Proofreading

"Heroics are ultimately easier to sustain than [routine]: the most significant and dangerous problem that most people face is how to get through a lifetime of ordinary days." ~Walker Percy

March 5, 2013
When I woke up this morning, I immediately looked out the window to make sure the weather was still nice. I was lucky! Sure enough, the sun had come out and it was another cloudless day! At school, everyone was wearing t-shirts and I realized I had not packed any warm weather clothes.

In Marketing, we finished our presentations on retail sales, and started talking about different communication strategies. The entire class was very quiet, so I started answering questions. Being a new professor—a professor in training for that matter—I could tell that Stan was nervous, so I played a long to get him someone to interact with. Most of my guesses were right any way, and when I was wrong, he was able to explain the correct answer to everyone.

We had to pick groups for our final project by this weekend. I decided to work with Jana and Markita, both of whom I’d sat next to the past few weeks. We went up to tell Stan we were a group. While we waited, I overheard him talking with Manu—an exchange student from India working on her Master’s degree.

“The policy is three absences,” he said. “We can evaluate it on a case by case basis if you have more, but that is the policy.”

“But I have an intensive class,” she said. “I have to go to both classes to pass.”

Just as he told me the week before, I needed to find a way to attend some part of every class.

After Manu left, we told him that the three of us were going to be a team. He said we needed a fourth person. Luckily, there was a new student from Chile who had just transferred to the class. We talked with him and, not knowing anyone, he was thankful to join our group.

Leaving the room, I saw Manu standing in the hallway. I’d spoken with her a few times in class and at the dorms, so I went up to offer my advice.

“Hi,” she said as I approached.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Ugh! Frustrated,” she said.

“I understand,” I said. “I’m in the same boat. I have an intensive class that meets the same time as this class every other Tuesday.”

“It makes no sense, right?” She said. “We have to be in this class and we have to be in that class. Why would they schedule it like that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But he did tell me that if I can be in some portion of the class, he’ll give me credit for attending.”

“It doesn’t matter. My class is all day, I can’t just leave to come to this class,” she explained.

“Oh,” I said. “Mine starts at 1pm, so I can come to the first half hour of this class.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes, and then she smiled. “Do you want to join me for lunch?” she asked.

“Um, sure,” I said. I’d planned to go back and proofread my blog posts some more but I figured I’d spent enough time doing that over the past few days. Going to class, and then going to blog was becoming my routine, and it was not the idea I'd had in mind when I set out on this trip. Having lunch with another person would be a nice way to break out of the rut.

We went to a little fast food joint across from school. The name of the place was in Czech but it was basically a burgers and fries type of restaurant. Orders were taken a counter which was situated underneath a giant light-up menu. I ordered a chicken sandwich, and Manu ordered some sort of wrap.

“No meat!” she said, to the lady taking the order. The woman didn’t speak any English. “Vegetarian. Ne meat!” (Ne is the Czech word for no.)

We sat down and talked about how the program was going so far. We talked about people we’d met and people we were traveling with.

“I try not to spend a ton of my time with other Americans,” I said. “I really want to meet other people and hear other points of views.”

“Good,” she said. “Most Americans are stupid anyway.”

I laughed. “What do you mean?”

“They don’t understand the culture and they don’t make any attempt to either,” she said. “Like the drinking. It’s all about the alcohol to them and getting wasted. They don’t get it.”

“I’ve noticed that,” I said.

“And I don’t think Americans know much about the world. I think they idealize it as some foreign place. For example, at the club last night, I convinced an American I’m an Indian Princess. India hasn’t had a princess in a few hundred years.”

“I think there are a lot of misconceptions about India in the world,” I said.

“Like everyone I talk to acts surprised I can speak English,” she said. “I even had a professor tell me that Indians cannot speak English. It’s the national language of the country. We were a colony of England until 1947. We speak English!”

“My high school geography teacher taught us a ton about India, but I still hear people make comments linking life in India to life in Africa.”

“I Know!” she said. “I hate that! India’s government has a lot of problems, but we are not as lost as African nations are.”

“Not at all,” I said. “India is a huge world player.”

She sighed, “They are trying to be, but I don’t know if they will get there or not. I think China will beat us there.”

“You know before I left the states, one of the professors at my university told me that people who travel make one of two mistakes,” I explained the pre-departure presentation from school. “Some people think that we are all different and could never get along, and other people think that we are all the same and should just get along. The reality is a third category: we are all different, but we still can get along.”

“I think Americans think the world wants to be like America,” she said. “And we don’t. America is America, but other countries are their own identities. We don’t compare ourselves to America. And if you compare America to other world powers, it doesn’t stack up. The Roman Empire lasted for thousands of years. The French Empire lasted for hundreds of years. The Spanish Empire lasted for hundreds of years. The British Empire only fell apart in the mid-nineteen-hundreds. America has had success, but it is only 200 years old and it hasn’t had success for that entire time. It is a fine country, but it is not the world empire Americans think it is.”

I didn’t know if I agreed or disagreed with her. If nothing else, her view provided me insight. On one hand, it has been obvious to me that the world does not think about or admires America to the degree that I’d always assumed they had. In history classes, I always got the impression that if the USA went away, the world would be screwed. I’ve certainly seen that isn’t true.

At the same time, I’ve met people—from both Europe and Asia—who can name the last 10 or more US presidents; know both political parties and the various contenders from the last election, including all eight republicans from the primary; know significant dates in American History including those of the Revolution and the Civil War; know all 50 states, where they are located, and most of their capitals; and know the conversion rate from various currencies to USD.

On one hand, I find this frightening; the world seems to know more about us, than we know about the world. I was never taught any of that information about other countries, and if I was, it was as a “nice to know” not a part of a curriculum. But on the other hand, this tells me that even if the world doesn’t need America, they certainly are interested in it.

“I have to ask you,” she said, “why don’t Americans participate in any of my classes? It’s all of the Europeans. You are the first American I’ve been in class who spoke up. Are they afraid or something?”

“Honestly,” I said. “I think they are afraid. I wouldn’t participate this much back home. In school at home, there is a huge fear of answering a question—or asking a question—and looking stupid.”

“Why would asking questions make you look stupid? Isn’t not asking questions more stupid?”

I thought about that. “I guess you are right. I guess in classes back home, it always felt so much more judgmental. It was like everyone felt like they had to pretend they already knew everything, and if you didn’t know everything, you were less valuable in some way.”

“I can’t imagine that,” she said. I had never really thought about it, but I guess some part of me knew it was true. I mean we all joked about the Ferris Bueller effect in classes. Dozens of times we’d exchanged headlighted glanced with professors until we were broken into groups for discussion instead.  In small groups, everyone knows the answer; it’s the spotlight (or the perceived spotlight) of the whole class that makes us go silent. I think there really is a fear in our culture of looking foolish

After we finished eating, I joined Manu in going to a pharmacy. She had injured her knee in a car accident several months back and was having quite a bit of pain with it. We found a pharmacist who spoke English who sold her an ace bandage along with some vitamin D supplements for her bones.

When I got back to the dorm, I finished adding to my Dresden posts and started proof reading them. It took me three hours to get through them, editing the grammar (which was pretty bad) and re-writing things to be perfect. I got them uploaded and then started thinking about dinner.

Before I made pasta however, Karin and Eli emailed me the paper. They asked me to add a little on one of the topics and then proofread the English….all of those language arts classes are really paying off!

By 11:00, I’d finished reading through the paper and tweaking it. I sent it back to Karin for submission, and she got it turned in.

My eyes were exhausted. I took a shower and put in eye drops. Normally I would have read a little, but tonight, I just turned off the lights and went to bed.