Meeting Professors

This definitely hasn't been one of my easier college weeks. I had a German project, a Spanish paper, a bunch of reslife stuff, and a bunch of other stressful things that popped up to make my life somewhat miserable. Needless to say I wasn't getting my nightly eight hours, and it wasn't by choice.

But things have been getting steadily better since Monday. I'm all set for one of my two honors-by-contracts, and the other is in the works and should go through fine, meaning that I get to stay in the Honors College. I actually met with my Spanish and German teachers to brainstorm and feel better about those projects, and it's amazing how much that helped.

As it's ended up I've now gotten to know four of my six professors reasonably well (aka better than most students). Admittedly one of them was Monica, who I had first semester Freshman year and immediately got along well with. But my Anthropology Professor, Dr. Palmer, is awesome too, very funny, and I'm looking forward to working with him on the honors contract. My German teacher, Franzel, is quite nice as well - not Megan, but who is?

I was also really happy to meet my Spanish teacher during his office hours. He hadn't impressed me overly much in class and I have to admit the possibility that I was holding a grudge against him for being a gringo. It's the truth - I hate fake Spanish accents, and not just the language Spanish, but particularly Spain Spanish, and particularly when spoken by American males. But honestly, what would I prefer? That he spoke with no attempt to disguise a heavy American accent?

What I found out is that he's a pretty cool guy by my standards. He is learning Chinese and apparently at least conversational in it (doing it for his wife, too ^^), has huge German and Italian dictionaries on his shelf (and by huge I mean, no one has a dictionary that big if they're not really doing something with the language), and is obviously familiar with the basics of untranslated Latin poetry. Oh, and he likes Lord of the Rings.

Getting to know professors is really a great idea - It makes me at least feel more responsible for preparing for class and working hard, participating, etc. It might be as simple as not wanting to disappoint someone I've established a personal contact with.