Continuing Education

At UIC my appointment comes with a tuition waiver. It seemed natural to me when I started that I should take some classes, for fun. For example, I could learn to draw, sculpt, or paint. There are classes in photography, voice, and java. Practically I probably was never going to take a class besides a language, where I am eager to take a couple semesters of French (I have taken one semester before, which is about the most useless level of a language to know.) I have designs to someday learn Spanish, Portugeuse or Italian, but French comes first. That being said I am at the end of my first year and have taken no classes whatsoever. In the Fall, I didn't take one because I was teaching for the first time and wasn't sure of the load. In the Spring, I was teaching a class that was mostly freshmen and I thought it would be a conflict if I was in one of my student's French II class (a lame excuse I know). This fall I will pass on French because I am teaching a second class, applying for NSF, and possibly applying for jobs. I hope that I will finally run out of excuses this spring when I am teaching just one graduate course.
In the meantime, I am brushing up on my French at my new favorite website, freerice.com. It is a joint charity¹ and trivia website. I recommend it for being a Less Ignorant American about world geography, as well as learning some of your favorite European language (unless you like Portugeuse, Flemish, Dutch, Danish, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Russian, Greek, ...).

¹Don't get carried away thinking this is a great charity. I clicked for an hour last night and earned 3500 grains of rice. A one pound bag of rice has approx. 30,000 grains of rice.