Learning Experience #2: We've got an ant problem

It is Thursday of dead days and my roommate and I have encountered a serious problem in our, dormitory. As my roommate put it, “We got an ant problem”. Unfortunately hundreds, if not thousands, of ants are crawling around my desk area. Upon further investigation, it became apparent that I may or may not have left a week-old, rotting banana in the trashcan next to my desk. Obviously, this is the last thing my roommate and I want to deal with during our study days as we both have an enormous amount of work and studying to do before the end of the school year. The interesting thing is we weren’t mad. Instead, we couldn't stop laughing as we both cracked jokes left and right about having ants in our room. We knew it was an inconvenience, but we both used humor as a way to lighten up the mood and laugh it off. Yes, I hate having ants occupy every square inch of my desk. However, I would take the moments of laughing and the memories that resulted over the inconvenience any day.

Although I could write a blog post about how I learned not to leave a rotting banana in small trashcan, I believe it is much more fitting to talk about an outcome of the ant event: humor.

When I signed up for this class, I literally had no idea what to expect. The title of the class, as we learned through the videos during the first week, could entail hundreds of ideas. When I discovered the topic was going to be humor, I could not have been more excited. I view myself as a pretty funny individual so the idea of delving into why people laugh and what causes things to be funny fascinated me. Throughout the semester, we expanded on numerous theories of humor which are easy to identify on a daily basis. Why do we laugh at the unexpected? Incongruity theory. This makes sense because some event occurs that is against the norm of what we think is going to happen and thus spurs laughter. Many of the other theories are similarly easy to understand…except two. Why do we laugh when someone else gets hurt? Superiority theory. But how is that funny? Why do we find it humorous to make fun of a specific person or group of people? Negative humor. Again, how is that funny? We may never fully understand, but that’s what I loved about his class. We learned about humor. More importantly, however, we were forced to think about things that are seemingly incomprehensible. Thinking outside of the box and developing critical thinking abilities is invaluable.  

So yes, one thing I learned this semester was to not leave an old banana in my room because it will attract an endless amount of ants. More importantly though, I learned about humor and developed critical thinking skills all through a course titled “Literature and Civilizations II”.