I really want to learn some programming knowledge. I took programming in Middle and High School, so I theoretically know a little Visual Basic and a little C++. I successfully made a Yahtzee game, and programs that would retrieve people's names from a little text file. I talked to a professor (now my major adviser) about this, because he has a degree in Computer Science, and he basically said that the comp sci classes here are not very good, which is what I have heard from other people also. He suggested learning Perl. I tried running linux for a while a few years ago, but I feel like I was lacking some kind of baseline of computer knowledge, and this kept me from ever being able to figure out how to get it running well. Mostly because my laptop needed hell of weird drivers and stuff, so I was mucking around with all this code I had no way of understanding, trying to install stuff... messing up and having to boot up in text-only mode and fix my mistakes...
it was kind of cool, but at some point I just wanted to be able to turn on my computer and turn on AIM and play a video game and stuff,
And so, computers are joining Calculus-and-beyond Math and Hard Sciences as something which I am interested in, but do not really know much about, and don't have any good way of pursuing. The science and math classes here are all designed to make Engineering and Pre-Med students quit, and so are just so unnecessarily hard and intense that I couldn't get away with taking them Just for Fun.
Foreign Language is also kind of one of those things, but mostly because I have already taken the equivalent of a full semester of language classes. The Latin classes beyond what I have taken were all about really specific topics I'm not interested in, and Arabic stopped being fun and interesting and started taking up all of my time. Plus, I realized that... I didn't really have that much interest in speaking Arabic, other than on the abstract level that it sounds cool and it would be good to know a foreign language. I started to take Spanish this semester, but I placed out of the first-level class, and wasn't confident that I could handle the second-level class. I tried to explain that yes, I understood the sentences on the placement exam, but it's because I've been hearing spanish my entire life, and because a lot of the words sounded/looked like Latin words.
"So, you should be in level 2 then."
"But... I can't speak spanish."
"You can't?"
"No. Mi mama es de Chile, pero yo no hablo mucho de Espanol. Solo hablo un poquito."
"You just spoke spanish."
"yes. the extent of what I can say is that I can't speak spanish."
"I really think Level 2 is the best fit for you."
"but... I don't know how to speak spanish. I only know a dozen verbs. I don't know the words for common objects."
"level 1 doesn't really teach you that much, I'm sure you would be fine."
At that point I decided I was wasting my time, basically, and switched into a political theory class which I've really enjoyed.
It seems kind of ridiculous, though, that I am majoring in basically Psychology and Linguistics, and can only speak English.