back to school.

Hey Ho! Let's Go!! Gone is 2011, here is 2012! Wonderful, fresh, new year! With that comes a new semester of school! And the break in education for me was totally nice, but I'd heard it can't last forever... (weird, right?) so I am physically (as opposed to online, which I did last semester) going to school at a college right down the road from me. It's different. We'll start there. Different from any sweet college experience I've had in Utah.

Let me just tell you about my first day. 8am: Ethics:) Bring it on. So my teacher presents a situation to us and asks us to express our thoughts. The situation is as follows:

Man in Canada puts his daughter in the back of family car, in garage, starts the car, shuts the garage

and leaves her there to be euthanized by the carbon monoxide emitted.

 He and his wife then go the grocery store and come home to find their dead daughter. They call the police and when they get there the father tells them that his daughter has cerebral palsy and was in extreme pain. He claimed he was putting her "out of her pain".

So after lots of class discussion, it's concluded that the facts are that the family had visited many doctors in search for a cure. Their daughter was basically a vegetable. She couldn't walk, talk, express emotion (other than smiling), etc. The doctors didn't even know whether or not she was in pain, but concluded that that must be the case since other patients of the same nature seemed to be.

I was surprised that 80% of my class expressed that they understood why the father would do what he did, saying that there were probably some financial burdens on the family from medical bills. There were many opinions along these lines, but I did not agree with what they were saying. So I raised my hand and said that the father committed murder. It's just that simple. I expounded on the thought and of course there were other opposing thoughts. But there you go! On the first day, I made a stand for something that may seem totally logical and ethical in one culture, but to another not so logical. I'll keep you posted on other interesting scenarios in that class!

Then I had politics, where during my introduction I was pegged as "the girl from Utah who will be voting for Romney since they share a common religion". Awesome. I mean I don't have a problem with it, because they're spot on. But it'll just be difficult to be in a very liberal setting... hahahaha it get's more interesting.

Next was anthropology! My teacher says "on a piece of paper, please write down your thoughts about Darwin's evolution theory. At the end of the day this class is about evolution." I wrote down on my paper "I don't really believe in evolution. Because of religious and personal beliefs, I have my idea and feelings as to where mankind came from. I do believe that animals have to grow and adapt to their surroundings though, and so I do believe that evolution applies in that situation." My teacher later approached me and said "you might be in the wrong class". hahaha

Finally I had marriage and family relations. Thank heavens I have a friend in that class with me though! She is also a member of the church and is married, so we feed off each other and support each other in that class. It's a good thing she's there too, because as you can imagine it's a very controversial class! There's a lot about homosexuality and child discipline and cohabitation and marriage... we're the only two who are married and believe the things we do. And for both of us (she's a previous BYU student) it's quite different from any other class we've had!

So anyway, I thought some might be interested in what California schools are teaching these days! I'm sure this is just the beginning:) Look forward to more opinionated stories to come!!