Last Semester

I've signed up for classes for next semester, my last semester as an undergrad. I will be taking a relatively light load of only 15 hours (compared to 18 this semester and last). Except for my mandatory Critical Thinking Senior Seminar for International Affairs, I will be taking only language-related classes (sweet!). Here's what I'm signed up for:

Semantics (MWF 12 - 1) - I'm not sure how interesting I find semantics compared to some other sub-disciplines of linguistics, but this is a required course, so I'm taking it. Who knows, it might be the coolest thing ever.

Morphology and Syntax (TR 9:30 - 10:45) - I think I'm less interested in syntax than I am in semantics because syntax is like grammar, but it is important to know about and this is a required class, so I'm taking it. Who knows, it might be the coolest thing ever.

Spanish Phonology and Phonetics (TR 11:00 - 12:15) - I only had to harass a few people to get someone to allow this class to count towards my linguistics major and I am really happy about that. I'm excited about this class because I like Spanish, and I like Phonology and Phonetics, and here is a class that combines them! I think this is the class that I am most excited about, except for the next class down, perhaps.

Portuguese for Spanish Speakers (MWF 2 - 3) - Out of 9 semesters of college, this will only be the second class that I take that doesn't count towards anything that I need credit for (the other class I took that didn't get me any credit that I needed was Spanish Conversation last fall). I'm excited about this class because I always like learning a new language, and it will be fun to learn a new language via a second language. Hopefully I will learn a lot more in this class than I would learn in one semester of any other language. Oh, and sorry to Amanda who is mad that I am going to learn some Portuguese before she does (she claims that Portuguese was her language first and now I'm stealing it).

Int. Affairs senior seminar (W 4 - 6:30) - Truth be told, I'm not really looking forward to this class at all. Truth be told, I didn't start liking the International Affairs major until I was already pretty far through it. Granted, I've enjoyed my IA classes this year, and hopefully this class will be good too, but I'm still worried about it. But on the good side, this should be my only really difficult class so I should have the time to devote to doing well in it.


In other, unrelated news, tonight was the 7th Annual East Asian Language Competition here at CU. It is a competition held jointly by the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean departments here. Students from each level compete by doing performances to demonstrate their language skills and then the best teams win prizes. I participated in it as a freshman and as a sohpomore, taking away first prize for my teams both years. This year I was invited to be a student judge and I got to rate all the younger kids. I was hoping the Chinese kids would kick butt, but they didn't. The Korean students won the most prizes, but in a way it is unfair because they are mostly native speakers but the Chinese and Japanese kids are not. Luckily, the Japanese kids didn't do so well either, so I can at least take solace in that. I was a little bothered about how the competition had been re-organized from years past though. In the past, the second-year students had to participate in a translation competition where one student would read something in English, they would then have to tell it to their partner in whatever language it was they studied, and then their partner would have to interpret it back into English. The teams that ended with a translation closest to the original passage given would win. However, this year they didn't do that and that's too bad. Anyhow, I got some gift certificates for being a judge, so that's cool. Deep down inside though, I really just like going because I like listening to the younger kids and seeing how much better I am than them... hahaha (am I joking? maybe).