School has taken off..

Reading, speaking, listening, living, is all in Spanish now. I am excited to already feel my growth and comfortableness in Spanish that I remembered I had in Paraguay.  It has consumed my life, brain, and body and stretched it beyond its limits (especially our classes in Spanish). I am happy still, but more of a mellow happiness with days of stress that are quickly left behind through my friendships both old and new.

 I only have a week left of Antonio's class and I cannot remember the last time I have felt pain that a class will be ending. The joy that I wake up to, knowing that I have another day of him cracking my brain open with ideas and words to better myself and my view on this world, will only last another week. This is true education. This is what I was always wanting from education and which I thought I would get but had not until now. His class is not about memorizing concepts, although there are plenty of economic theories if you wish to, but of a change in mentality. Of individual growth, probed by questions, and more questions and more, until you are frustrated and start to see another way of thinking.

Honestly there have been times in his class in which I wanted to say, many people just use drugs to be able to "see differently" or open their minds. But with Antonio's class there is history, theories, and future growth. Hope, that as a society as a whole we can come up with a better solution. It is not about us in that way. But a worldview, a movement toward openness through understanding the past and how it affects our views today.

He never gives a solution. For this he is my favorite teacher I have had. Because he teaches in this way. His view is unimportant. The authors that we read, views, are to be questioned. Ours as well. It affects each of his student individually in a different way. I see the class questioning themselves. So thought provoking, it is the most I have seen anyone participate yet in graduate school. And the first time I am not annoyed by peoples comments. He strikes us. He makes us exhausted.