September 11, 2003
Keeping busy
What a day. I don't know the last time I've been this busy for this long. I normally try to avoid "what-I-did-today" posts, but I've had a long day, and there being no one around with whom I can unload, I'm going to do it here. You have been warned.
I got up at 6:30 this morning, a good two hours early (being an undergraduate does have a few advantages) and headed to Erlanger to apply for several Unit Clerk jobs for after I graduate. As Mesh works at Erlanger, we met at the Starbucks inside the Medical Mall for a few minutes before splitting up to pursue our various days.
I filled out an application and submitted my resume, and that was basically that. I headed back towards the mountain, and realized that I needed to get my oil changed. So I dropped by the Penns-Oil facility on Broad St. to have that done. While I was there one of the attendants pointed out that my fuel filter was still factory original. As the car now has 125k miles on it, I figured it was time for a change. Additionally, the car was filthy from having driven to Rocktown on Saturday and Chattanooga last month, so I had it washed too.
Then it was up the mountain to grab a quick snack in the now-always-open Great Hall. I spend the hour from 10:00 to 11:00 dealing with email-based correspondence. Then came chapel, more email, and CHOW: Art and Music.
After class I met with a friend to discuss an upcoming Bagpipe article dealing with the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the Texas sodomy law. Someone had written an article coming from the fairly standard fundamentalist position (he actually said that the decision is a blow to constitutional democracy, if you can believe it), and my friend was crafting a parallel article from a more moderate position. We talked about it for an hour. Which was good, but it meant I couldn't talk to some people I wanted to over lunch.
After my power-lunch, I headed back to my room to do some quick reading and responding for Existentialism. I'm really, really frustrated with the class, to the point that I've decided to drop it. Now let me just set the record straight before I move on. I'm a decently smart guy. I've read a bit of philosophy. I've taken 39 credits already. I've spent numerous hours with Josiah, Todd, and others debating the finer points of Kierkegaard until 2AM, followed by Dr. Davis explaining Kierkegaard to us slowly, carefully, systematically, and brilliantly. So I think I'm entitled to say that I know just a smidgen about his thought. In comparison, this course is scattered, non-linear, disorganized, and unsystematic. We've had a lot of class discussion, accounting for perhaps 60% of our class time thus far. But it's getting more and more obvious that our continental philosophy professor doesn't actually like the continental philosophers. Which is a bad thing. He doesn't actually take the time to explain the vocabulary, never contridicts a student - even when they're obviously wrong and/or wanking - and somehow thinks that simply reading the text aloud will somehow let us understand it. Frankly, I have better things to do with my time.
So that was class. Afterwards, I got back together with my friend to finish off the article, which we failed to do, but we made some good progress. I went to dinner at 6:00, and as a result missed most of my friends again. Damn. I'm trying out for this semester's play, and callbacks were at 7:00, so I headed there straight from dinner. At 7:30 was the first philosophy club meeting. We watched Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries. Kind of. We tried to watch it in Mills 270/80, but as the floor is level and the movie is subtitled, people's heads made watching the movie fairly difficult. Then the DVD playback on the computer we were using crapped out. I fixed it once, but when it did it again a few minutes later I couldn't bring it back. So we took an intermission and adjourned to Sanderson 215.
The movie ended about 45 minutes ago, and I left the discussion at about 10:00. I hadn't stopped moving since 6:30. That's a nice, solid, 15 hour day. And I didn't even do any homework for tomorrow. Damn, I'm tired.
Okay, I realize that probably wasn't of interest to very many people aside from myself. Read the title of the blog before formulating complaints.
G'night.
