mewtwowarrior | Pretty Interesting Day

Today was pretty interesting.

Well, my classes were a little boring, but French wasn't too bad, because people did presentations about different French things. We ran out of time, and I and my partner didn't have to go today, yay! This'll give me more time to look over the presentation. ^_^

After French, I went to the store place. At my game club, someone told me that they were able to buy an MP3 player with their meal dollars. See, I have meal dollars that I get free with my meal plan, but I hardly ever use them. Turns out, I had like $100, and they expire in a few weeks. I've been buying some cookies and trying to give them away, but not much luck there. I've also been buying people lunch. XD Well, I bought the MP3 player for like $52, and I still have about $30 left, less because I bought a friend lunch.

I then went to the main building, and bought a Scan-Tron I forgot to get earlier, and a book called Reading Lolita in Tehran. I got this book because I was going to go to a lecture by the author for my leadership outside diversity activity. I figured that since I was going to the lecture, I would get the book, since the author was doing signings.

I checked the cafeteria place to see what food they were having today. It was a bunch of weird stuff, including shrimp salad with Goldfish crackers. It just looked strange. XD The pasta place wasn't much better, they had pepperoni, and it's often quite spicy.

So, I went to the food court to get a taco or pizza or something. Plus, my friends eat at the food court. I looked around, and decided to go to the burger place for the first time. I got a cheesy beefsteak thing. It was beef steak stuff with cheese whiz on a bun. Plus fries. ^_^ While I was waiting for my order, one of my friends came up, and we started talking. He mentioned that he was low on money, and so I offered to use some of my fountain of meal dollars to help him out. So, after I got my food, he got a burrito, and I paid for all of it. We both know a lot of the same people, so we sat with a bunch of our friends. A lot of random discussion between everyone ensued.

So, I went back to my room, and my roommate was asleep. So, I played Animal Crossing, and poked around on my computer. I messed with my new MP3 player, I think I might name it Snackie because I bought it with meal money. XD I put one song on it so far, most of my music is on my external hard drive, and I didn't want to get it out yet. lol I played on my computer until it was time to go to the lecture.

The lecture was pretty good, here's what I wrote for my leadership group:

I went to the Azar Nafisi lecture titled The Republic of the Imagination. I chose this lecture as my outside diversity activity, because it discussed things about other countries that I didn’t know about. To further my learning, I also purchased the book written by Mrs. Nafisi, titled Reading Lolita in Tehran. Some of the themes and information discussed in the lecture are also present in the book.

Mrs. Nafisi is from Iran, and she discussed some of the events going on there. She also talked about how a lot of the Middle Eastern countries are stereotyped as radical Muslim countries, but their different aspects are ignored under this broad description.

One of the big things she talked about was women’s rights in Iran. She said that people often dismissed the marriage age being lowered from 18 to 9, and other acts against women as the “culture” of Iran. But, in fact, many years before, women fought hard to get rights, and they got them. Sadly, a new government came in, and took all their rights away. Everything they had worked to get, gone. So, discrimination of women is not “culture”, it’s just what the government chooses to do.

I didn’t know some of that stuff about Iran, especially about the marriage age now being 9 years old! I was shocked and horrified to hear this. I was also surprised slightly to hear that women had gained rights and then lost them. I’ve never heard of Iranian women being any different than they are today. I feel really bad that they lost all their rights, and somebody needs to do something to get them back for these women.

Mrs. Nafisi discussed that imagination and curiosity is important. With imagination, you can put yourself in someone else’s place and see what they think, feel, and see. In the Republic of the Imagination, there are no boundaries, everyone is equal, no matter what the race, religion, or country of origin.

I never thought about imagination being that empowering. Sure, sometimes I’ve thought how others might feel, but I never realized how strong it really could be.

Mrs. Nafisi also discussed the tragedy about Virginia Tech, and how it was so much sadder when they posted the names of people, rather than just the number that died. She also mentioned countries and incidents where thousands of people died, but it’s just presented as a number, rather than individual human lives. She said that because we see things only in figures, we eventually become numb to horrible things.

I never thought about tragedies that way before. I did not see a list of names for the people that were killed at Virginia Tech, but I know it must have been devastating to have seen it. I didn’t really think about a listing of people who died in an incident before, I wonder how the world would be different if we did list every individual that died from a massive catastrophe. I would hope the world would be more caring, and perhaps do more to help stop further incidents.

All in all, it was an excellent lecture, and it opened my eyes to some different ways of thinking.

After the lecture, I got in line to wait for Mrs. Nafisi to sign my book. It took a while, but it was finally my turn.

Afterwards, I called the campus police to walk me back to my dorm.

Well, that about it for today!