Incessant Expressions

So I’ve survived my first week of college classes for the first time in two years and boy, was it a yawner. My Monday class is Anthropology of Islam which is basically being taught to educate the almost overwhelmingly ignorant masses about the Islamic faith. Out of a class of approximately 30, 4 of us actually knew anything about Islam that didn’t come from mainstream media and I suspect at least half of the 4 read up on things before the class but didn’t delve into much detail, merely trying to brown nose through the first class. I haven’t read up on Islam in about 5 or 6 months, barely cracked my free copy of the Qu’ran, but I’m still heads above the rest who think all Muslims are out to kill us. I actually imagine I’d see a similar disconnection if it were a class on Christianity or Judaism and since there is one offered on the latter, I’m going to take it and see especially given the huge Jewish population of FAU and Boca Raton as a whole. We ended up discussing mostly how little we knew about Islam and its early history for the bulk of the class and then the professor whittled away at putting us to sleep with a rather detailed history based on previous discussion. I’m now trying to plow through approximately half of Rethinking Islam by Mohammed Arkoun in order to write a paper due on Monday. I need to re-read most of what I’ve already read considering I’m reading the book like a regular book, expecting each successive chapter to build on the first. Much to my chagrin the book truly reads like a 140ppg. questionnaire and must be read as such. It’s a very dry read.

My second class –which is required for my major– is Human Evolution and the class itself feels like trip back to my senior year of high school, during lunch. I can count the number of people over 21 on both hands, including the teacher. It’s going to be a standard evolution class although instead of Darwin, we’re reading Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale. The professor really clings to Dawkins for some reason, I know the man’s a great biologist but this is to the point of fanboyism and it’s kind of scary. There’ll be 15 weeks of doldrums and me attempting to make a cladogram that doesn’t suck and plowing through From Lucy To Language because it’s got awesome pictures.

I overheard that Forensic Anthropology is a waste of a class since it was “more CSI than anthropology.” My guess is these kids don’t see how intertwined forensics and anthropology really are and that’s why they said it was a waste. What were they truly expecting from a forensics-based class, Indiana Jones-style field work? If they question why a class was a waste and why getting their degree in Anthropology is a waste, it makes me wonder why they’re even majoring in the damn subject to begin with. There are much much easier majors at FAU to waste your time and money on, let us who care about science go on and learn.

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