Cheesy Quintessence

I just read an amusing article about a male student wearing skirts in protest of his school’s ban of shorts this time of year. He is merely trying to point out the unfairness of the school’s ban of shorts while girls are still allowed to wear short skirts. The school tried to stop him from wearing skirts because of it being “disruptive,” but he ultimately won and will be wearing skirts until April rolls around and shorts are allowed again.

This brings up an interesting point about male and female rights. Although there is no enforcement outside of this specific class, my American Government II instructor, a middle-aged woman, is a real “Nazi” about hats being worn indoors; she will not allow men to wear a hat in the class because it is “disrespectful” according to “well-established” rules of etiquette. However, if a girl wants to wear a hat, it’s just fine. Is that ridiculously unfair or what? Thus, while girls are allowed to wear ridiculously short skirts, men can’t even wear a hat to keep their heads warm in the 63°F classroom because doing so is “rude.”

It seems NBC has finally realized that Americans’ ability to use English is rapidly going downhill. This story was shown as the last story on NBC Nightly News. In the story, they cover how companies are having to spend millions just to teach their employees basic English. They also associate poor writing skills with computer usage, claiming that writing techniques used on computers manifest themselves in all forms of writing. Of course, if people would just write correctly on their computers, they’d not have that problem!

This comes just three weeks after NBC Nightly News misspelled “forecasting” on a story heading.

Quite close to home, in San Antonio, it seems that a school has been disrupted due to terrorist threats posted via MySpace. After several students used MySpace to threaten to bring guns, about 2,600 students either didn’t come to class or left during class. The students posting the messages were identified and will be charged with felony. That, however, is not the most interesting part…

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Today was the first day of my United States History I class, which runs for three hours in one session each week, in the Fall 2005 semester. Upon my arrival, I entered the college, and I was shortly asked by the new old man’s face where the snacks, such as Coke and candy were located; the old man had scraggly grey/white facial hair and was dressed in an ugly work shirt. I told him where to go, and headed off to my classroom.

When I got to the classroom, I noticed a different old man, nicely dressed and standing in the doorway to the classroom, talking to one of the students. I thought, “He must be the instructor.” But this guy left and never returned. As I listened to my music, I waited with fellow students for a while, and then saw the return of the scraggly old man asking how to get on to the Internet with one of the lab computers. I explained that it was for students only, and that a password was needed, and I refused to give him access via my account; why should I break the rules by giving computer access to some crazy person off the street? Another student did as the guy requested, though. Time passed, and shortly after the assigned starting time of class, I was surprised to see what happened…

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My Introduction to Oral Communication grade is in! As expected, I got an A. It was a close A, as my speech grades were A-, A, and B+, and outline grades were all A, but I still got it. What could be harder for me than oral communication? On to the next semester!