Brian's 1st email update!

Hola familia!

I've decided that an email is now long past due.  I don't even know where to start, so I'll try to recap everything that has happened to me at BYU.  I got here and started classes on January 8th, which seems like forever ago now.  I'm taking Biology 100 in the same lab section that Andy is in, New Testament (The Gospels), Intro to International Relations, Spanish Grammar and Composition, and Hispanic Linguistics.  I put those in order of preference, starting with the ones that I am least fond of.  I'm in the BYU 138th ward, and I like my ward a lot.

When I first got here, it was extremely cold.  I remember walking across campus on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and it was the coldest air I had felt in several years.  I got all the way to the opposite corner only to discover that the person I was looking for had that day off.  So I walked all the way back.  In total I was outside for over 40 minutes.  I'm really glad it's spring now.  It was warm enough this weekend to play frisbee and have a picnic outside without even having to wear a jacket.  It was sunny and slightly breezy.  It didn't last today, but we're making progress.

I decided to change my unofficial and undeclared major a few weeks ago.  I have been telling people that I was majoring in Linguistics for about 4 years, which prompted lots of questions like, "so what does that even mean."  Well, basically it's the scientific study of the structure and usage of language.  It doesn't mean that I will be learning 7 languages, although that would be fun too.  But now instead of questions about my major, I get a bunch of false assumptions about what I'm studying.  I officially declared myself and English Language major.  It's not what you think.  I don't have to take a single class on poetry, writing, literature, or anything like that.  The English Language degree isn't even in the English Department, it's actually part of the Linguistics Department.  I will give you a rough breakdown of the classes I'll be taking.

1. Empirical Methods in English Linguistics (There's that word again!  I'm not a traitor to myself!)
2. Modern American Usage
3. History of the English Language (I'm taking that this spring)
4. The Grammar of English (not like your high school grammar class, we're going to dig DEEP!)
5. English Semantics and Pragmatics
6. English Phonetics and Phonology (this is guaranteed to be one of my favorite classes, I love phonetics)
7. "The Senior Course" (I think this is the class they make us take to help us figure out what kind of career we want to pursue, but I'm not sure.  I'd like a little more clarification myself.)
8. Sociolinguistics
9. My choice of Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Middle English (Chaucer's time period), or Early Middle English (think Shakespeare and Johnson)
10. Varieties in English (I finally get to let my Southern shine)
11. History of the Book
12. Psycholinguistics

Basically it's exactly the same as the Linguistics major, with one major difference.  In the Linguistics program they require a foreign language that is not descended from Indo-European (this means German and Scandinavian languages, Romance languages like Spanish and Romanian, and Indian languages like Hindi don't count).  In the English Language major, they have a foreign language requirement, but it allows me to count my 16 credits of Spanish to fill the requirement.  So now I'm studying the exact same thing, but now people assume that I'm an English major and it's really hard to explain the difference between English and English Language because, let's face it, we all know that English IS a language, and if you study English, you're also studying the language, right?  Well, it's a little tricky.  I still haven't found the right way to phrase it so that people understand that I'm still a linguist.  I'm a Linguistics major emphasizing in English.  Which goes back to the whole "you don't have to speak a million languages to be a linguist.  That would only make me a philologist or a polyglot" statement that I have to make sometimes, without using the words philologist or polyglot, of course, that would not make explaining any easier.

I'm also going to add Spanish (or possible Spanish Teaching) as a second major as soon as I do some more prerequisites for the program.  And I'm going to get a minor in TESOL, or in English, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.  I figure with English Language and Spanish, I should be able to teach people either language, and that sounds like so much fun to me.

My social life is sometimes a little overactive.  Since I started dating again, (I took a short break because I overloaded my system) I've been averaging I think about 4 dates a week.  Sometimes I go on more, but rarely do I have less than 3 dates in a week.  I went on two dates yesterday, which was fun, but exhausting, since I'm already getting sick.  I think everyone is getting sick these days, it's another sign that it's almost spring.

I also got a job working in the Morris Center, the cafeteria by Deseret Towers.  I'm not actually working in the cafeteria part of the building, I'm in the "Cougar Cove" which stays open later, and is home to the grill, the wok, the soft serve ice cream, and the Subway franchise.  I mostly just do the grill, but I have to make a lot of shakes too, and we have to fry the chicken in the deep fryer before the wok worker can make sweet and sour chicken.  So I stay busy, and I get a decent paycheck, and I only have to work 12 hours a week.  I work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8pm until closing, which can be anywhere from 11:15 (our current speed record) and 11:45.  I usually walk to and from, but sometimes I drive on Fridays because the risk of not finding a parking space is usually not as bad on Friday nights when people are all out on dates, and I can find a good spot to park closer than two blocks away from my apartment.

Well, that's about all I have time to write right now.  But I'm having a great time at BYU, watching the basketball teams whenever I get the chance.  Go Cougars!  I hope to remember to write another email before too long so I can fill in some of the finer details.  Finer as in more excellent and more detailed.  Have a great week!