What I've Learned

What have I learned this week? 

For starters, I've learned that sometimes there is no use arguing.  No matter how much sense your side of the issue makes, and no matter how helpful or beneficial your idea could be, some people don't care.  They won't listen, and they won't change.  Maybe it's because they just don't have an option, or don't have the power/influence/position to make changes.  Or maybe it's because they're hard-headed and dead-set in their ways.  I learned one time that people fight the hardest and argue the loudest when they are on the verge of being proven wrong.  One of the most difficult things in the world to do is to rearrange your thoughts and ideas- your opinions about the way things are- and adopt a new attitude.  I think my class' teacher must be on the edge of altering her views, because she was arguing with us pretty loudly this week.  After last week's series of arguments, I decided I would back off and not inject my point of view when we started talking about how things in the class should be changed.  I realized last week that there was just no use in arguing with her.  I attributed this to a) our age difference, and b) our cultural differences.  After this week, I am starting to realize that, while a and b may be true, there is also a "c," and that is that she is not willing to compromise because she is right and we are wrong.  But she won't get off my back.  All this week, every day, she made some comment to me about how I'm not working hard enough, or not spending enough time studying in the evenings, blah, blah, blah.  Every time we took a break between classes, she would tell me how, though she thinks I am smart, she knows I am also lazy.  Thanks.  She's probably right.  I thought it was a little more because I just don't have enough time to do all the things I'm supposed to be doing each day.  But I probably could make more use of the 5 hours I have in the evening.  Actually, I might be able to cut back on the amount of sleep I get each night.  I'm clearly getting more that I need, as I haven't fallen asleep once in class.  I could probably gain about two hours right there.  And then there's dinner.  The four minutes I take to cook a frozen dinner and the 15 minutes I take to eat it are a bit excessive... maybe I'll start cooking it just long enough to thaw it out.  And as for the eating, well, in basic training the drill sergeants always told us that food was for fuel, not for taste.  Maybe I'm taking too much time to enjoy my frozen dinner.  And I'll stop changing out of my uniform after work.  That'll save a few more minutes.  So now I've added an extra two hours and 10 minutes to the day- two hours and 10 minutes more Arabic studying.  Maybe now I'll pass her vocabulary quizzes (which, by the way, don't actually count for anything.  Really.  They don't count for anything.  It's not like we're getting a report card or something).

Wow.  Ok, I wrote more about that than I really wanted to.  And there's still more.  But I won't go into it now.  There's always next week.  Or tomorrow.  Or later tonight.