Yikes, it’s been a long time since my last post. My apologies; blame it on Cornell. I’ve been working my butt off lately, mostly for my Freshman Writing Seminar, which I don’t even enjoy that much. I really shouldn’t complain about it since it was my second choice, which is better than most people got, but it’s not quite what I was expecting. The focus of the class is on maps and cartography, and how they shape peoples’ ideas of geography and the world, which I thought sounded pretty cool. However, it turns out to be much less scientific than I thought, and much more analytical. We don’t really get to work with actual maps very often, which is disappointing (I love poring over maps and atlases), but instead spend our time reading about what other people think of cartography. I know all of this has value, but discussing the ways maps can be used as propaganda, or the how borders are both conceptually and physically powerful…it’s just not my cup of tea.

Anyways, that’s just one class, though it seems to make up the majority of my workload. Western Civ is going well, though we have a final coming up that I’m not too excited about. Psych is still awesome (though there’s a final soon for that too) and Arabic is going really well. In fact, I think I may have decided on a major: Near Eastern Studies. I’m set up next semester to take Elementary Arabic II (which finishes the language component of the major, though I plan to continue Arabic next year) and Politics in the Middle East, which I’m really excited about.

I’m also enrolled in French, which I took in high school and sort of miss, as well as a writing seminar (I don’t know which one yet) and a physics class to fill distribution requirements. That comes to a total of 18 credits, which is kind of a lot, but I’m willing to drop French if I have to, so it should be fine.