“To have another language is to possess a second soul.” – Charlemagne

The first day of class I felt so overwhelmed: a combination of what-did-I-get-myself-into and I-absolutely-love-this, all at once. It was new, it was exciting, and boy, would it be a challenge. This class has been the ultimate combination of love and sheer terror.

There were a lot of stakes going into this class. This course was going to determine which region of the world I would focus on for my International Relations major. In the grand scheme of things, this is not the biggest deal in the world, but at the time, it was. And it still is. I am going to take classes for the rest of my college career with this focus, study abroad in this region, and be potentially most qualified to work there. So I wanted to ensure that it really was what I wanted to do. And I said to myself: “If I don’t like this, then I am not going to focus on the Middle East. There is no point.” Amazingly enough, I did like it from the very beginning.

العربية. Arabic 101. What an adventure this class has been! It was hyped up to be this impossible feat. Arabic is not impossible. I can tell you this, because after three months, I can have conversations in Arabic. I can write in Arabic. I can hear short and long vowels. And I can understand a heck of a lot more than I ever could have dreamed I would after a 101 class.

I said this language wasn’t impossible, but it wasn’t easy either. Hours upon hours I spent learning the alphabet and listening to the sounds, trying to differentiate. There were several weeks in the beginning of the semester where I felt like all I was doing was Arabic homework. It is a very demanding language, especially in the beginning when everything is so foreign. And really, the only way to get past this is to be completely forced out of your comfort zone, which my professor had no trouble doing.

I owe so much of my knowledge of Arabic to my professor. Professor Eva Phillips is unlike any professor I have ever had. The moment she walked into our first class, she bombarded us with Arabic, and not only that, she made us understand what she was saying, with hand gestures and emphasizing certain words. I couldn’t believe that I was already speaking Arabic my first class! This set the tone for the whole semester. Whether we wanted to speak in class or not, we were pushed out of our comfort zone to form complete sentences and ask each other questions. It really woke me up how energetic Professor Phillips is, and how I never quite knew when she was going to call on me.

With her dedication and hard work, we really picked up the language quite quickly. Not only this, but she truly cares about each of us, and every we class we had to say (in Arabic) how we were doing that day. If any of us responded that we were sick, which happens quite often this time of year, she would quickly transition into a motherly lecture about how we have to take of ourselves and get enough sleep. I know for a fact that Professor Phillips is the reason that I can speak and comprehend the amount of Arabic that I can after one semester. And she is such an entertainer, always singing, laughing, and joking with us. The class really was a family by the end, as she said it would be.

I had an incredible realization today in my last Arabic class of the semester. I realized how much I had learned in such a short amount of time. Today in class, we each did presentations describing ourselves and our families. I was so impressed by the amount each person knew. I couldn’t believe that just in August we were beginning to sketch characters in our books. For a language such as Arabic, this diligence and learning environment is necessary to even come close to proficiency. I am so happy that I experienced Arabic 101, and I cannot wait for the next round of Arabic 102 with Professor Phillips once again!الحمد لله

The Magic of Rochester

This week, I had two close friends of mine from school visit my home, which is a suburban town named Rush outside of Rochester, New York. Both friends, Francis and Phil, live in Florida, and were unable to trek back home for Thanksgiving Break, which is why I extended an invitation for them to join us for Thanksgiving and the days after. Since neither of them had ever been to Rochester, we had a blast touring around and finding the sights that make Rochester unique from other Upstate cities such as Syracuse.

Wegmans: This is an obvious stop. Wegmans is an essential part of life in Upstate New York, especially in its birthplace, Rochester. We journeyed to the original Wegmans in Pittsford Plaza, which is incredibly over-the-top. The area with the hot food itself is impressive, with Indian, Asian, Italian, wing, and salad bars, a burrito station, pizza, sushi, soup, subs, and the list goes on. And then when you go upstairs (yes upstairs!) there is a massive dining area, where it is honestly quite normal to us. Wegmans is an experience. To fully emphasize how much a part of the community Wegmans is, I told my friends that I have had review sessions in Wegmans, which is absolutely true and something no one thought twice about. It is as much of a restaurant and social spot as it is a grocery store. After the trip, I think Phil and Francis understood why everyone is so crazy about it!

Simply Crepes / Erie Canal: Simply Crepes is a wonderful restaurant that is specific to the Rochester area. It was founded by the French-Canadian Héroux family, who wanted to expose the area to crepes and their versatility. The menu offers lavish savory and sweet crepes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert! The quality, atmosphere and presentation is always fantastic, which is why I wanted to bring my friends here. We all ordered dessert crepes, which is what we usually do when we go there. The options range from a pumpkin to ice cream sundae crepes, and we agreed that what we had ordered was delicious and extremely filling. Simply Crepes is also located right along where the Erie Canal runs through the Town of Pittsford, so my friend Anna and I showed them The Erie Canal. The Erie Canal is the reason that Upstate New York is called the “Burned-OverDistrict,” because ideas and movements traveled along The Erie Canal and ended up in Upstate N.Y. This is why we had reformers such as Susan B. Anthony and Fredrick Douglass live in the Rochester area. The Erie Canal in and of itself was an important connection to other places for economic and trade reasons, but it was cool to share this piece of history with them!

West Side Story at The Kodak Center for Performing Arts: One of the coolest things about Rochester is the huge presence of the arts. We have one of the best music schools in the country, Eastman School of Music, the Auditorium Theatre, which brings high-quality touring shows and master classes, The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, which is incredible, and several other theatres, dance troupes, choirs, and more. A great aspect of this is that not only people who do music professionally participate or view the arts here; it is community-wide. The Rochester Association for Performing Arts teamed up with the Rochester Latino Theatre Company, Inc. to do a community performance of the classic musical West Side Story. The performers ranged from high school students to college graduates to middle aged adults and the quality of the performance was spectacular. I think it really emphasized not only the arts culture we have in Rochester but also was a celebration of the Latino culture here.

To wrap up, I had a wonderful time showing my friends around my hometown! This visit really made me notice and appreciate the things that make Rochester special from other cities and I was overjoyed to share this with others! J

The Erie Canal

Pittsford Wegmans

Persistance

My biggest takeaway from the movie, “Wretches and Jabberers,” is persistence. I have come to re-evaluate my actions of “persistence” compared to what Larry and Tracy are trying to do as activists of autism.

In the movie, Larry and Tracy, two men who have autism, travel to Sri Lanka, Japan and Finland to spread awareness about autism and get others to join their cause. They are amazing people— they both learned how to read and communicate via typing despite the odds of them never being able to communicate. This is how the disease is: it prevents those affected by it from talking, not from thinking. Larry and Tracy meet fellow autism advocates Chandima, in Sri Lanka, Naoki, in Japan, and Antti and Henna in Finland, who have all learned to communicate as well and help Larry and Tracy get a feel for how autism is accepted in these respective places.

One of the most incredible things about the movie is to see how persistent Larry and Tracy are in simple activities that are made much more difficult. The typing itself takes very long, and it is evident that at times Larry or Tracy wanted to just give up if they were upset. But seeing them push through and keep typing so their assistants could understand what was wrong was so inspiring. Everything was pushing them to stop typing, and yet they kept going.

Another amazing moment was when Tracy met with one of the politicians for the State of Vermont (I cannot remember who it was). Tracy understood how important this meeting was and was frustrated when he could not properly convey what he was trying to say. Instead of letting this frustration get to him, he calmly kept trying until the politician understood. Communicating seems like such a simple thing to me— I either talk, text, email, call, etc without much difficulty. But for Larry, Tracy, and the others, their only option of sharing their thoughts is to type. I never thought of what it would be like to be limited in communication.

Larry and Tracy share in the movie that it is difficult for children with autism to attend school because they cannot speak. At eight-years old, Larry was placed in an institution for 15 years. Despite this, he developed a passion for painting while in the institution, which he has done his whole life. The detail, creativity and precision Larry puts into his painting (which is captured on camera) is very impressive. Seeing this, I wonder how much he could have accomplished in a school setting.

I hope that the practice of institutionalizing kids with autism is not still continued, especially since according to Autism Speaks, the largest autism research and advocacy organization in the world, autism is “the fastest-growing serious developmental disability in the U.S.” and the disease is found to be increasingly more prevalent. It is good that activists such as Larry and Tracy are educating people on autism since it is a major issue in our society that I feel is not often discussed as much as it should be. I know that I didn’t know much about autism before this movie and I am glad I do now. To conclude, I have no doubt that Larry and Tracy will continue to be successful because of their persistence.

Connect the Dots

One of the features I absolutely despise and love at the same time about social media is precisely what Kati talks about in her post quasi-synchronous stress. There is a feature on Facebook and if you have iMessage for the iPhone, and maybe other types of phones I just do not know about, where you can see if the person is typing or not.

I despise this feature in messages because it is a strange invasion of privacy to me. Why does someone need to know that I’m typing, won’t they get the message soon enough? It seems so strange to me. And sometimes, as Kati says, it absolutely excruciating because it is just there for a long time. And of course I analyze it: why did they stop typing, are they typing a really long message, why haven’t they responded YET???!

The one thing I do hate more than this is the “Read (Time)” option, when the other person can see when the message was read. That one is so terrible because you can see if someone just blatantly ignores you, whereas otherwise, you get the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you don’t have your phone or its out of sight. But with that option, you know they saw it and just decided not to respond, and that’s truly an awful and anxiety-inducing feeling. I would say this is definitely worse than the typing alert hands-down, but both are weird to me.

Now just today, I found this incredibly useful as I was wondering if a study session was worth my time since I was going to be late. So what did I do? I sent out mass texts (and by mass I mean 3) to people in my class I thought would be there. I hoped their responses would let me know if I should try and get my butt to this review session or if I should just skip it. I had no way of knowing if they would respond either… until I saw the little “…” bubble in two of the conversations, and I felt instantly relieved. Someone was in the process of responding to me! I had no worry about whether they would respond or not- I could see that they were doing that.

Although I am not fond of these settings, Kati made me think of this in a different light. They want the message to simulate real conversation, so by seeing the other person typing, it creates a more-natural, back-and-forth dialogue then just sending a text message. I find messaging to be a completely different ball park in terms of conversation anyways, and I feel that this setting further takes the spontaneity out of conversation. It is not like a face-to-face conversation because someone can prepare what they will say in advance. No matter what, I always prefer human interactions to any kind.

Will we ever know...?

Photo Credit

Blogging Noob turned Blogger

Before taking this class, blogging was never a part of my life. I was never into the tumblr or reddit scene, and can attest to never reading a blog before this class. So little old me comes into this class excited and is exposed to the world of blogging. When I was younger, I used to write in my journals a lot, and slowly fell out of it as my time became more strained. So having a blog to me is like a more public diary. It has given me an outlet for my ideas and views.

Blogging is an art. In college, we are used to writing pages upon pages on a topic that might not interest us. Try keeping ideas that are interesting to you between 250-500 words. That is hard. In blogging, I have to assume the audience has no reason to read my blog, so I must draw them in with an interesting title or personal story. Whereas in academic writing, my professor is guaranteed to read my essay, and I know he/she is the audience. Who is my audience in blogging? I don’t know! People could just stumble along my blog by accident.

Amanda Quick, a tech journalist for "Tech Cocktail," entrepreneur of “The Next Zuck” and graduate student at the iSchool of Syracuse University, visited our class this week. Her advice to us was: “Learn everything.” Amanda studied Broadcast & Digital Journalism, which helped her launch her project “The Next Zuck,” which is a website that highlights and interviews young entrepreneurs in all different colleges around the U.S. She started this because she found that entrepreneurs on college campuses had difficulty publicizing their ideas beyond college campuses. However, to start up this project, she needed financial, marketing, and business skills, in addition to technology skills. Her advice to learn everything really applies to her success because she did not only stick to communication skills; she drew from other places as well. And now she is learning more in-depth information technology skills through her Master’s Program.

Amanda’s advice to “learn everything” is precisely one of the reasons I took this course. I wanted to understand how to blog. I thought not only did it sound fun, but it also sounded like a skill that may be useful someday. This skill may be more so useful for a communications major*, but my thought process was that maybe it will come in handy someday. Through the other guests we have met, I have learned even more than I could have imagined, such as disability rights from Professor Bill Peace, a blog providing a safe place for people to express themselves from Melissa McEwan, and about the facts surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination from Martin J. Kelly. These are people who not only expanded my mind about course-related information, but also made me draw conclusions about our society and what makes humans act certain ways.

*I am studying International Relations and Policy Studies, with a minor in Management

One of the things I am the most proud of in this blog is, quite honestly, that I was able to make one. I am not a very techy person at all and just being able to choose a format I like with a color scheme and everything is something I consider the biggest win of all. Another thing I have realized is that I am very into personalizing my writing. I like to connect what I am writing about, no matter what it is, to something in my life, so I usually begin with a story of some kind. I think this helps me relate to the piece I am writing and I like to think it makes my writing a little more engaging.

I like to think that I will continue my blog after this class. As I mentioned before, I love using it as an outlet to release my thoughts in an organized way. Sometimes I am inspired to write about something, so I will quickly write it on a Post-It so I don’t forget it, and I feel so excited when I get around to actually writing about it. Two of my favorite posts to date have been “Why I Strive to be like Phoebe Buffay from Friends,” and “Married at Age 5: TheLife of a Child Bride,” for very different reasons. For the first one, the inspiration for this struck me and I felt so strongly about writing it, especially when a few other classmates also wrote Friends-related posts. The latter post is one of my favorites because it really came full circle to me— I wrote about the topic of child brides in Southeast Asia in one of my college essays and had not discussed it in awhile, so being able to share this eye-opening issue with others was a privilege for me.

This blog has definitely been a journey for me and I am very grateful that I have been exposed to the world of blogging, previously unknown territory for me. This makes me realize how right Amanda was— having experience in other territories outside of your field of study is useful and may help you in the future. I guess we will see where this takes me.