Nick - How Hard Could It Be?

Freshman year I had to pick a language to study. Thinking I would get my language requirement out of the way in a way that would help me with medicine or law, I decided, hey, why not latin?

After all, latin phrases are used all the time in English. Plus it will be easy because latin words look like English words a lot of the time, right?

Oh how foolish I was.

This is a table of latin "declensions." Declining a noun is kind of like conjugating a verb in English. Except that there are five declensions, each of which contains ten endings, and that's only if we're not counting the vocative case because it's usually easy.

But the nouns aren't the difficult part. The difficult part is verbs. You know how we have those handy tenses? For example, past tense? Well, latin adds some fun extra tenses, like the pluperfect, in case you need to express something that happened way in the past. Or the imperfect tense, which expresses something that was happening in the past and may or may not still be happening in the present. Or, my personal favorite, the future perfect tense, which expresses something that has already been completed in the future.

Here's a chart for a first conjugation verb. There are four conjugations, each of which has 6 forms per tense, if we leave out infinitives and imperatives. Plus they also have a subjunctive form for each person, and a passive form on top of that. If we do a little bit of math, we can see that there are roughly 480* forms for verbs. Awesome!

*Do not question my math

Also, let's talk about the subjunctive mood real quick. You use the subjunctive mood when you want to express something that you want to happen. Or something that could happen. Or something that would happen. Or something that should happen. So basically, if you're reading along and you run into a subjunctive verb, you just guess what it means and hope that you're not wrong. (protip: you are wrong most of the time.)

One last fun aspect of latin is that the words don't really have to be in any order. So sentences are just collections of words, jumbled around in a completely unhelpful configuration. They also didn't have any qualms with run-on sentences, so sometimes you have to look really hard just to find the verb, and then guess what it's taking as its object.

If there's one thing that I've learned thoroughly from studying latin, it's why latin is a dead language.

-Nick.

Nick - Make It A Priority To Learn

There's a lot of sentimentality going on in these posts this week; I want to take the focus off of the sadness of leaving behind the people you know, and try to look to the future and new opportunities. Today I want to talk about a couple of qualities that are instrumental to the success of our college careers.

Priority and learning.

My name is Nicholas Dietrich, but you can call me Nick. I know nothing about pop culture, but I read about politics and science every day. But more on that later. Let me introduce myself.

I grew up in private schools from kindergarten to freshmen year of high school, when I made the decision to stay at home and homeschool. And I'm not talking about the wacko Glen Beck-style "your kids are being indoctrinated" homeschooling. I wanted to quit being taught and start learning.

It was the best decision I ever made.

All of a sudden, I could tell you exactly what I've learned this year. I could explain all about the behavior of fish in an aquarium and the nesting habits of wasps; I took two math courses my first year so that I could get to calculus before going off to college. I was reading books every day, solely because I wanted to and had the time to. Freshman year I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life; this year I went and saw an autopsy at a hospital, and next year I'm going to be starting pre-med at University of Illinois in Champaign. You have undoubtedly heard that homeschooled kids are awkward and lack social skills, and I'm here to tell you that you heard wrong. I'm part of an improvised comedy troupe which I love, and I have friends and a girlfriend (!) despite deciding to stay home.

The reason I'm telling you this isn't to try and brag. I certainly don't think I'm smarter than the average person; I just have more time and I'm willing to put in an effort. The reason I'm telling you this is so that you think about these things, and maybe consider homeschooling when you have kids. It can be awesome when done right.

Now, back to the overarching theme here; priority.

When I say "overarching," I'm sure that I raise a few eyebrows. "You only mentioned priority in the first paragraph," you think to yourself. The point I'm getting at here is making it a priority to learn; don't waste your time when you could be learning. Use your common sense, and instead of finding out who is in what movie or what funny groups you can join on Facebook, go learn something real.

I'm challenging you all to pursue your interests, or find some if you don't have any you want to read about. You could go read up on the science behind climate change or the BP oil spill, you could study the anatomy of insects and witness the balance of an entire ecosystem by simply starting a freshwater aquarium. The only way you're going to make a difference in your life is if you know what you want to change and make it a priority to do something about it. And to do that you need to start learning as much as you can right now, because life is short.

Prioritize. Get out there and learn while you're still young. I'll even throw you some links to get you started.

News and Politics:
Politico
Think Progress
The Young Turks
Huffington Post
Al Jazeera

Animal Behavior, Anatomy, and Psychology:
Fabre's Book of Insects - edited by Rodolph Stawell
King Solomon's Ring - by Konrad Lorenz
All Creatures Great and Small - James Herriot

All Sorts of Science:
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
Reddit Science

That's just the most interesting and fun entry-level stuff I can think of off the top of my head, in case you don't know where to start. But go to wikipedia and look up something you're interested in. There's a whole world of material out there you haven't even heard of yet.

-Nick.