Attended an Interpretation & Argumentation class with my friends today. I dropped the course during the first week of last semester. I think it was a ridiculously challenging course for me a non-native speaker then. Maybe it was too early and too much of a shock for me to delve into an American-style writing class. Back home, there is hardly an open discussion. Every topic that our English teacher gives, even in UiTM, are subjected to a certain type of content. The topics were not that tough too. On the other hand, the theme for my I & A class was "sweatshop labor". My goodness. It took me a day or two to really understand what's the theme about. The amount of material I had to read was horrendously a stockpile of advanced literature, at least to my standard. 10 pages in 3 days? I'm a slow reader unlike my good friend Seng Seng in University of Chicago. Perhaps the ultimate reason that drove me out of the 76-101 course is giving opinions in discussion with other American students. They are not the average American students but those who make the cut to enter Carnegie Mellon for courses like Computer Science, Engineering and Music. I couldn't believe how well depth in content and language were my peers response to the topic. I still remember the name of my then intructor, who is like me, was new to the country. He was and I think still is pursuing a PhD in English in Carnegie Mellon. I remember clearly that on the first day, he rushed into the class panting as if he was being chased by a panther. "Hi. I'm so and so and I'll be your nightmare for this semester." He indeed was one for a week for me.



The undergraduate curricullum in Carnegie Mellon is kind enough to offer an alternative writing course for non-native speakers considering the number of international students in this school. I took Reading & Writing in Multi-cultural Settings that forced me to wake up at 8.30 am every Tuesdays and Thursday in order to be in time for meeting half an later. The rest of the semester was fine although I find it was irrelevant for me to join in a discussion the topic about Model Minority when I'm clearly not. Furthermore, I have been in the states for less than 6 months then and hardly there was time for me to read the newspapers and magazines on racial issues.