School Stories 11 - Misc

Just a few random things from the past few days, that I thought were worth sharing.

Yesterday in English, we had to bring an item so that everyone could think critically about it. For example, the guy who likes beer brought a beer bottle, and we thought critically: why are beer bottles shaped the way they are? Why is the label the way that it is? Is the beer different because it's imported? Why is the beer different because it's imported? Etc, etc. Some people forgot to bring items for us to analyze. Other people "brought" things like their cellphone or a pen. (I took a fortune cookie. What does that say about society?) My favorite item though...

"I brought in a ceramic mushroom." (Rannndom.) "I used to work in a ceramic mushroom factory." (Whaaaat....?) The class laughed. "Old ladies go nuts for these things." Awesome.

And then for my other class, we had to read "just a few poems" ( = over 50 pages). My favorite parts from that were:

- From the description of Tennyson,
"Tall, ruggedly handsome, and with a faraway look in his eyes that was actually due to myopia, Tennyson fit everyone's idea of how a poet should look."

(p. 1231, The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 2B, The Victorian Age.)

I just really love the part about how he had a faraway look in his eyes, and that made him look like a poet, but that it was actually because he couldn't see. And that they wrote about it in the anthology. Good job.

- "Swans can live as many as 50 years."
(from a footnote for Tithonus, p.1246)

Huh. Who knew?

And then, this morning in my US Government class, the professor posted this:

Test
Short Answer

A liberal is a guy who believes in school busing, but he does not believe there should be prayers in school.
A conservative believes in school prayer but no school busing.
A moderate believes children should pray on the bus on the way to school.

Based on class discussions, it seems like there are far, far more liberals in my class than conservatives. (Even though I'm at a Utah university.) It makes me want to start a College Republicans club (there's College Democrats one) and join the NRA. No problem. It was just like this in California.

I'm also thinking of starting a Knitting Club, since it doesn't seem like there is one. There is a nine page listing of clubs, and there are no College Republicans OR Knitting clubs. Next week is our big thing where all of the clubs set up booths and try to get you to join, so I suspect I'll have more to say after that.

In other news, I finally have a house in Salt Lake. And I think I'm getting sick. And I read Twilight. (Which I thought I would read never in a million years, but actually ended up liking. Go figure.) My favorite thing about Twilight (aside from Edward, of course) was all of the foreshadowing. Awesome. Annnd, I'm actually at the library right now because I had to pick up the second one. Which my school library has ONE copy of, and it was in. Which is probably because all of the other University of Utah students are reading real books. Whatever.