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beowabbitI had a hard time with this, because lots of my friends have similar interests, but I did my best:
- Given a 40-minute presentation in Chinese, a language I had only studied for two years. [Edit: This was for work, to people who didn’t speak much English, rather than in class.]
- Dropped out of high school to go to college (OK, I bet a bunch of you have done that).
- Seen an original Old English manuscript in the flesh (well, skin, anyway).
- Painstakingly centered and right-justified lines on an IBM Executive typewriter.
- Typed entire college papers with nice-looking apostrophes by rotating the platen up a half line and using commas.
- Written a program in Z-80 assembly language to print proportionally-spaced mixed-case text on a printer that normally only printed capitals [edit: and used it to print my Russian homework].
- Invented a new Romance language as a child (I bet some of you have invented languages, but not intended to fit in as plausible relatives of real languages).
- Invented two imaginary writing systems as a child (I’m guessing most of you stopped at one).
- Conducted a long-distance relationship via (what would come to be called) electronic mail and instant messaging — before 1984. (See PLATO People.)
- Recited pornographic poetry in Esperanto for a sweetie. (She didn’t believe me that it was pornographic, so I had to translate it for her. In front of her co-workers. :-)
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Date: 2005-02-23 13:26 (UTC)Mandarin. After the Tian An Men Square massacre, Princeton had about 40 dissidents come to study. (I think it was part of a deal among the university, the U.S. government, and the Chinese government.) I worked for the IT helpdesk at the time, and I gave them a talk on the computing resources available (with the help of a Taiwanese student employee -- I wrote up the talk in Chinese with his help, but then he translated for the question-and-answer phase). It was loads of fun.
Oddly, I’m even more tickled to find somebody who’s done number 4.
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Date: 2005-02-23 13:31 (UTC)And here we pinpoint the age gap! I was a sophomore in high school then, I think. Either freshman or sophomore. We were actually planning a class trip to China, but then the massacre occurred, and, well - not anymore.
Oddly, I’m even more tickled to find somebody who’s done number 4.
When I was a kid, my favorite toys were typewriters. I taught myself to type when I was about seven - I did the damage early, and I now hunt and peck at 80+ wpm!
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Date: 2005-02-23 13:59 (UTC)I’d been wondering how old you are, given that IBM Executives were starting to get a bit long in the tooth when I was playing with them. But I guess you were probably typing on that particular model younger than I was. (I also always used to switch type balls in the Selectric to get real italics rather than just underlining things.)
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Date: 2005-02-23 14:18 (UTC)Heh. Funny story. I took both Chinese and French AT THE SAME TIME. I requested Chinese, with French as an alternate, as one of my electives. One of my other electives wasn't available, so the idiots gave me French and Chinese; I had them in consecutive class periods, even. It was a hell of a mental shift, rewiring myself from Chinese to French as I walked from one building to the next.
I tell you, I looked at my ninth-grade schedule and whimpered...
I did okay. Solid As in French and Bs in Chinese both years (yes, I voluntarily did it again). I still maintain that I'd've gotten As in Chinese as well if I hadn't had French to contend with at the same time.
And my high school was... special. It was a Highly Desirable magnet school with a closed K-to-12 system. The waiting list was so insane that I was on it as "Baby Boy or Baby Girl [last name]" at least a year before I was born. It was an experimental school; we got to try things before the rest of the state did. My favorite of the programs, besides Chinese, was the blended English/History program - two hours in which we learned about writers of the times that we were studying in history, and got to put on plays and stuff...
There was counterintuitive stuff, too. For instance - I showed extreme aptitude in life sciences, so I ended up doing AP marine biology & anatomy & physiology, stuff like that, but never taking chemistry or physics. *eyeroll*
It was a really competive, single-minded school. Kids were encouraged to only do one extracurricular, in order to Be The Best at it and kick the other schools' asses.
Dude, I could write about it allll day... *laugh* It warped me. It warped everyone who went.
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Date: 2005-02-23 16:08 (UTC)Dang, it sounds like a fun school to me. In hind sight, I would give a lot to to have gone to a school like that. If I'd been challenged I might have actually developed study skills before college.
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Date: 2005-02-23 16:11 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-23 16:12 (UTC)The arbitrary division of knowledge into school subjects has always struck me as a bit odd.
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Date: 2005-02-23 16:14 (UTC)Yep! We try to give Elayna bonus background whenever possible - and her school doesn't do half bad, being Montessori and all.
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Date: 2005-02-23 14:22 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-23 14:35 (UTC)I did take a semester of Chinese as an adult, with Raymond Lum at the Harvard University Extension School, and it was one of the best classes I ever had in my life.
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Date: 2005-02-23 16:08 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-23 16:40 (UTC)This also occurred in 1989, so a lot may have changed since then...