Powell Computer Lab

I just found out to how type Chinese on the computers here, and I am immensely intrigued! You would think that at the College Library, people would be using the computers to study or do homework, but the guy to my right is checking NBA stats and watching basketball clips and the girl to my left is watching a show fullscreen. And now I am just blogging!

The entire day yesterday, I waited to blog because Blogger was under maintenance for considerably longer than expected. I had so much to say! And since it is now 12:35 p.m., I have about 20 minutes to share before I head off to English discussion, which is about two minutes away. ...if that.

I'll start with what I have been wanting to share for a while now but have not yet (obviously).
Recently, in English, I learned that there is no such thing as happiness. The same week, I learned in anthropology that there's no such thing as standard English. The following week, I learned ALSO in anthropology that double negatives are, in fact, grammatically correct. MY WORLD IS CRUMBLING. Is this what humanities classes do to people? Demolish their entire belief and value system (based on the English language, anyway) and destroy any hope for happiness based on that? Oh, the tragedy!
Elaboration: In Rasselas, Samuel Johnson continually emphasizes through his characters that the pursuit of happiness is futile. In a world where people already have everything they want and therefore have nothing else to want, they aren't happy because there's nothing to desire, nothing to yearn for. En route to seek happiness, they keep encountering people who aren't happy with what they have (much like them) as well as people who aren't happy with what they don't have (also like them, but materialistically for the former and philosophically for the latter). It's just so sad! I may have misinterpreted since I didn't finish reading entirely, but my professor declared in class that there is no such thing as happiness, at which point my heart just sank.
Anthropology is usually interesting to me because I actually like analyzing linguistic aspects of culture as well as culture itself. But when the professor said that there's no "standard" English, I was flabbergasted! What, then, have I been learning this entire time?! This ties in with the double negatives matter. According to linguistic anthropological studies and ethnographies, there's no one standard English or any language because of the variation of dialects and diversity of cultures. As long as there are established communities that speak particular dialects or languages (or variations of them), whatever they speak is standard because it is relative to them and people in their communities accept, understand and use the words, phrases, etc. that "we" as "standard English" speakers otherwise would deem "wrong." Same goes for double negatives. In Spanish, "No tengo nada" means "I don't have any" and it is a grammatically correct sentence. In other communities, an English speaker may say, "I don't got none" but we must "survey the whole" (as Alexander Pope suggests in "Essay on Criticism") and consider the way that other people in those particular communities speak and understand one another.
Which brings me to point out that EVERYBODY IS INNATELY RACIST.

Gosh, I have been learning so much this quarter! It's quite amazing. I'm not sure if I ever wrote about this, but one day in English lecture, I suddenly felt smart... Not test-smart or book-smart, but culture-smart. So, I suppose what I'm trying to conclude with here before I head off to class is that despite all these seeming tragedies that have made me question my academic belief system, I'm glad that I'm here learning all these things and gaining a wider perspective of everything. I suppose that's why people come to college, right? To learn, to become cultured, to diversify (if not in intellect, then in friendships)...

As a side note, perhaps I will consider anthropology or linguistics, or... linguistic anthropology. Hmm, fun stuff!

Off to English discussion for some William Blake!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Talking about T1D

Image
I used to tell people, "I am diabetic" or "I am a diabetic" and I never liked saying that because it wasn't something that people reacted positively to, or it wasn't something that everybody understood.  Previously, I wrote about my first taste of empowerment , when I (finally) learned in middle school to give myself injections. Undoubtedly, this turning point also brought about a change in attitude. Until then, I used to constantly be frustrated or angry about having diabetes, about not being able to do X/Y/Z, about being micromanaged by my parents. After I learned to administer injections to myself and especially after I started using the insulin pump, I began to feel more control over and ownership of my condition. I no longer had to rely on my mother or the school nurse, and I could take insulin whenever, for whatever I wanted to eat (within reason) or glucose reading I needed to correct.  One day, I had an epiphany: that what I had been tell
Read more

Becoming Happier

Image
I can't always make other people happy. It's hard to do and even harder to admit. I spent years making decisions and commitments based on what I thought others wanted or needed, forgoing the better decisions for and commitments to myself. I tried to convince myself that seeing other people happy made me happy, but alas, they were only fleeting moments. On the occasions I failed to make somebody happy, I became disappointed. On the occasions somebody was completely unappreciative, I became angry. Furthermore, I can't ever base my happiness on one person, or any group of persons. I have to find happiness on my own terms, and that means asking myself what I want, and actually doing it. (from " Reflections ", January 2018)  You know the saying, "Do what makes you happy"? Well, I've been trying that out for the past year or so, and it really works. It took a lot for me to realize that I hadn't been happy, and it took a long time for me to become h
Read more

Things I Wish I'd Known

I don't need to try to please everybody. As valiant and commendable of an effort as one can make, it is impossible to make everybody happy. While happiness can ensue via acts of service for others, I've come to realize that it also has to be actively pursued by asking myself what I want .  A good relationship with my parents is just as important as a good relationship with anybody else. In middle school, I began to "rebel", and in doing so, I of course often upset my parents, and began to communicate with them less and less about my daily goings-on. Meanwhile, I began to develop deep relationships with friends and later romantic relationships with boy(s). A part of me thought that it was a trade-off--either relationship with my parents or relationships with my friends. And I made a choice. But really, there was truly no reason it couldn't have been both.  Not every relationship (the general sense of the word, not just the romantic sense) needs to stay a relatio
Read more