Laughter Event 2

Date of Occurrence : March 18, 2015

During our class that meets on Mondays and Wednesdays, all of the students received an email regarding honors college professor of the year nominations. The email reads :

Dear Honors Students,

Thank you for your nominations for the 2015 Honors Professor of the Year.  This award is meant to be a surprise, so please do not talk to the finalists about their nominations until after the recipient is announced and celebrated at Spring Convocation on Thursday, April 16 @ 11 am in Ed Landreth Auditorium.  With that said, it is my honor to unveil the finalists that you’ve selected!

[Redacted] – [Redacted]

[Redacted] – [Redacted]

Dr. Dan Williams – Honors Professor of Humanities and Director, TCU Press

Please use the following link to submit your vote by noon next Friday, March 27.

[redacted]

Thanks again for your input and for keeping the finalists unaware of their nominations.

Sincerely,

Christopher “Taylor” White

John V. Roach Honors College

Cabinet President

The email was received at 4:19 PM local time and no later than 4:19 PM was Dr. Dan notified by one of his own honors students that he was nominated for the award. And no later than 4:19 PM did I feel obliged to quickly scan the email myself and find some interesting tidbits of information...in the second line of the email. "This award is meant to be a surprise, so please do not talk to the finalists about their nominations." I repeated this line aloud to the class to the dismay of the overly eager student, who seemed to miss this quite important line, and to the amusement of the rest of the class. 

Conversation Partner Meeting 3

Date of Occurrence : March 2, 2015

Fortunately, I still had many questions for Sari about the culture in Saudi Arabia and his experiences. When I speak about my background and reasoning behind choosing TCU, American football is always mentioned as part of my college selection search. I lived with an international student from Vietnam my freshman year at TCU and he told me that TCU had a seminar for international students on American college football. From what I remember, the presentation included the rules of football and the component of school pride and spirit. Sari mentioned that he has yet to fully understand the rules of American football. I definitely see how American football is a difficult sport to understand because I did not seriously start watching football until I was about 10 years old. I think it took me two years of watching professional football on television to fully understand the rules, common penalties, and intricacies of controversial calls. My exposure to college football was even more sparse and I don't remember watching college football outside of the championship game before 8th grade. Part of this was due to growing up in the northeast and the relative lack of local football schools that I could identify with. No, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Michigan are not close to New Jersey, although they do control a significant amount of "fan market share" in the NYC metro area.

I have little interest in American soccer or "futbol", but I follow the World Cup when that is an occurring event. I followed the FIFA World Cup bidding process for 2022 by looking up the vote totals for each round and the eligible nations while that process was ongoing. After being severely disappointed and confused as to why the United States lost to Qatar in the process, I began to see articles appear regarding the corruption and bribing of FIFA officials throughout this process. As a complete novice to anything regarding FIFA or the Premier League, I asked Sari about his thoughts on Qatar receiving the bid for the World Cup, the structure of the Premier League, and what teams he follows.



Topics discussed include:

• Sports
• FIFA
• NFL
• Qatar
• Friends and HIMYM

Conversation Partner Meeting 2

Date of Occurrence : Feb 16,2015

Sari and I met at the exact same table to continue our discussion. This conversation mostly focused on American culture and media and the contrast or similarity between Saudi Arabia. My 21st birthday was a few days prior to our meeting and the topic of alcohol and related banned substances in Saudi Arabia was brought up. I was familiar enough with Sharia law and some cultural differences in Saudi Arabia, so I knew beforehand that alcohol and drugs were strictly not tolerated in Saudi Arabia. Sari began asking about American culture as it relates to college, partying, and alcohol or drug consumption. I clarified this by stating that while there may be a stereotypical idea of a "college experience", each student has a unique background and differing goals regarding their college experience. While some aim to party 24/7, others have their sights set on obtaining a certain job, garnering a diverse set of knowledge and skills, or preparing for graduate school. With this in mind, Sari had an interesting question that made me think about the influence of American media. His question was basically, "Why does a certain ethnicity in America tend to use or deal drugs more than others?" I was taken aback by the bluntness of this question, but made sure to point out that your ethnicity does not determine your tendency to use or deal drugs and it's more of an environmental situation. We talked about the concept of "inner-cities" and lower-income communities where drug use and dealing is prevalent and seen as a form of income for some. Obviously, this comes with risks of jail time for breaking the law and the effects of drug abuse. Sari's comments about the law in Saudi Arabia and the rarity of drug use magnified the effect in my mind of how strict in comparison their legal system is and its effectiveness.  More importantly, I wondered how such a question came to fruition and actually asked him about this thought process. Interestingly, he said he's noticed that trend on the news and media outlets. I never thought about this, but an international student who did not grow up with American media acts as a blank canvas for the media to instill certain ideas or trends like we discussed.

We also talked about state vs national law and the conundrum of Colorado legalizing marijuana, but that it is still a federal crime to transport it across state borders or use it in states where it is not legalized. Sari's insight on hookah use in Sari Arabia was interesting because I have heard about hookah bars back home and their popularity among citizens from the Middle East.

This turned to a conversation about food and family traditions in regards to restaurants or personal traditions. To my amusement, his mother forced the family to put their cell phones on the table so they would speak to each other and turn them off. I laughed and told him about the similar American "game" where people would go out to dinner, place their phones on the table, and the first person to grab their phone would have to foot the bill. This amused Sari greatly and he said he would pass along the idea in the future.

Conversation Partner Meeting 1

Date of occurrence: Feb 9th, 2015

After a week of exchanging emails to find a mutual availability, I met with my conversation partner, Sari, in the BLUU. To my mistake, I waited in Market Square near the swipe register based on the assumption that my partner would also have an unlimited meal plan. After a quick chat and introduction, we moved the conversation to Union Grounds.

Once we found a table, we went into more depth about our respective backgrounds while we signed the conversation partner contract. For about the first 10 minutes, I struggled with my ability to use simple sentence structure when phrasing a question or just simplifying my word choice. Sari had been a member of the Intensive English Program (IEP) for under two years and his command of the English language was impressive, much more so than my foreign language skills after 4 years of high school. Curious, I asked him about the process the IEP program uses to teach at such speed and with a high success rate that seems unknown to most foreign language programs in American high schools.

 Sari was the first Saudi Arabian I have had extensive contact with and I was extremely interested in his background and his views on American culture. His insight on the school system in Saudi Arabia and the prevalence of American media was fascinating to me because although we've discussed the popularity of American media, I did not truly grasp the wide dispersion of American media.

I was surprised to learn that Sari had been to California, New York City, and multiple states within the northeast. We discussed each of our views on California, New York, and West Virginia, where he spent most of his time previously. It soon became apparent that we both hated the cold weather.

We wrapped up after speaking for an hour as I had to leave for class and agreed to meet at the same table each week.

Laughter Event 1

Date of Occurrence: 3/24/15

I tend to make innocent jabs at people for inventing their own seemingly universal hand signs for objects or events. One such event occurred during a Resident Assistant staff meeting for my residence hall. One of the females on our staff proceeded to tell a story reminiscing of her adventures in search of some establishment known for its combination of waffles and other food items. While she told this story with a sparkle in her eye, she mentioned the word waffle numerous times, for obvious reasons. Waffles with tacos, waffles with pasta, waffles with whatever you want. I decided to question the inflection of her voice when she mentioned "waffle", in addition to her odd hand motion. Her pronunciation of the word waffle was distorted and ended up sounding like "waaaa-full". The overwhelming excitement affecting her speech was not enough; she decided to invent some hand motion that accompanied the word waffle and what I can only assume she felt was an appropriate hand gesture for a waffle. The gesture, although unforgettable, is hard to depict verbally. Imagine your hands making two "C" like motions opposite of each other and ending with your arms crossed. In essence, it was akin to parabolic thug pose. I was perplexed, but interested in her motive for such motions, so I decided to ask a simple question. "When did that become the universal hand gesture for waffle?" The other staff members in the room burst into laughter, obviously in agreement.

Driving in the snow?

As students of TCU have been graced with inclement weather related school closings, the thought of students driving in these conditions shocked me and made me think of a certain video or two. While there is nothing funny about the potential physical harm or damage inflicted on personal property, this video may garner a few laughs out of pure shock or terror that results from people attempting to drive in winter conditions. One accident has already occurred this week involving a car sliding into a telephone pole on campus.
Also, this video is taken in Seattle, where I'm assuming they would have snow tires and other tools to aid in driving in sub-par conditions. Sometimes, even with the proper equipment, you can't drive in the winter and it's not worth your time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZCyQ3emQg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzBdW1OVcWw