Lamenting the Languishing Linguistics Department, Part Two
On the tails of what I wrote yesterday I chanced into an interesting conversation today about it...
This freshman English teacher (teaching 102) was sitting on the steps of the Humanities building smoking while her class was busy, and I was on break. I reminisced, "Yeah, I had one of those a while ago... hmm, I took 105." She responded, "Ah, you are an honors student...", and I sheepishly looked at my shoes and cut in with, "Well, I was." I then had to explain to her how my GPA was scrambled over in the Engineering courses and that my real draw/passion for it lies closer to the linguistic/creative edge than the mathematical/science edge. She then went through most of the questions I had asked myself in last night's blog post. It was such glorious irony, I guess, to have someone else ask them of me.
She lamented the University's lack of strength when it came to the cross-disciplinary arts, and reminded me of how what little remained of the Linguistics department had been poorly smashed into her own English department. She then pointed out that the ex-head of the Linguistics department was someone that I would do well to meet, and that the University was so poorly utilizing his skills because he was now doing menial work in the Communications department!
Just very interesting to see my own self-discussion revisited in conversation no more than eight or nine hours after I wrote it.
The Ugly, Uncaring University
First of all, I like my University... she's not the prettiest swan in a lake, but she has wings and can fly (sometimes). However, it is hard not to complain about the problems you see; perhaps in the hope of seeing something change...
Lamenting the Languishing Linguistic Department
Almost all of the University of Louisville's problems revolve around the fact that the University is "hollow" in a way. The outlying, more vocational or research oriented areas (Engineering, Medicine, Dentistry, Business) have well rounded curricula. But, each is its own segregated fiefdom (largely due to the fact that the University was indeed created as a series of individual schools that were sloppily integrated). There is little communication between them, even after so many years of pretending to be a part of the same University. What's worse is that the Arts & Sciences department that is supposed to act as the glue binding them is weak and in disrepair. What money there is is being spent on the individual fiefdoms and sports leaving A&S to pick up the scraps, and it shows: the areas that A&S pushes money into are the ones bordering the fiefdoms (the Gen Ed courses required for accreditations and the science courses required).
I'm in the third week of German and reminded of how much I love languages. UofL has a mere handful of linguistic courses; most of which are modern language courses which remain only because of general education accreditation requirements for other degree programs.
Not that I didn't know this going in... when I applied, dead tired of school, I stupidly thought the last thing I wanted was a "pointless" liberal studies degree. Funny how four years later I feel myself sometimes regretting not taking a degree of more diverse ...
