Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2008-04-22 02:14 am
tenlittlebullets) wrote2008-04-22 02:14 am
Entry tags:
Things I Wanna Learn
In the spirit of choosing a school to transfer to, I'm attempting to compile a list of Things I Wanna Learn (that you can actually take classes in). Because see, my plan for college is to get a degree in information technology or some subset of that, but take forever to finish it because I'll be taking classes in six gazillion other things in the meantime. Things that interest me, but that I wouldn't necessarily want to write a thesis on. Or get a degree in--majoring in IT is slightly more useful than, say, European history. But shit, why even bother going to school if you're not going to study European history and Old Norse and music theory and other things that have absolutely no use in the real-world job market? If I wanted a job without an education I'd go to trade school and make a comfortable living as an electrician. But on the flip side, I appear to be violently allergic to any Overarching Liberal Arts Philosphy that wants to teach me how to think--I want to take these classes because they're shiny and interesting and I like learning stuff, not because I want to Live An Examined, Critical Life. So an IT major is also a way to avoid drinking the liberal-arts kool-aid (and, while we're at it, keep me as far from the women's studies department as humanly possible oh my god talk about drinking the kool-aid).
So anyway. Stuff to divert myself with while I'm nominally working towards a degree.
IT:
I mean, I actually am interested in this. Coding, systems administration, Unix/Linux, networking, databases, webservers, PHP... not so much with the theoretical computer science stuff, or software engineering or graphics or any of that, more the Making Shit Work (And Occasionally Do Cool Stuff) end.
Languages:
The other biggie. I want to increase my fluency in French, maybe take some courses on translation, and improve my shit-awful German. I'd also like to take a whole host of dead languages including Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Old French Latin, Attic Greek, and Classical Arabic or Hebrew. Would also like to take Italian properly at some point (or at least get coached on killing my French accent), study an agglutinative language (Finnish, Hungarian, Basque, Turkish...), and maybe try out a few market languages like Chinese or Hindi or Modern Arabic. And if I have time, there's always Koine Greek, Aramaic, Old Church Slavonic, Anglo-Norman, Vulgar Latin, and other things it's probably insanely hard to find classes in.
Music:
Although I might take music theory at some point, this is one area where I'm much more interested in doing it than studying it. So I'll continue with voice lessons of course, and piano if I can find a teacher less horrifyingly strict than my old one. Would love to learn how to play the cello. Choirs are good, and an early-music ensemble would be great if I could find one. Theory... yeah, it's a possibility.
Maths and sciences:
First thing I'll need to do is re-take calculus and actually understand it this time. Egads. I wouldn't say I'm bad at math, just that it takes me a bit longer to wrap my head around higher-level math than it does for other people, so I tend to fall behind and get hopelessly lost. And of course calc is a prereq for everything science-related that's not specifically designed for liberal arts majors who need a science credit. So I want to take real chemistry and physics--something I did not get to do since I skipped the last two years of high school--and maybe make forays into the mind-bending stuff like particle physics that already interests me from a layman's perspective. Also, anything that could be construed as mad science--especially using chemistry to make things go boom--just makes me go :D.
Other liberal-arts blather:
I'm so respectful, aren't I? The trouble is that I like history and literature--as evidenced by the contents of my bookshelf--I just hate writing papers on it. For serious. Best way to kill my fricking enjoyment. I probably will end up taking courses in European history, French history, Romantic poetry, 19th century literature, and whatnot; but the probability that I will drop the class when faced with the prospect of dissecting the book I just thoroughly enjoyed is pretty high. (Meanwhile, anything with 'modernism' or 'postmodernism' in either the title or description of the course will make me run screaming. It's kind of a reflex after Simon's Rock.) There's a lot I'd like to explore in these realms, but I'm not so sure school is the best place for that. I might also end up taking a theology course or two out of pure curiosity; being agnostic doesn't prevent me from being vaguely interested in religion. And I wouldn't mind a course or two of poli sci or economics.
Miscellanea:
I want to learn how to sew. Replica historical clothing, to be exact. I've tried to teach myself, but it didn't really work, so I think a class is the best option. Would also be open to learning knitting and embroidery. And sketching--I will never be the next da Vinci, but my scribbles do tend to improve when I take just-for-fun art classes. And I have this sick urge to learn ballroom dancing. I've always been the oaf with two left feet wherever dancing is involved, but I think it might just be like math--I pick it up slower and it takes more effort for me. Private lessons might be useful for this, since being the person in a class who always catches on last seems like the quickest way to make me hate dancing forever and ever and ever.
On the other end of the gender-role spectrum, at some point I will learn the workings and maintenance of cars. Even if I have to learn it myself out of a goddamn book, use my poor Civic as a guinea pig, and end up enlisting my dad to show me how to fix whatever fubar results from that. (With strict orders to never ever if he values his hide Just Do It For Me. Fuck, that's not how you learn.)
Things I am not interested in and will in fact avoid at all costs:
Psychology. Postmodernism. Philosophy. Women's studies and any other subject whose jargon includes words like patriarchy, heteronormativity, privilege, systematic oppression, cultural imperialism, etc, and whose adherents seem to think that everyone should be just as interested in it as they are.
And this is just the things I have an active interest in learning; it doesn't even account for the ooh, shiny! factor involved in browsing any decent school's course catalogue.
So anyway. Stuff to divert myself with while I'm nominally working towards a degree.
IT:
I mean, I actually am interested in this. Coding, systems administration, Unix/Linux, networking, databases, webservers, PHP... not so much with the theoretical computer science stuff, or software engineering or graphics or any of that, more the Making Shit Work (And Occasionally Do Cool Stuff) end.
Languages:
The other biggie. I want to increase my fluency in French, maybe take some courses on translation, and improve my shit-awful German. I'd also like to take a whole host of dead languages including Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Old French Latin, Attic Greek, and Classical Arabic or Hebrew. Would also like to take Italian properly at some point (or at least get coached on killing my French accent), study an agglutinative language (Finnish, Hungarian, Basque, Turkish...), and maybe try out a few market languages like Chinese or Hindi or Modern Arabic. And if I have time, there's always Koine Greek, Aramaic, Old Church Slavonic, Anglo-Norman, Vulgar Latin, and other things it's probably insanely hard to find classes in.
Music:
Although I might take music theory at some point, this is one area where I'm much more interested in doing it than studying it. So I'll continue with voice lessons of course, and piano if I can find a teacher less horrifyingly strict than my old one. Would love to learn how to play the cello. Choirs are good, and an early-music ensemble would be great if I could find one. Theory... yeah, it's a possibility.
Maths and sciences:
First thing I'll need to do is re-take calculus and actually understand it this time. Egads. I wouldn't say I'm bad at math, just that it takes me a bit longer to wrap my head around higher-level math than it does for other people, so I tend to fall behind and get hopelessly lost. And of course calc is a prereq for everything science-related that's not specifically designed for liberal arts majors who need a science credit. So I want to take real chemistry and physics--something I did not get to do since I skipped the last two years of high school--and maybe make forays into the mind-bending stuff like particle physics that already interests me from a layman's perspective. Also, anything that could be construed as mad science--especially using chemistry to make things go boom--just makes me go :D.
Other liberal-arts blather:
I'm so respectful, aren't I? The trouble is that I like history and literature--as evidenced by the contents of my bookshelf--I just hate writing papers on it. For serious. Best way to kill my fricking enjoyment. I probably will end up taking courses in European history, French history, Romantic poetry, 19th century literature, and whatnot; but the probability that I will drop the class when faced with the prospect of dissecting the book I just thoroughly enjoyed is pretty high. (Meanwhile, anything with 'modernism' or 'postmodernism' in either the title or description of the course will make me run screaming. It's kind of a reflex after Simon's Rock.) There's a lot I'd like to explore in these realms, but I'm not so sure school is the best place for that. I might also end up taking a theology course or two out of pure curiosity; being agnostic doesn't prevent me from being vaguely interested in religion. And I wouldn't mind a course or two of poli sci or economics.
Miscellanea:
I want to learn how to sew. Replica historical clothing, to be exact. I've tried to teach myself, but it didn't really work, so I think a class is the best option. Would also be open to learning knitting and embroidery. And sketching--I will never be the next da Vinci, but my scribbles do tend to improve when I take just-for-fun art classes. And I have this sick urge to learn ballroom dancing. I've always been the oaf with two left feet wherever dancing is involved, but I think it might just be like math--I pick it up slower and it takes more effort for me. Private lessons might be useful for this, since being the person in a class who always catches on last seems like the quickest way to make me hate dancing forever and ever and ever.
On the other end of the gender-role spectrum, at some point I will learn the workings and maintenance of cars. Even if I have to learn it myself out of a goddamn book, use my poor Civic as a guinea pig, and end up enlisting my dad to show me how to fix whatever fubar results from that. (With strict orders to never ever if he values his hide Just Do It For Me. Fuck, that's not how you learn.)
Things I am not interested in and will in fact avoid at all costs:
Psychology. Postmodernism. Philosophy. Women's studies and any other subject whose jargon includes words like patriarchy, heteronormativity, privilege, systematic oppression, cultural imperialism, etc, and whose adherents seem to think that everyone should be just as interested in it as they are.
And this is just the things I have an active interest in learning; it doesn't even account for the ooh, shiny! factor involved in browsing any decent school's course catalogue.