Course shopping

[tarigwaemir]

Lowell House on the Feast of St. Joseph and Companions

More blather about shopping period. Modern European Intellectual History is horribly intimidating, with huge amounts of reading (I just got the sourcebook, and it's nearly 700 pages long). The professor was probably my archetype of the Harvard humanities professor: extremely articulate, a little neurotic, and very passionate about his subject. My only qualm about the course is the amount of work involved; the professor says the main challenge is the reading since there would "only" be three "short" papers and a "straightforward" final examination. I'm not sure if I trust his concept of "short" and "straightforward", but after talking it over with my mother, I decided to take it anyway.

The reading list for this course includes most of the major thinkers of the modern era: Nietzsche, Freud, Lukacs, Adorno, Horkheimer, Heidegger, Weber, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida and Foucault. I figure I'd be able to say that I've had a proper liberal arts education after such a runthrough. But seriously, I really like the way the professor thinks, the questions he poses, and the way he contextualizes these ideas. If it were a pure philosophy class, I'd probably not find it as interesting, but the historical lens makes it fascinating. It's still intimidating though because I've never been surrounded by so many humanities concentrators in one class. I'll have to muster up the nerve not to drown in discussion sections.

Intertextuality failed to blow me away; the professor was nice but didn't thrill me, if that makes any sense. A shame because the course had an interesting reading list too (Byatt's Possession, Murakami's Kafka on the Shore among others), and I thought, looking through the syllabus, that it would be really neat to do a final paper on fanfiction (if that was allowed). The topics being covered are exactly the same questions arising in fandom meta. Nonetheless, the lecture was, well, not really scintillating. The only exciting part was interpreting the sparrow in Catullus' poem "Lesbia's Sparrow" as a phallic symbol, haha. It's a much easier course though (only two hours a week, no section, two papers), and I wondered whether I shouldn't go the route of keeping my sanity intact instead. But oh well, what is college for if not to take risks?

Structural Biology was boring. So much for my efforts to understand crystallography. I really shouldn't call myself a "biochemistry" concentrator; I'm really a molecular biologist/geneticist through and through. -_-

Anyway, so I'll be taking Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Thought, Modern European Intellectual History, and Developmental Biology. Plus thesis research, of course. Let's hope I'm not making a huge mistake.

Kendo practice tonight. By the way, the MAC is closed next spring. (ladydaera, klio911, did you hear about it yet?) It's just wonderful that the administration doesn't tell us ahead of time but waits for us to find out through the Crimson. Of course no mention of how club sports are utterly screwed over by this decision.

Yours &c.

Comments

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

Heh, seems a little heavy on the non-material, that course line-up. (Okay, half-half divided with the Bio, but, still.)

And, what, no Durkheim or Bourdieu? Hmph. XD (And as regards the Chinese Ethical and Political Thought course, yes, I'm not surprised that there should be sweeping statements and the like. And I'm rather curious about how it shall play out.)

[troisroyaumes]

Heh, it is, isn't it? I do have a predilection for the abstract, alas. The course is a very broad survey, so it's probably skewed very much towards the professors biases.

I'll probably post incessantly about the Moral Reasoning course wailing for help so I'm sure you'll hear about it. XD;;

[sangoire.livejournal.com]

Word to the MAC thing. I'm the space coordinator for ballroom, and that's going to be fun, fun, fun.

[troisroyaumes]

Agh, much sympathies on your situation. We're freaking out because all of our major events are in the spring. I wish they told us in advance but then again, what else can we expect from the MAC. (Good luck on finding space! ;_;)

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Hee. Modern European Intellectual History consists of the people I've reluctantly read and bitterly cursed while at university, but that Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Thought class sounds really interesting. What are you covering in that?

[troisroyaumes]

I will probably add my own bitter curses, but I feel like it's something that everyone ought to go through in college. Like an initiation. XD

The Chinese philosophy course is really excellent: covers Confucius, Mo Tzu, Mencius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Hsun Tzu, Han Fei Tzu, Sima Qian, and a lot of Han philosophers/commentators. As my father says, all the major texts one ought to read for the civil service exam. XD

[issen4.livejournal.com]

That's a lot to take in. But thank goodness you don't have to read all of that in Chinese, because that is painful. Have fun, anyway!

[schwimmerin.livejournal.com]

Club sports and IMs and a whole bunch of stuff. Where am I supposed to go swimming? :((((

Hahaha, I totally forgot you had kendo and was wondering where you were. My brain is fried XD

I really shouldn't call myself a "biochemistry" concentrator; I'm really a molecular biologist/geneticist through and through. -_-

ME TOO

[troisroyaumes]

I'm going to reply to your comment even though you're in the other room! Yay! XD

Don't worry, this is not a usual practice time so it's all right if you were confused. Mother was confused as well and kept calling me in the middle of practice. -_-

[ladydaera.livejournal.com]

I've been following the email threads but since I have no good suggestions I haven't said anything. Tell me how practice goes.

[troisroyaumes]

Yeah, just wanted to know if you saw the emails. Practice went well. Not the usual horde of beginners that we usually see at the beginning but then again this is technically the third practice, so I think the first big winnowing has already occurred. In which case we're doing pretty good (about 10-15 people?). And there was a vet for every beginner, which was nice. Today's practice was the basics so very low-key. Zach and Brian are doing most of the teaching, and they're actually doing it slightly differently from usual (not in a major way, but they're not parroting the Chit-dogma), which is interesting. I think it works just as well. Zach did most of the talking today, and he seemed very confident and prepared (more so than I was last year anyway). We can all be proud. Eva and Phil are much, much better (practiced against Phil on Sunday, and he's gotten excellent at striking; haven't played against Eva but she's lost all traces of awkwardness from last year and looks really natural in her suburi). Brian has gotten positively scary; apparently he practiced all summer in Oregon. Seriously, he had to go easy on me in jigeiko. I swear, he's going to slaughter people at the next tournament. Izzy ought to be proud. ^_^ Zach's foot is still injured...Jenn's boyfriend is starting this year, which should be interesting. Oh, and Clare is coming back to kendo, which is nice. Tom, Roland, Howard, Allen, Jon in addition to Eva all showed up to practice, so our kids are sticking. Yay! ::feels proud::