First off, apologies to Lawrence for not replying to your email before sending this off. I'll reply to you in a couple of days. Promise! :-} Secondly, today has been a good day. A very good day, in fact. So, I thought I'd share it with you all. In contrast yesterday was horrible. I had an exam (second to last, yay!), and all day felt...disjointed. Like I couldn't quite get a grip on what was happening, even though nothing much was going on at all. Ordering a coffee was a nightmare, and I don't even want to talk about the filled rolls. The exam itself was a doddle: a third-year psychology paper called "Evolution, Behaviour and Cognition", which is the sort of thing I've been studying since Year Dot. The lecturer for the paper even rang me up the night before to make sure I was OK, because he hadn't seen me in class in a week and I hadn't come to pick up my essay from his office, which was nice. Not to be too cynical about the whole thing, but this is the time of year when lecturers start looking around for students who want supervisors for their thesis years, and this particular lecturer knows that I share an interest of his in the philosophy of biology, so I've become something of a teacher's pet. Many of my friends have bandied the word "protege" about. :-P Once that was over, I went to work, then went home and had an early one, hoping to put the day behind me. This morning when I got up, I felt much better. I went to my mentoring session (I help run a voluntary mentoring programme at a local school, and also mentor a 12 year old boy) and had a jolly good time, discussing long term planning and critical thinking as it applied to the computer game, Baldur's Gate II. :-} Then, I got on the bus. I like buses. I think buses rock, and frequently ride them as a hobby, not unlike a certain boy. Buses are a great place to meet interesting people, and to see the sights of the City of Sails, the Queen City if you will. I did my usual thing, sitting down near the back, so that I can people-watch without feeling crowded. A few moments into my ride, I realised that the person sitting in front of me was my Mediaeval Philosophy lecturer. I said his name, he turned, and I then had a _very_ pleasant conversation, all the way back home. This is what we discussed (amongst other things): I am almost finished my programme, but not quite. I am doing something that sounds much more impressive than it really is. What it is is called a conjoint degree, which is where, if your marks are good enough, you are allowed to do two degrees at once, at an accelerated pace. Many people do Law and Commerce together, but I am doing a Bachelor of Arts (majoring in Philosophy) and a Bachelor of Science (majoring in Psychology). Such programmes usually take 4 to 5 years. I am just beginning my fifth year now, and need only to do one more psych paper and one other science paper to graduate, which I have decided to stretch out over the whole year, taking a few other papers at the same time for interest. Effectively, I have finished my BA already, but will not graduate formally until the requirements for my BSc are complete. My lecturer knows this, and said that, if I would like, he would look into the possibility of me doing Masters level Philosophy papers _next_ year, before I officially graduate, to prevent me from getting bored with just doing more undergrad philosophy (this is not likely, because I love philosophy and intend to go straight into my Masters in it after I graduate, leaving psych in the past, where it belongs.) This, of course, made me rather happy-not only was one of my favourite lecturers saying that he would like me in one of his advanced papers, but I was also suddenly faced with a significantly expanded choice of topics-grad students get to do all the _really_ interesting cutting- edge stuff. Yay for me! Then, we talked about tutoring. Traditionally, tutors in philosophy have been second year masters students, but with the philosophy department growing rapidly in size, demand has far outstripped supply. The HOD has stated that he would be willing to consider people such as myself, who had completed their major in philosophy but had not yet graduated, for these (paid) tutoring positions. Now, tutoring in philosophy has always been a dream of mine-I have had some _outstanding_ tutors in my time, and really want to be just like them. Also, tutoring is most certainly the first step on the road towards lecturing in philosophy. My lecturer, when informed of all this, said that since the philosophy department was absolutely filthy rich right now (in NZ, university departments get funding based upon the numbers of students they have enrolled each year, and philosophy one of the biggest departments with very small overheads) and since they were always looking for good potential tutors, OF WHICH I WAS OBVIOUSLY ONE (yay and double yay!) I was shoe-in for any tutoring job I applied for. I later confirmed this in discussion with a group of graduate students that I know, some of whom had been my tutors in past years. (They also really liked my beard.) That, you would think, would make my day, but oh no! the best was yet to come. As we got off the bus and walked towards the philosophy department, I broached a subject that I had been dwelling upon for over a year, but never had the guts to mention before for fear of being laughed at. I obliquely asked him if he'd done much reading on the works of various Rennaisance magicians and alchemists (of which the delightfully-named fellow in the title is one), to which he replied that that was a particular area of interest of his. Encouraged, I began discussing my interests in examining the texts of such folk not in the traditional way (i.e. that they were all ignorant, deluded fools with no intellectual ability or appreciation of the history of philosophy and science) but that they were genuinely attempting to set the groundwork for a methodology of science that, while now obviously false, has significant forebears in the works of Classical researchers into the natural world-Pliny, Aristotle, Hippocrates, etc He looked at me for a second, then said that that sounded like an excellent idea for a thesis topic (yay, double-yay, and dare I say it, triple-yay!) because there are a lot of primary sources available, but not much has been done on their thinking from a philosophical standpoint. He also said that he'd be happy to supervise my thesis if that was what I decided to do it on (YAY!). Before this, I was intending to write my thesis on a book by a guy called Robert C. Solomon, entitled "LOVE Emotion, Myth and Metaphor", but I was struggling with a rather problematic academic issue. Bob Solomon is a regular visitor and lecturer to the department here in Auckland (being based at the University of Texas), and earlier this year announced two graduate scholarships, the only scholarships available specifically for philosophy students. Tertiary education is expensive here, and such a scholarship would significantly help me to pay my way. Of course, assuming that I ended up winning the scholarship, there would be a rather obvious conflict-I would be being paid by the person who's book I was critiquing to critique that very book. Can you say "Conflict of interest"? I thought you could. Of course, now, that's no longer a problem. I'm now able to do a topic which fascinates me, but which I never dreamed in a million years I'd get support to do in an academic philosophy setting-studying the writings of a Rennaisance magician and discussing it as a philosophical text. Can I get a BLOODY GRATE YAY, my brothers and sisters? How cool will it be to go to a party and say, "Mmm, yeah, I'm writing my thesis about a funky German magician"? Better than "Err, actually, I'm a librarian", anyways. (I know, I know, but I'll still be twee on the inside! Go the libraries! Besides, do you know how much time I'll have to spend in closed collections in libraries chasing down obscure references and learning Latin and Greek?) Well, that's what I wanted to write and tell you all about. Not very B&S oriented, unfortunately, but then again I don't have days like this very often. I feel like I need a beer and a kebab to celebrate (What's "Could I please have a beer and a kebab?" in Greek, Stacey?) Today was a VERY good day..... Right-o, that's all, Go the buses! Cunning Andre +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+