Alright already

[legalmoose]

Enough of this withdrawal crap, can the caffeine cravings just be gone already?
...
Why, I ask you, do graduate programs which are about topics which are almost exclusively in English still require you to know one other european language in order to graduate? But because they do the further question would be whether to pick up on my long-interrupted study of Deutsch or to pick up something else like French or Spanish. I think Deutsch would be easier to deal with, and I already have several resources (dictionary, readers, etc.) at home that I could tap. It's a shame Mandarin Chinese doesn't count for this. I'm unsure that the purported research purpose is as useful as it might have been once upon a time.

Yeah, was looking at graduate programs today. Not that I'm going to one any time soon, but is better to be prepared for the eventuality of further graduate work. Anyone know of any good programs in Rhetoric? Aside from Berkley, which I know is a good one, that is.

Comments

[pinkfish.livejournal.com]

How long have you been caffeine-free? I'm surprised you are still having withdrawal cravings. For me, those usually go away after about three days.

As for foreign language; I happen to enjoy studying foreign languages, so I have never minded the requirement. The usual justifcation of it at a basic (undergraduate) level is for general development of perspective. I must say, that in my own development as a young adult, I felt that learning a foreign language was the single most important study I ever did, not because of the language itself (French), but for the perspective it gave me in questioning assumptions of things that are so "just because that's the way they are."

For a graduate program, it is a bit tougher to justify, though I have found recently in my professional life (as an information systems consultant) that beign fluent in a couple of European languages has been very useful. Some of the companies we work with have published their technical documentation originally in German, with English translations lagging behind (and being of fairly low quality). Having learned German put me in a very strong position. One of my coleagues speaks Russian, and was surprised to find that this gave her an edge in learning about another of our companies.

But somehow, "you never know" seems like pretty lightweight justification for a curriculum addition.

[legalmoose]

Friday was the last day I had caffeine. It's not so much withdrawal as that my energy levels haven't balanced back out. I was caff-free for a year (00-01), but 9/11 whacked me and I hit it, off and on, for the last 1.5 years, and after some extended use the past month I said screw this and went cold turkey again.

I've taken Latin, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, and know a smattering of ASL. I love studying languages, it's just the thought of having to go back and pick them up all over again where my skills have atrophied pretty badly that irks me. And perhaps just thinking about my BA and MA in East Asian Studies (Chinese emphasis) that are now totally unused in my professional life that iks me more.

Studying foreign languages is an invaluable learning tool in so many areas, I'm just not sure of the proposed utility for a graduate program. Am just feeling skeptical and curmudgeonly today, I suppose.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

The usual justification for it at the graduate level is that we are part of a community of scholars, and that community is global. So learning a foreign language is part of participating in the world of scholarship.

However, I bet that in your average rhetoric program, Latin is acceptable as a foreign language, even though there's no contemporary scholarship in Latin. Probably the justification there is that some of the most effective rhetoric ever was Latin; one can still learn a lot from studying Cicero.

[legalmoose]

Now that would be a trip, digging up my high school and college latin and trying to re-memorize vocabulary and grammar. LOL! I can only imagine.