Project GO!

This week I found out that I will be attending Indiana University this summer!  My Arabic professor had recommended a summer workshop there called SWSEEL.  Focusing on Slovak and Eastern European languages, it is an intense nine week program that requires you sign a contract agreeing to speak only the language of study.  As an ROTC student, the government also invests in cadets/midshipmen interested in learning critical languages such as Arabic or Russian.  I have horrible luck so it was that much more exciting to find out I had been rewarded the Project GO funding for SWSEEL this summer.  All I have to do is pass Arabic now...so we shall see about that.  If I decide to continue learning Arabic after completing Field Training I believe it is an additional pay check each month, mostly because of the high need for these critical languages.  In terms of scholarships, they are given out first to technical majors, then to language majors, followed by non-technical majors such as myself.  Apart from Arabic being difficult to learn, at least in my opinion, it is not offered as a major at many American universities.  I therefore could not double major in this language if I wanted to qualify as a language major.  Part of the reason why I chose this language is because it’s a critical language, and also because I didn’t find Spanish all that interesting in high school.  Arabic is cool because it’s different and has a different alphabet I thought.  This also makes things problematic because I can’t have just anybody help me study for a test because they have absolutely no idea whether I’m right or not.  Despite the difficulty of the language, I’m excited to continue learning Arabic at Indiana University this summer, in a much more effective and efficient environment.