this semester is my Honors Class: Literature and Civilization. Some of the concepts I've learned thus far were explained in my "What is Humor?" post and the upcoming "Conversations" series of posts. The first thing I learned from this class is the difficulty in describing everyday words. I assume you can come back with a counter argument as claim that everyday words such as 'cat' and 'apple' are pretty basic. But words that we think we understand, when asked to define, we suddenly realize we don't actually know what we are talking about. Well that was one of the things I learned early on in this class. Literature? Civilization? Humor? I challenge you to try for yourself....Exactly. A technological lesson I learned from this class is how to make a Blog. WOAH jump back! I am someone who only uses facebook mainly to share photos that friends ask for so they can tag themselves (also due to the fact that I'm one of the only people who has an actual camera...since my phone is a little lacking). I am also someone who only uses twitter to follow The Onion and The New York Times and Motivational Quotes. I have never tweeted myslef. This information is to point out that I am not a 'social media buff.' I sometimes believe people's tweets/facebook statuses are a slightly a waste of time (let's be honest people). I didn't really imagine myself blogging. But here I am. LA-DI-DA, writing a blog post.
- On Tuesdays and Thursday I get a nice surplus of some biology: Genetics and Developmental Biology. To clarify to anyone wondering about my class choices, I am a double major in mathematics and biology. What's considerably amusing about taking these classes together is the vast overlap. Down Syndrome, Meiosis, it does become quite a fascinating subject to discuss the way biology relates. With that being said, here is a fun fact. Dachshunds. Ever wonder why these little wiener dogs are so short? This is due to the fact that the Dachshunds have a genetic mutation in the FGF4 gene. And humans, loving their cute little legs, decided to continue to breed for this trait. Just a fun little fact I learned in Developmental. What is the ploidy of human: A) diploid all the time except germ cells, no exceptions. B) diploid all the way no exceptions, C) Diploid somatic cells, haploid germ cells, and a few polyploid exceptions. Answer: C!!!!!!. Just another fun little science joke, this time from genetics.
As one could guess, you can't list everything you learn in one little blog. If that was honestly all I've learned, that would be pretty sad. Most things we learn we never realize, until perhaps a couple weeks, months, years and then we realize the knowledge we had gained prior. Before I get to preachy and start to sound like Dr. Seuss I'll end this fun little post.
To end, here's a fun little quote I love:
I am a junior at Texas Christian University, half way finished with my Undergrad education. Le Fin. As a teach pointed out recently, being it the end of the fourth week of the semester, I am now 1/4 done with the fall semester. Sad day. Well when thinking about the first fourth of my semester, I will now summarize what my junior year has taught me thus far.
Week 1: A Calm Transition
- Week 1 primarily consists of syllabus week. A week where teachers give summaries of course goals and objectives. This week's main lessons are learning to wake up yet again everyday to an alarm, and deciphering the approximate time to leave my apartment to make it to class, as this is the first year I've lived off campus. One of the best things that everyone learns this week is discovering how his/her friends and associates and such forth spent their summer. Walking around campus, trying to figure out what is different, and what remains the same, these are my favorite lessons that one learns the first week of school. This is not to say that no learning takes place in the classroom. No, being the fact that yes, we are in college, I certainly did have studies and work to do pretty much everyday of that week. But small in comparison, so thus this week is all about life lessons 101, which I will now elaborate on.
Allison's Life Lessons 101: (Junior year edition)
1) Never buy milk, fruits, veggies, and breads (basically anything fresh) in large quantities when feeding for one person, you will lose money
2) Remember to turn lights off now that electricity price is variable to change per month unlike dorm life
3) Pretend you lost your key card to get into the Bluu, now that you no longer have a meal plan
4) Never step out into the hall briefly when your door automatically locks on you
5) A free meal is never a bad thing when you have to start buying your own food
Weeks 2-4: Acceleration
- Week 2 is when suddenly everything goes fast, and you know that yes, summer is indeed over. No more syllabus discussion, no more early dismissals. It all finally kicks in: 1 week down and 15 to go. My first class of the week is my final core credit "Sophomore Comp." The first thing I learned from this class is when you put off core credits until your junior year in college, you soon feel old when you realize you're the oldest one in the room (with the exception of the professor, obviously). Secondly, I learned that I'm apparently very intelligent when it comes to movies. Not entirely sure what use this provides me. But as a 'competition' in order to determine the order we pick our Rhetorical topics, we were quizzed with movie trivia. The number of people who have no idea what the movie "Back to the Future" is slightly disappoints me. On a more serious note. We spent the second week in my Comp class primarily discussing the three main literary devices: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. I can't claim I haven't heard of these and discussed them previously, because frankly I have. However, I do think it was interesting applying these concepts to movies. I don't spend much time thinking about movies in a literary sense, so it was a useful practice to discuss. Later on, I got to use first person in a rhetorical response. The main lesson I have learned thus far from this class is to be concise. I am not the type of person who can write a 500-700 word essay. I find that much more challenging than if you were to assign me a 10 page paper. I am naturally a lengthy writer who likes to flourish things and find different prepositional clauses and such that sound nice and flow-y in my head. Unfortunately, this more then triples my desired word count.
- The second class of the week is my math class: Linear Algebra. The plus side with this class is that I have a class with this professor before; therefore, I have already mastered the art of understanding his very strong Chinese accent. Check. The other plus side with this class is, like all math classes, starts out with a bit of review to refresh on the knowledge you've learned previously. Check. And finally, this class is structured in the sense where you get small homework assignments every day, followed by the test. And then repeat. Check. For those who do study math, for a little brief overview, linear algebra consists of matrices and transferring vectors between different coordinates. As one would imagine, it clearly gets more complicated than this. This class, as all math classes are, is pretty straight forward. You understand the concepts, you get the problems right, thumbs up, good for you. You don't quite know what you're doing, you get the homework problems wrong, go study. The end. Nice and simple. you never have to question whether or not you'll do well. You pretty much always know.
- The third class I have this semester is my Honors Class: Literature and Civilization. Some of the concepts I've learned thus far were explained in my "What is Humor?" post and the upcoming "Conversations" series of posts. The first thing I learned from this class is the difficulty in describing everyday words. I assume you can come back with a counter argument as claim that everyday words such as 'cat' and 'apple' are pretty basic. But words that we think we understand, when asked to define, we suddenly realize we don't actually know what we are talking about. Well that was one of the things I learned early on in this class. Literature? Civilization? Humor? I challenge you to try for yourself....Exactly. A technological lesson I learned from this class is how to make a Blog. WOAH jump back! I am someone who only uses facebook mainly to share photos that friends ask for so they can tag themselves (also due to the fact that I'm one of the only people who has an actual camera...since my phone is a little lacking). I am also someone who only uses twitter to follow The Onion and The New York Times and Motivational Quotes. I have never tweeted myslef. This information is to point out that I am not a 'social media buff.' I sometimes believe people's tweets/facebook statuses are a slightly a waste of time (let's be honest people). I didn't really imagine myself blogging. But here I am. LA-DI-DA, writing a blog post.
- On Tuesdays and Thursday I get a nice surplus of some biology: Genetics and Developmental Biology. To clarify to anyone wondering about my class choices, I am a double major in mathematics and biology. What's considerably amusing about taking these classes together is the vast overlap. Down Syndrome, Meiosis, it does become quite a fascinating subject to discuss the way biology relates. With that being said, here is a fun fact. Dachshunds. Ever wonder why these little wiener dogs are so short? This is due to the fact that the Dachshunds have a genetic mutation in the FGF4 gene. And humans, loving their cute little legs, decided to continue to breed for this trait. Just a fun little fact I learned in Developmental. What is the ploidy of human: A) diploid all the time except germ cells, no exceptions. B) diploid all the way no exceptions, C) Diploid somatic cells, haploid germ cells, and a few polyploid exceptions. Answer: C!!!!!!. Just another fun little science joke, this time from genetics.
As one could guess, you can't list everything you learn in one little blog. If that was honestly all I've learned, that would be pretty sad. Most things we learn we never realize, until perhaps a couple weeks, months, years and then we realize the knowledge we had gained prior. Before I get to preachy and start to sound like Dr. Seuss I'll end this fun little post.
To end, here's a fun little quote I love:
Twenty Years From Now You Will Be More Disappointed By The Things You Didn’t Do Than By The Ones You Did Do - Mark Twain
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