Ian Swenson .com

Awww shucks. Is it that time of year again? I suppose it is.

For those of you who don’t know me (and there are only two people who read this, both of which know me), I’m still in college. This is my final (read: Senior) year at Pacific Lutheran University, or good ‘ol PLU.

I’m finishing up my super-useful history major and will soon be embarking on the quest of (A) applying to grad schools, (B) earning a Masters in Education, and (C) getting a job as a high school teacher in a Washington state public school.

All of this is cool and interesting, no? But you fine folks want the nitty-gritty on my first day back to school.

First of all, my mom walked me to the bus stop and held my hand until … er, no. I’m reminiscing. Rather, my first class is not until 11:15 on MWF, so that means a fantastic amount of sleeping-in will be taking place.

I had two classes today, Wednesday, the first of which being Latin 101. The professor is one of the two I hadn’t had before, so I was slightly apprehensive about meeting him. I am of the firm belief that the professor makes far more of a difference in the enjoyability level of a class than the subject. But, I was soon soothed as Dr. Nelson was fast, fresh, and funny. He even imparted an old Latin learners’ adage:

Latin is a language / As dead as dead can be. / First it killed the Romans, / and now it’s killing me.

I’ve already done my required homework teaching me all about imperatives, infinitives, and simple conjugations. I’m already confused. I now am supposed to know about 11 different endings to words. That’s right. One word, eleven different endings. For example:

“Laudare” is the Latin imperative for “to praise.” The -are ending denotes the infinitive. Then we have: laudo (I praise), laudas (you praise), laudat (he/she/it praises), laudamus (we praise), laudatis (you all praise), laudant (they praise), lauda (You! Praise!), laudate (You All! Praise!), laudavi (I praised), and laudatum (I had praised). Now if this seems excessive, and it should, it looks like there are about 80 other possible endings for this one verb. What have I gotten myself into?

My other class was one for my major: History Research Methods. Sounds like a fun class, no? Yeah, it sounds just as fun to me. But the professor is good, I’ve had him twice before. And as much as I hate to admit it, classes that teach rudimentary boring stuff like research turn out to help so much in future classes. Ah well, c’est la vie.