Monday was the final time spent in my German II class and my final German course during my college career.  A year ago when I had to sign up for a foreign language course to satisfy the 2 semester requirement at UNI, I was absolutely dreading it.  However, at this point I think it was fate.  I almost didn’t sign up for German. Since I had taken a year of Spanish in High School, I was going to go that route, but online reviews of the professor were less than satisfactory. So I ended up in German I.

This class had been like no other.  We had people from totally different majors with totally different personalities. Most of us spent 5 days a week with each other. The first couple weeks seemed almost dreadful as everyone was learning each other names (in German of course), yet no one could remember my name.  I was feeling isolated from the rest of the class, but that didn’t last long. There was one day when someone started sitting next to me, and I started to feel that I had made a friend. Shortly everyone began coming together. It was almost a strange kind of family and closeness that I had never seen in any other classes. If somebody missed a class, it was most certainly noticed.

In the beginning I think everyone was a little bit shy about speaking out loud as we were fearful that we’d be judged by our peers.  But we realized that we were all in this together and there was no reason to be afraid.

We were very lucky to have the instructors that we did. They new that it was difficult to learn a new language and although they did challenge us, they were easy on us as well.  They cared about whether we understood the material, and made every effort to make sure we understood.

One of the instructors, was a TA from Russia, who taught us twice a week during our practice course.  I still remember the first day he was in front of the class, you could tell he was a little nervous, but he quickly got over it.  Sometimes I feel he learned as much about English as we got to learn about German from him.

When second semester started this fall we had quickly noticed that we had gained a few new classmates while losing a few from the previous semester.  We had even gained a new TA from Georgia (the country, not the state, and no we still had our Russian friend).

At first it seemed almost awkward to have this minor change of classmates and instructors, but they joined our “family” very quickly.

When I woke up Monday morning, I felt a certain sadness. I had been seeing most of these people for 5 days a week for 2 semesters and I wouldn’t be seeing them anymore.

As a final message to my German classmates and instructors: You are a fantastic group of people, and I have felt truly honored to have been able to take this journey with all of you. Although I probably won’t have classes with any of you next semester, I hope to see you all very soon.

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You can find the app here.

if I’ve helped you at all, feel free to send some bitcoins my way

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Dear <Class> :

I am writing this from an airplane! Yes! How cool is this? Answer: VERY COOL! I am on an AIRPLANE and writing an email to all of YOU ON THE GROUND! Hoooo Haaa! Do you know what is holding me up right now? Answer: AIR! If YOU tried to climb on some air right now, you would fall, so do not try to duplicate my feat of amazingness. Similarly, if you yelled as loud as you could, I would not be able to hear you, yet I can communicate with YOU, all of you at once, while I am ON A FREAKING PLANE!

Here is a combinatorics question:

How many ways are there to arrange the members of our class who are ON A FREAKING PLANE?

Answer: Only one, for it is I.

I hope you do well in all your ground-based finals next week, and that you study hard, given that you have more than a tray-table to work on, and don’t have a little screen above your head displaying “Eat Pray Love” without sound.

Dr. <censored> , Ph.D.

P.S. I AM SENDING YOU THIS EMAIL FROM AN AIRPLANE!

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Link here.
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If you were someone that actually used my cacti page, then you can still access it via this link.
Update
After the move to Bluehost, this page wasn’t moved back to the server. If you wish to have access to it, please contact me. Email

Everyone’s favorite online ad-supported streaming service has now released Star Trek: First Contact and Generations. You can even embed them in your website. So I suggest you watch it now and remember, Resistance is Futile.