February 2003
It looks like we'll be going to war again in Iraq pretty soon, and
there seem to be some mixed opinions about it. There have been a few
protests at Madison, including one big one on Bascom Hill. I only saw
a little of it, but a ton of people were crowded around a square while some
guy shouted out through a bullhorn in protest against Blood for Oil or U.S.
Imperialism or some other thing. Then, when I was shopping for groceries,
some other guy came up to people who went in the building and urged them
to Bomb Saddam. Maybe he was trying to urge them to join the military
or interrupt the anti-war protests or something. I have my first batch
of midterm tests this month, and let me tell you, they are not much fun.
I've got a computer class that's pretty straightforward, another computer
class that's more theoretical and requires proofs of complicated problems,
an ecology class where I already know a good portion of the subject material,
a literature class where I have to retrofit monomythic archetypes onto stories
(the professor does acknowledge that people tell stories without the monomyth
in mind, but he says most of the good stories conform to it in some way or
another), and of course, there's the ever-present Japanese class. This
semester, the Japanese class is taking up most of my time. I have to
read essays and articles that use kanji we don't know yet, so I have to use
a dictionary or a computer program to find them. I'm using a numbering
system, where I write down a number on my copy of the article and write the
corresponding furigana in a notebook, along with the word's meaning, so I
can learn the kanji and not just be looking at the furigana directly all
the time. It's a good class, but I really think I'll be over my head
if I try to take any further Japanese classes because it's not my major,
and I can't spend all my time studying Japanese when I have computer projects
to work on.