Expect the Unexpected

After 3.5 years of college, certain things become routine. "Learning" for example. Come exam time, here's what happens: cram, take test, purge, wait for next exam. The school year: abhorrence for the start of a semester, looking forward to spring/Thanksgiving break, dreading finals, hooray for time off!

Sometimes though, things come up that you just don't expect. Last week I ventured into the local Best Buy to buy Crackdown for my newly acquired Xbox 360 (awesome game btw). As I'm checking out, the guy stops doing whatever he's doing with the cash register and asks for my ID. Huh? I just carded trying to buy a video game. Yeah yeah, sure it's rated M and you're supposed to be at least seventeen. OMG! GTA causes kids to kill people and whatnot. I don't buy into that, but that's beside the point. But what 16 year old is in Best Buy at 10:00 on a Tuesday morning? Wait, those kids are at a local high school. Actually, so is anyone who's under seventeen years of age. And I know I look pretty young, but I'd like to think I look at least seventeen. Apparently not. At least when I got asked my middle name or street address at bars, that made some sense. I do look different from my original driver's license picture and consumption is different from gaming.

Another thing I don't expect is a non-American professor who's not Asian. At U of I, most of my profs and TAs who aren't American are Asians, some with questionable English skills. However, one of my physiology profs is definitely Scottish or something else European. His grammar is pretty much spot-on by American standards. However, his pronunciation is a bit different from what I'm used to. The following words whose syllables are in capital letters are to be emphasized, and I'll be spelling said words phonetically. Trachea, which I'm used to hearing as "TRA-kea" becomes "truk-E-a." Capillaries: "CAP-ilarese" vs. "cup-ILL-arese." Pulmonary: "PUL-mon-ary" vs. "pul-MON-ery." Medulla: "med-OOL-a" vs. "med-UHLL-a." This guy also likes to roll his "r"s, much like Ricardo Montalban of Taco Bell fame. Flow rate becomes flow rrrrrrate. I don't have anything against this guy, he's actually a pretty decent prof. It's just kind of interesting to hear how different parts of the world pronounce the same words differently. However, he does use a few phrases that are different. You don't take an exam, you write the test. Also, people don't study "math," they study "the maths." Ah well, "pu-tay-to," "pu-tah-to."