Sinister: Henricus Cornelius Agrippa Von Nettesheim and me......

[aale002 at xxx.nz]

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
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