Suboptimist

Somedays I Hate the MEC

The University of Utah Middle East Center finally decided to list an advanced Arabic course, calling it fourth-year Arabic. I should be excited about this, but I can only see bad things happening in this course. First of all, nobody can agree on what should be covered in the course. Some of us want a literature class, while others claim that will ruin their job prospects (I think I have written on how such sentiments bothers me) and how they need a speaking course. Some want to focus on newscasts, while others want to work out of a text book.

Here is the thing: I don’t want a fourth-year Arabic class, I want a focused Arabic class. I had a terrible third-year experience (the instructor was great, it was the students I couldn’t stand), and I refuse to take third-year part two. We need individual classes in the U’s Arabic department that focus on literature, linguistics, application, media, whatever, but nobody will learn at this level if we keep doing what we did in Arabic 1010. I should also say one thing to people who want a speaking course: go live in the Arab World or take an intensive course domestically. Taking a speaking course at the University of Utah, or any university for that matter, will not make you a better speaker of Arabic (except, perhaps, with other non-native speakers of Arabic).

Enough of that, time for unrelated complaints:

· Complaint one: I have a friend in the VA hospital right now. We have all heard how excellent the VA system has been in recent years, but from what my friend’s wife (who is also my friend) has told me, everything we have heard is a lie. I don’t think I should go into further detail, nor do I really want to, but I should just throw that out there.

· Complaint two: The originators of my student loan have screwed up, and I cannot pay my tuition today. Thankfully, due to an exception in the University’s tuition policy, my classes will not be deleted after today, but I will still incur a late fee. Geez…

EDIT:

I have been looking at grad schools more and more lately. Here is my problem: I want to go into historical linguistics (at this point), but particularly historical Afro-Asiatic linguistics. When I browse Linguistlist, I see that most Americans in historical linguistics are into Indo-European and only Indo-European. Clearly, IE is en vogue today. Scholars say, “I’m an Indo-Europeanist.” Yes, you and every other historical linguist out there. I mean, we’ve effectively reconstructed Proto-IE, but we have only reconstructed the phone inventory of Semitic — a small aspect of a relatively small member of a large language family. I am considering going overseas.