We’re well and truly in to our classes and I’m enjoying them - they have huge potential but I find that some professors are easily distracted and don’t cover the core material, instead they spend time asking how everyone is or showing you how to read news articles online. These are important things but they’re not really supposed to be done during class time - if I can’t figure out how to Google the news then I shouldn’t be in college.
I thought I’d really struggle with the classes as I’m not from a business background but everything we have done has been complete common sense and I’ve found it really interesting. I really like when you learn something you already know, if that makes any sense? I’m also really excited about my human oppression class. It’s meant to be a class exploring the nature of hate and evil in the world but again we seem to get distracted and talk about issues that aren’t really relevant to the course. I know it sounds depressing but I’d really like to explore genocide in detail - it’s a terrible thing but it’s so fascinating. Why does genocide happen? Hitler didn’t kill every single Jew personally, he had people, normal people, working in his party, working as soldiers, loading the trains and running the concentration camps. Why didn’t they refuse to kill their neighbours? I find it fascinating that an idea, the idea that certain types of people are undesirable or “subhuman” can become a part of “civilised” society and be used to justify mass murder. I’d heard of the Rwandan genocide, I have the movie and I know that a whole bunch of people killed a whole bunch of people but if you actually think about it it’s baffling. My understanding is crude and you can’t ever do the history of a country or a people or a nation justice in a few lines but basically the Hutu population killed a vast majority of the Tutsi population (about 800,000 people were killed in 100 days). That’s all I’ve ever really thought about when someone mentions Rwanda - but if you go a bit deeper you realise that in the aftermath there were literally thousands of murders in Rwanda and the vast majority of these people aren’t locked up. Now they live beside Tutsi families. You could pass someone in the street and that person could have killed your entire family. It’s surreal and horrific and something that I’ll probably write a big thought provoking Blog about at a later date, but for now all you need to know is that I go to class, hear about genocide throughout the world and then spend the rest of the day wondering why it still happens, in modern times, in our “civilised“, “tolerant” world. But don't be sad, here's a picture of a penguin.
It hasn’t been all work - I’ve managed, with my only friend Padraic, to escape from Elms. I don’t know if I’ve really touched on the location of my college, but basically it’s in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing surrounding it and you can’t go anywhere or do anything unless you have a car. Padraic and I plucked up the courage to take the bus into Springfield, our nearest city… I don’t think I’ll do the experience justice but I’ll try. We went to the bus stop which was located in a very dodgy area of Chicopee and attracted some very dodgy people. We got on the bus, took our seats and enjoyed the not so scenic drive to Springfield. I kid you not, it was like something from the movies. We drove through genuine ghettos. There were people on BMX bikes, cycling round in circles with baggy pants and baseball caps, not to mention the men and women having domestics on the front steps of run down apartment blocks. I knew I wasn’t going to be spending a year in Ballyholme but I had no idea that I’d be in a Jay-Z video. It wasn’t much better when we arrived in Springfield; the ghetto theme continued. I was also surprised to discover that there are actually no shops in the city. There is literally nothing, not even a wee rubbish clothes shop. There weren’t even any people on the street, something I have come to expect in a country where they drive everywhere, but seriously, no people, not even in a city! Maybe there’s been some sort of natural disaster in the area? Maybe they’ll have to evacuate Elms and they’ll send me home, to civilisation!
Look, a person!
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