I just suffered through an absurdly difficult logic midterm (I'm hoping the grader, AV, remembers the cookie I gave him before the exam). Hopefully I'll fare better on my classical Japanese midterm tomorrow, and then I'm looking forward to Michael DellRocca's colloquium tomorrow ("Spinoza and the Metaphysics of Skepticism"!) and movie night at AV ( Read more... )

Today I've 'accomplished':
-a paper on Plato that seems to mostly skirt the topic and is, in retrospect, far less convincing than I thought it to be
-logic homework that is at best closer to correct than incorrect
-a dismal grade on my Japanese quiz
and yet I'm exhausted. Even the afternoon nap I succumbed to didn't do much to dispel my weariness, ( Read more... )

I don't suck at logic anymore!

My roomate needs to start removing rotten food from the fridge before it starts to ooze out of the open plastic bag it's being contained in and on to my hands when I try to move it aside. This is the third time I've found something so putrified that it's recognizable in less than a week. I shouldn't be using examples of disgustingness from my own ( Read more... )

I'm tired and overwhelmed, so I bought myself a present for getting through the day with nothing more than a pseudo panic attack: a Milky Way bar and a discounted book on the problem of evil. I never had a Milky Way before, but it was tasty albeit too sweet. The excessive sweetness was almost pleasant: the kind of thing that would make me nostalgic ( Read more... )

CO and KG, upstairs neighbors and fellow philosophy grad students are just plain awesome. Today they invited me for tea, and we munched pumpkin bread and cashews and indulged in idle gossip with a little bit of philosophy on the side. And reading Kant just injects an element of serenity into my intellectual and emotional life.

1. Emotionally, pathologically (to play on both senses) I am still and perhaps perpetually sixteen years old. I've got the self-restaint, so far at least, to avoid door slamming and notebook doodling yet I seethe over heaps of hurt both real and imagined and yearn and lust in ways that are both embarassingly naive and even more embarassingly ( Read more... )

Classes start tomorrow. Last time I was this nervous, I had to ask Terrence Irwin for an extension less than 24 hours before the paper was due. I'm excited as well, but right now my heart rate is higher than my spirits...

Yesterday was a nearly perfect day- every item I bought at the grocery store was on sale, they were running a special $5-off with a discount card promotion and I got a 10% discount just for being a Columbia student, I solved the NY Times crossward puzzle with unusual ease, I got a long awaited e-mail, and my dinner was unusually attractive ( ( Read more... )

Pending any revisions from the DGS my schedule will look like this:
Later Heidegger M 11-12:50
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason M 2:10-4
Introduction to Symbolic Logic MW 6:10-7:25
Reason and Value W 11-12:50
Plato W 4:10-6:00

I don't start for another week; I don't know what to do in the interim...