I continue to be amazed by my friends. Here are some:
G is quiet, brilliant, young, and playful, with many of the mannerisms of a kitten; he wears bright colors well, makes faces, cuts my hair, points out the thing in the reading you should have noticed hours ago, and cultivates a sardonic streak. He says he can't dance, but everywhere he does. Except at dances, I guess.
J is like a cross between a 40s film star and a punk rock antihero, possibly the coolest and certainly the most literary person I know. She is strong and funny and perfect, mistress of the gourmet picnic and the bon mot. We have sisterhood in our over-aged escape from minimum wage life.
Y takes contagious delight in the intellectual world and irresistible joy from argumentative play, with a particularly agile and demanding brain. He's unfailingly kind to humans at hand but equally ruthless to theoretical ones, a sympathetic but unruffled shoulder to cry on, and the best lab partner I've ever had.
They are all gentle, considerate, generous, independent, and reliable. I love them fiercely, and try hard not to breathe or wake up.
After working hard and re-starting five times, I turned in a rough draft for my freshman essay; it was OK, quite good for a first draft, and for a completed essay, OK. I haven't yet given an oral defense, which will probably happen next week.
My lab tutor, H, is also amazing. She's supportive of whatever weird experiments Y and I can design, gave me brilliant advice regarding my freshman paper, and has magical Aristotle superpowers. She tells me not to consider any grad school that would care if I've published as an undergrad, but also to go ahead and start practicing for the GRE. She tells me that she often sees people who work outside of classics as intellectually lonely--you work in philosophy and you're specialized, the person across the hall hasn't even read the same foundational works.
SJC Social Justice Corps is up and running, though I don't expect any large actions till next year. Transportation to DC would be really nice.
I'm getting a more cohesive philosophy for dealing with physical objects; this may be another blog post soon, I've written some about it. My room is gorgeous (without having bought anything new for it) and my filing is done.
My three favorite misogynists, presently, are Simone de Beauvoir, Euripides, and Aristotle.
I have learned, when I hurt, to wait it out. Taking care of yourself is a hard but useful thing to learn.
Day, I hate kittens.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting advice. I get the feeling that the best thing for grad school is really to just slap on as many "I'm a fancy person" things as possible, try to get into the best one, and then use that to get into a decent job if possible.(the field is very competitive for jobs)
Philosophy is pretty specialized. I think an interesting emerging field is experimental philosophy, which is probably less isolated due to its overlap with empirical psychology.
Philosophy of physical objects sounds interesting, but... vague? Physical objects have so many elements to them. There is our subjective reaction to them. The ontology of their physical nature. Their nature as aesthetically pleasing. Etc. I'd love to read it though.
You should add Nietzsche to the list. :P :P
In any case, I am glad to hear that you are doing well and have good friends. Of course, I recognize that your portrait of them is a matter of abstracting an essence out of the crudity of their flesh. The descriptions appear too literary to be fully real. I mean, maybe I am mistaken, but this seems like a good inference.
Yeah. . . she went to the University of Chicago committee on social thought, which is probably my dream school, so I'm going to assume her advice is good.
ReplyDeleteBy philosophy of physical objects, I suppose I mean "philosophy of the relationships people have with physical objects." Especially use, beauty, manufacture, maintenance, and ownership.
Nietzsche may be number four. Maybe. Maybe five, after God.
Regarding my friends: that's the crazy part--they really are impossibly cool--the descriptions are abbreviated, but not at all fictional.
Oooh, wow, that's an impressive school.
ReplyDeleteOh, ok. I can see that being interesting. I can also see myself hating the entire topic-area as well though. The reason being that I get the feeling I'd end up having a tendency to think "Get empirical or GTFO" So, I would tend to think of mankind's relationship with objects as a anthropological, sociological or psychological question.
God? You'll have to elaborate. Either I am not getting a joke, or you think Christian scriptures are profound. (I actually tend not to consider them profound... then again, I hate old things)
I don't think you're making whole cloth, it's just that even when talking to my friends, I've seen how they mythologize me a little. It kind of throws me off to see this as well. I mean, when I look at myself, I see flesh and meat, and while I see the abstractions, I doubt my own abstractions for the primary reality of myself as a meat-thing that will fail to truly measure up to the essence of any description.