Another motivation to move out of this country, other than cheese

I work in an academic advising office at a university, and so all day long I interact with college students. One of the most frustrating parts of my job is dealing with students who are turning to my school as a last option. I have no idea how or why this is the case, but my school has the second-lowest GPA requirements for admission and graduation of any school on campus. Students who have screwed up in other schools come crawling over here because they can't get in anywhere else. Awesome, huh? That's not to say that there aren't students in my school that are passionate about the curriculum and goals of the school, but I'd say there are easily as many screwups as high achievers.

Yesterday, a student from another school came into my office to inquire about our majors, and with a little questioning, I was able to get out of him that he didn't want to continue with his current major because of the foreign language requirement. He didn't see any reason why he should be forced to learn another language. He said, "I already live in the best county in the world, so why would I want to learn anything else?"

I almost launched into a list of a hundred reasons why he would want to learn something else, but I held my tongue out of respect for his ignorance. He clearly valued it enough to share it around, and I didn't want to burst his safe little 'merica bubble. The truth is that I cannot WAIT to live abroad. We have plans, and plans involve finishing degrees and getting the hell out of here. People like that guy make me even more anxious to leave, but I suppose it's reassuring that I won't have to deal with people like him after I'm gone.

While I'm thinking about ridiculous things, here's something that struck me as so odd that I just had to take some pictures.







I hate it, but I also secretly love it. Maybe I just hate that I secretly love it.