If you've read my previous post, then here's the ending to my story. I took up the matter with one of the Deans and so my decision is to withdraw from class. I am somewhat relieved that I have one less class to worry about and that I don't have to be disrespected 3 hours a week.

Thanks Caussette for your kind words! It's probably true that not all French people are like that but it's still hard for me to extinguish the bad experience I've had with this one particular professor with the rest of French people. It's just going to take sometime for me to be unbiased again towards the whole group.

I'll see if I really want to learn French. If I do, I might just study it independently and enroll in the 2nd semester french course next semester. That might work. I don't really know though. I'm taking sociology right now and it's really interesting so we'll see where that goes.

I have 2 more days of school and then I have a 3 (much needed) break. I hope that I can upload a new layout on this website. While, I love the design of this layout, at this particular moment, it is not making me happy. Considering my sad and depressed mood I'm probably gonna change it to something more uplifting.

I'm really stressed out and just at the peak of feeling like a failure in everything. I feel like all I do in my life is study, study and study and the more I study the more I'm questioning my goals and what I'm doing. On top of that, I feel quiet lonely and isolated from all of my friends, which I am. They think that I'm mad at them most of the time so they don't talk to me. I don't really blame them. I mean all of them 4 live in the same building and way away from me so it probably does seem that I'm upset with them if I'm not making the effort to talk with them everyday. It's just really hard with everything that's going on with studying and stuff...

I'm gonna stop rambling because I need to go to bed.

Gossip Girl was amazing though this week! I absolutely loved it! That's literally what I look forward for on Mondays.

I know I haven't updated in a very long, long time and I'm sorry. I'm sorry because I've been neglecting this site, for which I do deeply care about. However, my classes are worth more to me and are a high priority. It's my Sophomore year in college and I feel like I need to step it up after last year. Last year, I believe was a huge adjustment and challenge but this year is going good so far, that's if you're idea of a 'good life' is studying everyday and not having having much of a life after that. It's alright though. I'm working as an RA and I feel like that's compensating a lot of the things that I'm not doing this year that I did last year.

All in all, I don't think I'll be abandoning this site because abandoning it or deleting it would mean that I've lost interest in graphic design, which I haven't.  The less I do it, the more I miss it because I realize what a constant thing it was in my life. I started GD during my freshman year of high school, a point in my life in which I felt alone, depressed and completely prejudiced again by American society because I'm a Muslim and I wear a hijab (head scarf).

However, that wasn't the only time that GD was there for me. I also did a lot of photoshop work during my happier years, senior year of high school and during the recent summers. And now that I have so much going on in my life, I've realized that making art and designing websites isn't something that I did just to escape my almost bitter reality but also because I actually enjoy doing it. Now that I'm happier and not as depressed, and, thus, having nothing to escape from, it's not an outlet for escape, it's an outlet for self expression.

Maybe one of the reasons why I did graphic design was because I felt wasn't being judged constantly by my looks. I think in some ways I enjoyed that fact that once in my life people didn't just look at me as another diverse body in a school population or as a potential terrorist because I'm Muslim. Other artists criticized my work and that was it. Which is totally fine and acceptable. In some ways, it's a more peaceful way of expression because in typical every day life, expressing one's opinion would also put that person under scrutiny and analysis. Why is that person voting for Obama? Is it because they're black? Is it because they're a minority? are they poor? And the list goes on.

The point is that in real life people judge me and assume things about me from 100 meters distance without having even heard a word from me just because I wear a hijab. Yet on the internet, all that is heard is my voice and my art. To me, in an ironic way, that is freedom. It's almost the democratic justice that we in America so highly strive to achieve. Instead f using our looks to formulate our opinions about people, on the internet, we actually have to read  and write to people in order to know them. That's how it should be in real life but unfortunately it's not.

You may be wondering why I decided to update today of all days and that's probably a good question since I haven't updated in a long, long time. Something happened today that really triggered me and caused me to take a step back and think about what happened.

If you don't know, I'm not American, that is I'm not a White American. I was born in Iraq, I'm a Muslim and have lived in the U.S. for 10 years now. I got my U.S. citizenship this past summer. My first language is Arabic, my second is English and my third is Spanish.

This year I decided to get out of my comfort zone, try something new and take French instead of continuing with Spanish at my college. I've been taking Spanish for the past 7 years and so I decided this year was as good as any year to start learning a fourth language. I've never taken French in my life but I wanted to and so I got enrolled in the class.

This is what has happened so far: My professor is nicknamed the Troll and that's because she's a very old lady who's really uptight, mean and rude. I didn't know that but my friends and people around me warned me last year however, because her class worked for my schedule (which was centered around getting my desired professor for Organic Chemistry), I decided to go ahead and take her. I decided to give her a chance and make my own decision of what type of a person she is. After all, people make assumptions about me all of the time and I always prove them otherwise, so why couldn't she be any different?

I went into the class with an open minded and a positive attitude. However, I've clearly and within the past month learned that what people have nicknamed her is more than she deserves. She's rude, mean, insensitive and racist.

Here's what happened:

1. She's very condescending. Every time she talks to the class, she talks down. Apparently, we 'Americans' are immobile and are like dead since we don't move very much when we're sitting in desks.
   
2. She gave out a reading regarding the controversy of when to use tu vs. vous in French. The main point of the article is that you never use Tu with a french person unless you mean to be disrespectful towards them or you're super familiar, and in that case you have to ask them. So always use vous. The article also mentioned that even today cops in France use Tu when dealing with Criminals and Arabs. I was like Okay, when I read that. So, we go to class, we're talking about the article and she asks everyone 'give me examples of who we'd use tu with...' and people were trying to be friendly by saying criminals and foreigners...or immigrants instead of saying Arabs. Then she says 'Yeah..Tu is still used today when speaking to people who are not white or black but kind of tan and who livee in North Africa'...Hmmm. I wonder who lives in North Africa, is 'tan' and is migrating to France? Who else could be but Morrocans, Algerians and Egyptians?...While saying this, she's standing directly in front me, looking at me and pointing at me. And yes, I am tan and yes, it's kind of obvious that I'm Arab.
3. Another day. She's talking about Obama and McCain. It's kind of a general rule and known rule that Professors do not discuss their personal opinions in class. Furthermore, it is even more stressed that they do not share their own political beliefs. But no, this professor doesn't feel like she's has to follow the rules. She's obviously above everyone else and hence has more privileges and she should be granted the authority to make Republican students in the classroom feel like shit because they like Palin. It's so ridiculous. She keeps putting down McCain and Palin. Now, I'm not a republican nor do I know whom I'm going to be voting for but I think it's very rude, disrespectful and insensitive to students who are republicans and to put them in that position. It's not fair for them that they have to hear her talk trash about their nominees and not have the opportunity to rebut her because she's the authority figure in the classroom.
   
4. Last week she brought in a French magazine that had Obama's picture on the cover. She said that a lot of minority groups in France including black people and people of color relate to Obama because he's black. Then she started flipping through the pages of the magazine and pointing at black people and people of color. At this point, I'm beyond shocked, I'm feeling uncomfortable and I'm just talking in my head saying 'why the hell is she talking about this? why won't she stop? is this even intrinsic to us learning the language? Of course not."
5. Last week, a girl asked why the French had banned Muslim women from wearing hijabs in school. Her reply was that all religious symbols were banned from being worn in public schools, not just hijabs. She added that Muslims were starting to attend Catholic School because there head scarfs were allowed. She also said that Muslims were starting to make their own schools however, the French government was fearful that the children will be taught terrorism. In other words, Muslims are terrorists. I was so shocked that she said that and looked straight at me. I was so uncomfortable. I turned to my friend who was sitting next time and asked him why she was discussing this and that I wish she would just get on with the lesson. When she saw me whispering to my friend, she asked me, with a smirk on her face, if I was upset. Wow. If you knew that I'd even feel slightly uncomfortable why would you even go into the topic? Why? Clearly you knew or had an idea that it would make me upset yet, she kept on going. It's like pressing on a wound that's still sore.
   
6. Another incident last week. I know, by now you'd think that she would stop, but apparently not. We were learning how to form more elaborate ways of asking questions and using 'Est-ce que' and how to use the apostrophe and such. I was confused and I wasn't completely sure of how to use it so I made a mistake when writing the question. As she was going around, she stopped at my desk, told me that my question was formulated wrong and continued to stand there. Then she asked me what the correct answer was, on the spot. At that point, I started  getting nervous and told her that I didn't know. She turned to the girl next to me and said 'hillary help her.' Yes, please help the stupid, arab, muslim girl who doesn't know anything and who so far has been able to pass all of her classes because she has been helped by more able white people. Let's just all help the little child. Thank you so much for discrediting all the education that I've had. Thank you so fucking very much.What's even more ironic is that so far we've had one test and I've gotten an A on it and I do great on my homework. But no, that's not good enough, all that matters is that I'm Muslim and I'm Arab so I'm clearly stupid and incapable of learning a language like French.
   
7. Today was the tip of the ice berg. It was the Titanic hitting the ice berg or whatever you want to call it. She handed out a sheet that we had to fill out because we have a test on Wednesday. I started filling it out and I felt quiet confident because I've been studying and I'm actually quiet good at French, unlike her unflattering image of my knowledge of the language. She was walking around the class and, again, like last time, stopped at my desk. She said that I had conjugated the verb avoir (to have) in the wrong form. I conjugated it as "Ma Soeur j'ai" which was wrong...However, instead of nicely pointing out to me that I put the wrong thing, she pointed and said that 'that is wrong. What's the right answer?' I then, in my hurry to get her off my chest and to be as far away from her as possible, wrote down 'elle' which is completely wrong and I know it since I've taken Spanish and French is very similar to Spanish. But I was panicking, I was scared and nervous because I thought she would have my head if I didn't blurt out the right answer in that once second. So because I'm such a 'stupid' person and completely 'incapable' of learning an oh so hard a language as French, she took my pen out of my hand, without asking for my permission, and pointed with it to my paper AGAIN and asked 'what's the right verb conjugation.' I said "I don't know" because at that point, I've started sweating and my heart was beating faster. Then, with my pen, she tapped my head and said "if you want to learn French, you must memorize." What would you make of that? What would you make of someone who has repeatedly made it clear that Arabs are on the level of criminals and then taps your skull with a pen, as of saying that 'you gotta work your brain, you're being to unintelligent.'?
   

I've been meaning to post here to update the site and just talk in general but for some reason I couldn't logon onto Cutenews. It's just insane, I don't know why that happened. But it did and because I've been so busy I just didn't care. I was like whatever, I'll just wait and see what happens. Thankfully, it now works.

But other than that, I've had a pretty emotional day, an emotionally draining day to say the least. I don't know if you've ever heard of this activity but today, as part of our staff meeting, we did something called Lifelines. It's pretty much were the whole staff (there's 11 of us) get together and share a personal story about ourselves to others. So I got to hear 10 wonderful stories from other people. It was so emotional because I felt like I can feel some kind of pain in each and every one of their stories...they were so touching that I was crying openly.

I'm not a very touchy, touchy person and I don't like to cry in front of people because I feel week and vulnerable, two things that I don't like to feel and try not to show but I just couldn't hold it in at that time.

However, the whole time I was listening to people's stories, I kept trying to 'coach' myself not to cry when it was my turn to share my story. Amazingly, I surprised myself by not crying during my story. I don't know how I did it but I think having a rubix cube in my hands definitely helped. My friend was sitting next to me and she told me, after the meeting, that she felt bad for the cube because it felt like I was releasing a lot of anger/tension on it. That was funny ....

I feel like I have more to say but I think I'm going to cut myself off and just go to bed. I want to work out tomorrow and it's already 12 am in the morning. Gotta get my sleep...

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