Perils of a foreign language

At the end of the summer, I am graduating. I will be spending my summer looking for jobs, deciding where I want to live and lifting my roommate's cats off of my window blinds, from which they love to dangle. \nIn the meantime, I sit in class each morning learning the French word for toilet. That's right. In just a few months I will be entering the real world, one in which the IU general education requirement decision makers feel that an extensive irrelevant foreign vocabulary will be necessary. \nCome to think of it, I am certain I can understand why they feel this way. Perhaps I will be sitting in my cubicle (with a window view, "Office Space" style) when suddenly my boss will peer over the top, frantic and wide-eyed, and tell me that the future of the organization depends on whether I can translate "Maintenant! Il y a des legumes sur mon bureau! Je dois une serviette!" (Roughly translated as "Now! There are vegetables on my desk! I need a washcloth!)\nApparently I will not be successful unless the required four semesters of a foreign language are fulfilled. Now, I know what you all are thinking. You're wondering why I took French in the first place, when Spanish would have been much more useful.\nI am still wondering that myself. I'm sure you're also wondering why I didn't just get it over with earlier in my college career so I wouldn't have to conjugate irregular verbs while I'm waiting for my interviews. (And when I say "waiting," I don't mean dressed in my suit, sitting in the waiting room for my interview to start. I mean waiting for an actual interview.)\nIdeally, I would have liked to have fulfilled these requirements earlier, but I started college at the University of South Carolina, whose journalism school recognized no need for four semesters of rolling "rrrrr's" off your tongue. This is because in the South, the r's travel from the eastern states, like South Carolina, and move west until they land in Arkansas. In Boston, they don't have any r's at all. \nThey have slowly slunk southwest to inhabit the vocabulary of Arkansas folks such as my father, who doesn't wash his car; he "wershes" it. \nIn the South, things are done correctly. They aren't worried about subjects, pronouns, reflexive pronouns, direct objects or watermelon. There is no "you, me, her, his." In the South, everyone is simply addressed as either one of y'all, some of y'all, y'all, or all of y'all. \nPeople in the South are also friendly, which is why they don't want to learn the language of a nation that is stereotyped as a very rude and unfriendly nation. I would go over to check out this stereotype for myself, but I don't know how to ask the French where their bathrooms are. \nBut I am sure that they would agree with me that learning their language, or anyone else's for that matter, should be an option and not a requirement. I have no problem taking history classes, culture classes, math classes, Advanced Google Searching 309, whatever. But I honestly don't understand the methodology behind this requirement. \nInstead of feeling excited about my upcoming new future I feel frustrated because I can't remember the word for bathtub on a French test. I would just like the French department to know, I ain't mad at ya. Whoever does decides on these requirements, I must simply say: Non fromage pour vous (No cheese for you).