Too busy, too busy.

Am I the only one that feels the void each time I go on a blogging hiatus? This entire week has been rather busy for me, I'm sure you will understand, and so I've put the blog on the back burner for now. I may keep it in irregular update mode now. The constantly blogging style doesn't seem to suit me anymore, perhaps it's because I've increased the font size and now my long posts just seem epically long, or perhaps I've experienced a change as a person. Who knows, that's unexplored territory right now.

At the same time, I want my blog to hold enough of a record of my days, or more importantly, my cognitions about my days, that in future I can look back and have some semblance of an idea of wtf happened. It's interesting, when I look back at the 3-4 month hiatus I took from the whole Incident, I don't remember those details as clearly. Perhaps the act of blogging and forcibly engaging with my thoughts and my day I am thinking about it more. In the same way that reading a textbook is about as useful as licking a fridge for sustenance. One has to, or at least I do, actively participate and interact with the material to learn it. It's how I study for all my exams.

Which is the perfect segue into Why My Week Was So Busy.

Had two major exams this week, one on Wednesday and one to Thursday. I had a few nights to study for the first one and I only studied Wednesday night for the Thursday one, after watching MasterChef for 90 minutes, leaving me with only a coupla hours. My mother would probably lament reading this, but I can confidently say I completely aced my second exam, despite the relative lack-of-study. As for my other exam, I didn't ace it, but I did well enough, I think. Could I have studied more for it? No. The exam was are more thorough and searching that it should have been, so theoretically most people should've suffered through it as well, in which case my mark, comparatively ought to go up.

(I've noticed that I have a tendency to either have exams that I just do great at, or I have exams that are far too hard than they should've been. In either case, the amount of study I do is justified. Perhaps if you're not me you might think there was a relationship. Since I'm not not me and am rather astutely me, I maintain that is a pleasant coincidence)

Beyond that I also had to collect data for the research project I'm doing. We, as a group, basically decided to rent out a room in the library, and then go around the place approaching people and asking for their assistance. I have never been rejected so hardcore in my life. I mean it's occurred to me what little public speaking I do these days, and the little theatre I do and therefore a lack of improvisation, but honestly, whatever confidence I had retained was shattered in the face of nihilistic rejection by just about everyone. In two hours, me and my partner managed a niggardly 12 people to fill in our survey.

On the upside, it was an interesting insight into how others lie. I mean, we all do it. When people approach us in the street, we all come up with some excuse that kinda is rather lame, despite that small part of us that always congratulates itself thinking it to have been a genius at ad libing that completely original excuse. Having been on the other end of these badgerers, I know how decidedly stupid almost all excuses are.

This next week will probably involve a buttload more data collection. Will update you with details of how I go with that.

Sunday, i.e., ANZAC day, was spent mostly with Chris, who came up to watch "Kick-Ass" the movie with me. I am probably going to do a more indepth review in future, but if not, here it is: It is just pure, raw, unadulterated awesome. "Kick-Ass" is ... kick-ass. And I don't just mean it being hilarious in all the right ways, but it also had the right heart and ethos and spirit and everything. It was unashamedly awesome. There are really good, y'know, stupidly hilarious awesome movies, "The Hangover" comes to mind. But for films like that I feel no urge for ownership, by which I mean I don't feel the need to say "I wish I had written that" or "I will write something like that someday". All my favourite things in life MUST have this quality. And "Kick-Ass" has oodles of it. It is only my list of favourite films of all time, along with "Up", and ... I'm not sure what other films go there, I've never given it much thought, but those two sit there comfortable.

Chris and I chessed for a bit. And quite frankly, I really need to pick up my game. I can't remember the last time I beat Chris. Perhaps is the same condition that afflicts me in making me crappy at mahjong. My analytic, strategic skills have dissipated into the cosmic breeze. We Pokemon carded, and for the most part that was fun. But Chris just has too good of a deck right now that none of mine stand a chance. It's time for me to build a new one. I suspect a haymaker type deck will be the one to take him down.

I FINALLY got my copy of John Green's "An Abundance of Katherines" and his and David Levinthal's "Will Grayson, Will Grayson". I've read the latter. It is a really, really good book. Once of the few that has ever made me tear up at the end. Not blubbering crying or anything like that. Just a tear. The ending worked, that's all I have to say about it. More indepth review later.

But I will say that that book held a lot of significance for me. Purely because the structure of the book is very similar to Kolby and my Spiral project. John and David wrote it by alternating chapters and perspectives of their characters. They didn't really discuss the plot before hand, though I suspect there was some light discussion, unlike the total wall of silence erected between Kolby and myself. I couldn't help but draw comparisons.

For the most part, I think our half of a novel is probably long in terms of word length than their entire book. But this is to be expected, as stylistically Kolby and I are going for a detailed account. If anything, we write almost like a comic book in writing form, where we move through pictures. Or at  least a TV series written in word.

The other major difference is that there's is young adult fiction ... had to get more specific than that, whilst ours is ... the best word to describe it would be mystery. So the feel is very different. But if we manage to give our characters the same pathos and telos and catharsis and just general emotional arc I will be very happy. LOST has probably had one of the biggest influences on us, and TPTB have always said that the characters come before the mythology, and ours, I hope, falls into that.

I have also done some writing. There's a short story competition here at ANU. I've decided to enter this year, specifically with a few months to go to give me some time. Two nights ago I wrote the first segment of my short story. I'm going with the idea I came up with the night I decided to enter this competition, but expanded it. The next morning I thought up a rough story arc for my characters. It's going to run along the lines of a post-modern/philosophical/absurdist fiction. I think it treads the fine line between the good and bad kinds of pretentiousness. Once I finish I'll have my test readers provide me with feedback. There are a lot of ideas going into this one, and intentionally going to be open to interpretation. This'll become clear once you read it, for once the competition is over it shall go up on here. Or my personal website, haven't decided yet.

T-shirt business. I'm probably not going to go with my friend. The entire company he bought his stuff from, I've come to realise does not suit my needs. Not only is a 4 jig screen printer not enough, but his only allows one shirt board. I need 4 at least. I'm looking at an option to get 6 of each, costing me $1000. On this I will need a heater ~$600, and with any luck my friend will still sell me the carbon printer, for the several hundred $'s. This will hopefully save me about $2000 which I can use to actually purchase the blank shirts and ink and maybe pay rent for a mini-stall or whatever. Need to think it through and talking it through with my peeps.

And this has grown to be far long than I had anticipated. With that, adieu.

Clarification...

*epic boggle* @ how it's been 4 days since I last wrote something here. Definitely doesn't feel it.

I should clarify, if not for you then for my mother who saw fit to call me and chastise me about my previous entry, I wasn't complaining about the brain melt. It was a good thing. It was an interesting experience, and one that I don't very often get. I've said it before and I'm going to say it again now, if I finish an assignment a week before it's due it will NOT be better than if I do it the day before. There are several reasons for this.

1. By waiting until "the last minute" (even though it really isn't, since I allow myself enough time to actually do it and finish on time, based on MY judgement on how long it will take me), I give the assignment more thought than if I had done it a week before and lost a week's thinking. I don't come "fresh" to assignments. I get them months ago and I spend that entire time thinking about what I can do and how I can do it best. So when I start an assignment the day before or a couple of day before, I will given it the most amount of thought possible.

2. I've written about it before, but I do not capriciously write. I have a fair idea what I want to say when I start a sentence, and how it fits in with the rest of the essay (using essays as an example; the same logic applies for other kinds of assignments). For the most part, my thoughts just come streaming out, like they do here in my blog. Therefore any editing I do make is always for length issues, in which case I cut out entire sentences and paragraphs and then link it all together nicely. I don't need to go back and rewrite sentences for clarity (obviously sometimes I do, but by and large I do not).

3. Yes, I do make silly mistakes. That is I sometimes making a spelling/grammatical error. And I get most, if not all, of them on my read-throughs. You might suggest that there will be a whole bunch of mistakes that I will miss and therefore I will lose marks for it. I say that the marks I lose will be a miniscule amount, so much so that it's negligible. AND at the same time, in going through and making changes, I introduce the risk of over-editing and making it worse than it was before. I'd venture to say that, for me and my work at least, there's a 50-50 change of either being the case, and quite frankly, I'm happier wagering on my errors being few and inconsequential.

4. I manage my time. I always allow myself enough time to start and finish an assignment. If I can't finish it in my slot then I have backup times to play with. I know precisely how much time it will take me because I've thought it through and organised my brain to produce it.

The reason my last post was short and perhaps may have given off the impression that I was suffering was because I was tired and my brain was thinking about the assignment, as I said. Forgive me if I didn't go on to explain precisely why it was a good thing :P

Best. Courses. Ever.

I said in a previous post that I was really looking forward to uni this year. This was mostly on account of one particular course, which is an advanced research based course, with highly exclusive numbers (ie, only accepts 5 people). As I come to the end of my first week of uni - that's right, 2 days a week, I have now gone to the introductory lectures for each course.

Not only was this special course incredibly exciting and potentially a game-changer for me and my understanding of what a normal uni course is, but one of my other courses really surprised me. I've lamented in the past that I'd yet to come across the stereotypical eccentric professor, the one who is supremely amiable and understanding without the condescension, the one who has the perfect ethos of student-lecturer relationship and a strong paradigm for teaching.

This guy isn't exactly it, but he's certainly going to be the closest I get to that idealised professor. This other social psychology course just excites me. I was enthralled just by the way the course was structured and how assessments were made. I was ecstatic about the way he delivered his speech. I was enamored by the course material he presented, and I suspect some of that will stay with me for a very long time to come. If anything, it represents a lot of my first year at uni, where I remember so much from my linguistics courses, just because of how interesting and foreign it was to me.

I have high hopes for this course. As well as the special course.

The other two...? Not so good :P

I noted earlier today that the two good courses were the ones without textbooks and the ones that had them weren't as good. I maintain that that is just pure coincidence ;) Textbooks will cost me an arm and a leg this semester ... not looking forward to it.

No, I'm not dead

Forgive my bloggy silence of late. But I can promise that will all change. Just managed to finish my last major piece of assessment before my examinations. Pretty much smooth riding frm here on in. It really is quite stupid how they place two major assessments on two days right after one another... especially for people who like to work through these things last minutes, a group of people in which I proudly allign myself. And yes, I know you're reading this Mum, so maybe one day I'll write about why I think working at the last minute is better for my work than otherwise.

But as such, I need sleep.

Yes, I Can

Yesterday I gave my presentation in social psych. My group and I covered the topic of Leadership ... Specially we broke down the seminar into two sections. The theoretical landscape and then practical, real world interpretations of the theories and some interesting leadership-type phenomena. My section, the last section, was on leaders and followers. Followers are seemingly quite ignored in psychological literature in terms of forming leadership theories, when one would imagine they were integral to a leader's skill and effectiveness and even as a status as a leader, rather than some orthogonal, subsequent afterthought.

Anyway, my point isn't so much the content of the speech (in and of itself quite kickass), but wish to focus rather on the deliverance. My slides were possibly a bit more verbose than I would've liked... but they were as much a cue for me as they were the audience. So basically I would go through each point on the slide, elaborating and enhancing with whatever I remember and linking it back to the thesis.

If you recall last year, around this time, I have a speech in Aesthetics. 20 minutes of awkward ums and ahs and basically I ballsed it. Slowly and surely, I've been forcing myself into ad-libbing my speeches to try and gain back that quality of which I was most proud and studential. A year of this has paid off, because I was quite on fire yesterday.

Ums and ahs were still there, but not awkward. Just in general. I felt like my presentation style was quite amicable, well-paced and methodical. I've discovered I take particular joy in displaying graphs and then explaining in an articulate and comprehensive manner what the results of the graph are, interpreting them in line with some hypothesis. I've noticed no one else actually present this way... not even lecturers. And I find it to be the most effective way to explain both phenomena and as well theoretical models that are derived from it.

I did note I spent a lot of my time walking back and forth. But I think that was more a function of being seeing as animated and energetic, rather than so much distracting.

Now to talk about my jokes... I was presenting to ostensibly 15 people. Well 19 if you include my frickin' group. And as we hadn't rehearsed at all and thus were virgins to my jokes. I had a whole string of them planned. My first one, as described afterwards as "remarkably intelligent and witty," was basically I was talking about leaders... and change. And I asked "Can we think of any real world leaders who are very interested in change?"

I hit the next slide button.

Obama.

And a podium saying CHANGE.

On the top it says "Yes, we can".

It's more about the timing that makes it funny, I guess my delivery via blog = can use some work... Anyway, I got a few awkward chuckles and a big smirk on my tutors face, which I guess is good enough. That was supposed to be a nice warm-up joke.. and I dunno why in my mind, when I was planning this, I had envisioned rollicking laughter, knee-slapping, floor rolling mirth. Instead I got awkward chuckles, the bane of my existence.

I tried to push on with the next 2-3 jokes but when their reception was equally inimical I just quit with the humour.

I'm fairly certain we as a group did exceptionally well. Given it's only worth 10% but it's probably worth doing well in. I mean compared to the other groups... The first week's basically went over all the theories we already knew and explain the classic experiments by way of horrible youtube cartoons. The group that went after us yesterday pretty much had so much content.. it would've been like 2-3 separate lectures. No clear through line either, and they just barreled through it.

But I shan't say more, in case they come read this blog. :X

(I am acutely aware how unlikely an event that would be. But I'm feeling particularly self-conscious given my earlier grievance, a story which I shall tell you lovelies tomorrow. For now, I sleep, perhance to dream.)

The Biggest Turnoff

Got back from my philosophy tute this afternoon and made a certain epiphany. I have a turnoff. Not necessarily in a sexually limp-making sense, but certain to do with arousal and interest and stimulation.

If I'm in a conversation and the topic somehow turns into something about ethics and morals ... When we get into the whole debate on objective/subjective/relative moralities ... about Hitler ... about psychopaths and sociopaths ... about cultural differences ... about morality ... whether murder is justified ... whether stealing a loaf of bread is justified ...

If any of those banal, mundane issues come up, I switch off. I just clam up and basically lose focus, don't pay attention, and funnily, I discovered, absolutely refuse to talk. I'm not sure if this was because I was too busy mentally stabbing everyone in the eye with my toes, but I said nothing my entire tute. Normally I have several things today, and in fact, I had plans for today as well.

We were discussing Dancer in the Dark in conunction with Levinas and Derrida. I mean seriously, a whole chunk of my own philosophy is not dissimilar to Levinas' idea of the other being unknowably foreign and infinit to us. He even links it quite explicitly back to Kantian aesthetics (one of the other pillars of AbMo'ian philosophy!!). It's important to note here that these two did not influence me to develop my thoughts, rather I had them developed and thought out, but these guys helped articulate it properly, is all.

So Levinas' infinite and Kant's beauty. Plenty of Shanan-talking material right there. However the discussion waivered into moral pablum and I switched off.

When the conversation veered off course, and even specifically came to my topic, I still refused to talk. Well not refused in the sense that they were asking me and I sat there like a 'tard with my lips shut. Rather there were a lot of awkward pauses today which I could've jumped in for but didn't, and just sat there doodling the entire tute.

It was mostly me thinking "fuck 'em, if they're going to drag me into the murky depths of moralistic bullshit then they can rot there forever." That's right. I have a high horse.

And if you ever want me to shut up, just start talking about morals ;)

Why am I such a little attention whore?

The major assignment that has consumed me the past few days has been my presentation in my Film as Philosophy course. Though it's only worth 10%, I always find presentations to a tute/lab to be quite paramount. What better opportunity to totally solidify myself as the strappin' young lad that I am? Being perspicacious at an individual basis in having quiet chats with people only gets one so far.

In a class, where you see everyone almost every day, the situation is quite different. But weekly meetings with the lab/tute quite more oblique performance.

Thus I have been focussing all my mental energies at that 10% for a course that is ultimately an elective and not going to matter at all in my degree. That presentation was earlier today. How did I go?

I'm going to say well. I wasn't the most articulate I've ever been, but then again, I wasn't the least articulate I've ever been. Unlike my last presentation, which was almost all totally extemporaneous, I had a very strict format, a logical progression to move through.

Last week both presenters pretty much read from a sheet, which reminded me how much I hate seeing those. Which is why I opted not to, despite my failure last time. There were a lot of um's and ah's, but whenever I felt a lost I just jumped to my next point on my list. I actually skipped a few of the more mundane points ... I have a tendency to do that. I just cut and snip withersoever and I end up with a jumbled mess.

While last time in Aesthetics I was aiming to impress by being impressively articulate, this time I was aiming for presenting a totally original idea. Which in many ways it was, it was a refutation of the theories/readings that the lecturer put forth for Silence of the Lambs. The other guy's presentation rather closely stuck with the material we all knew, which made for a nice dileneation.

Not sure if everyone got my point. Guess I should've made clearer that Demme's use of the gaze is ironic, almost in a sense as an reductio ad absurdum. He uses it so obviously and so self-consciously to argue that it isn't a good mechanism for our interactions with other subjects, knowledge and that analysing films via the gaze isn't tenable.

Who ever knew the gaze could be such an important philosophical concept? I mean my tutor mentioned it during the Phenomenology lectures last year, but never went into detail. Sartre is quite explicit about what the look means. And without an understanding of this look, particularly in light of Sartre's digestive philosophy and Heidegger's arguments, gives so much more philosophical credence to the film Silence of the Lambs.

Like one could very easily analyse the use of the 'gaze' in terms of a filmic or even english type essay. That the gaze confronts the audience, breaks the fourth wall, makes us the subject, helps us identify with Clarice or whatever. The analysing films from a philosophical perspective is quite refreshing indeed.

And I say this particularly because I don't think many of the people in my tute are very good at analysing philosophically.

NOTE: my browser crashed last night and I totally forgot to finish and post this, so I have no idea where I was going to end this... Such a fleeting thought D:

omg, just stop talking

I hate my life. Just got back from a lab in my Criminology course.

Our last lecture was on terrorism and one of the major (if not banal) topics we covered was definitions. What constitutes terrorism and what doesn't. Understandably, our lab was on the same topic. The point of the lab and lecture wasn't so much that some acts didn't count as terrorism, there is pretty much universal agreement (in the Western world) about what constitutes terrorism and what does not.

What was meant to come as an epiphany (to which I sadly admit most of the people in the room) was that perhaps there existed acts out there that counted as terrorism but we did not perceive it to be so. Say, some acts committed by the American Government. Exactly what part of "Shock and Awe" doesn't conform with terrorism? :P

Unfortunately, there were individuals in my lab who not only hadn't thought about this before, but failed to understand the idea at all. In fact, they spent a good half hour discussing why state sanctioned terrorism wasn't terrorism at all, citing reasons of fanaticism, religion, poverty etc. All of which were considered in the lecture and refuted with evidence.

Perhaps it was just me, but at the beginning we did an 'experiment' which very obviously measured what we perceive to be terrorism (ie acts committed by Al Quaeda) that are also intentional VS acts 'for the greater good' or were mistakes (oe acts committed by Australian troops). Then we read one of Chomsky's articles on the exact topic on why a lot of the American acts are terrorism.

Take a fucking hint.

God, you should be able to infer right then and there that the entire topic of the lab will be on the role of perception and ingroup/outgroup bias in determining what constitutes terrorism.

I could literally see my tutor withhold demeaning comments ... I just sat there rubbing my forehead sighing rather ostentatiously, though I think those fuckwits didn't notice.

How have these people make it to university is beyond me. What isn't beyond me, however, is whether or not they make it out of university *evil smirk*

Neuro, Developmental, Stats

And the final reason why I haven't posted in the past few days has been EXAMS!! But now they're over and my next ones will be next semesters.

Every exam period I think to myself that I'll work harder during the term, that I will focus more and consolidate my notes and pretty much reach a point where I wouldn't need to study and could just walk in having all this knowledge. But at the end of the day I only ever do that with the courses I love and adore, mostly computing or mathematics based courses. The more fruity-stuff will probably always require a bit of study.

Then there's my most hated of third areas of study, neither mathematical nor fruity, just technical. That was my Neuroscience course. As I said, trying to learn 850 pages of a dense, jargon heavy textbook, something the lecturer couldn't even teach over a semester, is quite the impossible task.

Turns out, I really didn't need to study so intensively. The areas in which I had focused my learning over the semester anyway (language, vision, sound, cellular) were the only assessed areas. You'd think for the most technical subject there'd be far more technical questions, instead we had to write 5 'essays' and 11 short answer questions. None of my answers breached a page, a lot of people had 3-4 page essays, but I'm guessing their diagrams were large. I was quite concise and to the point, something that, if you're a reader of my blog, you'll know I'm usually not.

When that 3-hour mark came up, there was a literal collective sigh and there was literally some weight that was lifted and everyone could feel it. Neuroscience was over - the only neuroscience we have to study for a degree in psychology. The rest of it will be less intense <3

That was Monday morning. Tuesday afternoon brought about my Developmental psych exam. I always find the best assessment of study is really your own intuition. You know when you have the exam, and sooner or later, you will get into the mood to study. Sometimes that's two days before, sometimes that's 9pm the night before. I've never walked into an exam feeling I haven't covered enough.

This exam was something that I had consciously thought "I'm going to need to run home after Neuro and just study my ass off". Instead I went home, at lunch, lay down for a bit, watched a coupla hours of Prison Break season 2. I got to work sometime in the early evening and finished by 11pm. Watched a few more eps then went to bed. Woke up and consolidated what I had learnt and walked into the exam.

50 Multiple choice questions, 1 mark each, plus 3 short essay questions, altogether 50%. It's odd weighting, so I made sure to particularly give comprehensive and in-depth responses. Good thing with essays is that you can always spin shit, and written in the right way with some form of justification, and you'll be fine. Felt really good walking into that. Only thing I hate in these exams with my lecturer is that the multiple choice is 5 choices, and 3 of the choices will always be plausible. My problem is I end up with time leftover, sitting there going through them, and I end up trying to rationalise each of the three, until my judgement of which one is true is clouded to a point where I feel like I ought to change my answer.

Which, when all is status quo, is the wrong thing to do. My first, gut instinct is more often than not correct.

Between Tuesday and Friday morning I had to study for my stats exam. Turns out, and again my intuition was right, my study literally took 1 hour. All that was was going through a practice paper, and reviewing the answers, picking up lil' tricks with formulae. But as I mentioned, since I adored the subject and its inherent mathematics, I was pretty set.

And I was right (H). The exam was a total breeze. In terms of methodology I was totally right on ... but I'm glad I stayed the whole three hours and went over it.. there were a lot of number-crunching problems I made, but for the most part really fine. There was about 15% altogether than I nailed, that would have been the "advanced/complicated" stuff. Walking out of that exam most people were querying each other about "how did I figure out the y-intercept!?".

I came home and had an epic facepalm moment when I realised my method for getting the y-intercept could've been a lot neater using the point gradient formula, something I spent almost every mathematics tutoring session teaching. Then when I wrote it out, turns out it's exactly what I did anyway. I unconsciously derived the forumla, yay!

Celebrated my academic victory not over alcohol as the streams of students walking from the unis right now outside my window are going to do, but over a nice lunch of beef vindaloo and Prison Break season 3. S'how I roll.

brb

brb study.

Yeah, 450th post isn't exciting whatsover. Deal with it.

I learnt something over the past few days. Do not endeavour to learn an 800 page book. IT WILL NOT WORK. I allocated perfectly enough time to get through it ... I just didn't account for the fact that I would burn out 50% of the way through. As my friend Kerstin put it "now every time I open the book it's like walking into brick wall" and it's true.

However, I think somewhere in the past hour and a half I repicked-up my mojo, unfortunately, I must get to sleep and get at least 7 hours sleep <3

'night.

Psychologists aren't that stuffy afterall

This post is as much for me as it is for you. Dunno how many of you will have access... But the knowledge of its very existence will do wonders to your soul.

Today I discovered a psychological journal with a very interesting focus. It's called the:

"International Journal of Humor Research"

A whole plublication dedicated to all things humourous and the psychological and physiological basis behind it. Wonderful! You can add that to my list of potential specialisations in psychology. It joins the ranks of personality, psycho-linguistics, bilingualism/biculturalism, philosophy of psychology and morality.

Haven't had much time to seriously go through the available articles. But rest assured I'll use my university credentials to take a sneak peek around and find any interesting tidbits in the coming holidays.

Electives Electives Electives

My Developmental psych lab only went for the 1 of the 3 allocated hours today <3 This afforded me several extra hours free time. I used this time to bum about the course guide of the ANU, looking at possible electives I could do. As it stands right now, there will be two mandatory courses I will have to do next semester. This gives me two electives to play with, one of which I will most likely (99%) go for another psych course on offer.

Then this gives me one last free elective, for any course I am elligible for across the uni. First year I took electives in Linguistics, Philosophy and Programming. I'm probably not going to go into Programming, as all those courses depend on me having done it first semester 2nd year, which I didn't. Right now I'm enrolled in another Philosophy (Wittgenstein) - but it's with the same guy I've been taking for Epistemology. And he's ... er... Well, it's good and interesting (sort of) but for the most part, the content isn't conceptually challenging or attention sustaining.

One of the other options was a thing of studying Film as Philosophy, which from the looks of things, involves analysing movies as philosophical texts ... Which would be very interesting. But I can also see it being ridiculously dry and contrived. Perhaps if I could find someone else I knew who was doing it ...

Then I turned to Drama. Mother had suggested I at least look into it, as it's one of my passions, and I should make use of my electives. I looked. And then I vomitted. Fucking disgusting. The only practical acting courses on offer at the ANU are nothing but a thin veil for getting people to be "patients" for medical students. They make it out like it'd be a really hard course - but we all know it's not. There's THREE COURSES OF IT. WHERE THE HELL IS THE ACTUAL ACTING??? Pretending to have symptoms is not acting - you learn nothing to take away and apply elsewhere.

The other option available is a Directing one, which seems mildly interesting, but I can also see it being forced. There's a directing option for English, but that has limited class availability, with preferences for people with majors in the area. ie, not capricious wanks like myself.

Then I stumbled upon the Creative Writing class. People always say that creating writing classes are the death of creativity, and yet I do not get that. Well, there are three of them available, and they seemingly have a progressive order... I'm thinking of seeing if I can jump straight into the "advanced" one. Look at the write-up.

"In this unit, students will write a series of short stories, experimenting with a variety of forms, styles and genres. Through the workshop process, story ideas will be subject to critique, and students will be encouraged to develop their early drafts. Lectures will address theoretical and practical concerns involved in writing fiction, and will examine contemporary short fiction and novels as examples. Close reading of published fiction is intended to inform students' own work. The course will include some consideration of the practical processes involved in publishing stories and longer works."

For some odd reason this doesn't come across as contrived to me at all, unlike what would be popular opinion about these things. I see these, particularly the workshops, as engaging, fun and interesting periods of intense creativity. And perhaps I may be dreaming, fabricating fun times when none are to be found.

Way I see it is that if you made it through the first course without dying or feeling like it drained all that creativity, then the only people left are the really interesting people. What I'm hoping it's not, and I feel that it's not, is a series of lectures on different styles and what metaphors are etc. I hope it's just encouraging you to read different texts, think about the style, the values espouse by the genre, and to replicate it, while placing a nice Shananian spin on things.

I'm hoping that the course convenor is a potentially very engaging (Jeanne or Dee or Mazur <3) type of crazy, out-there teacher. Someone to seriously enjoys reading creative words and can produce it themselves. Someone who cares about her students. I'm hoping that the classes are filled with jovial, like-minded individuals with whom I can communicate and articulate my insane ideas.

I'm also hoping that the people in the classes can become invaluable contacts, people who already are or might be big names. Maybe even, if I'm lucky, to find that perfect collaborator, someone with whom my style (or my comedy! :D) fits well. Sort of like Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, Hamish and Andy, Lano and Woodley, etc. All those creative duos over the years... Maybe I can find of them in this class?

"Workshop" process. That sounds like indepth, highly interactive, personal group work. I would love to do that with intelligent people.

Right now it does seem like I'm overestimating how good it will be. But I think I'll fire off an e-mail to this lady tomorrow or Friday or the weekend, seeing if I can get in. I think she'll want to read some of my writing ... so I'm left at a bit of dilemma at what to send her ... My Ext 2 piece? Maybe some Spiral (obviously with Colby's permission, since I'm a good co-author :)).

Evaluative forms

At the end of each semester, all ANU students must endure a grueling process in which every lecture and lab/tute they attend will have these Evaluation Forms. You give feedback on the lecture materials, the lecturer and the course in general.

Typically, it taxes me in every possible medium to fill these in, though I endeavour to leave insightful and useful comments. Not for this Neuroscience, though. I'm looking forward to the moment I get my hands on those forms. There are so many things wrong with this course.

I'm the sort of person who knows the difference between when I just don't get something and when something is unneccessarily difficult. It's not just a matter of instrumental value, I know I will use 5% of the knowledge acquired in this course throughought my life, that's not the point though. There's just too much to learn and all crammed into this one course.

Let's take this week. I have a 5% quiz. According to the syllabus, the readings are ... 7 chapters. Not just light frothy chapters either, densely packed, heavily jargoned readings. Fuck this. I'm hedging my bets and focussing on two chapters only.

Theoretically there's only 15% of this quiz business left. Overall not a significant amount. I'm worried and studying for what is ostensibly very minor. It's like Cap As at Grammar all over again - everyone freaking out for what would end up being 1.75% :P People pulled all nighters in the boarding house. Seriously, there's something wrong when people worry about not having done enough or knowing enough for a number of marks that I can count on one hand.

A Day of Meetings

Isn't it funny how you spend days, even weeks thinking about some one event, how important and significant it is, and then when the time comes to overcome it, the other party forgets? :P I was supposed to have a midsemester exam for developmental psych last week, but due to me being in Sydney that got postponed to today. In Shananian style, I started my study yesterday.

I decided to try an obtuse, hollistic approach to my note-taking. This time, instead of doing what I usually do (summarising each chapter in the textbook into a nicely formatted word document with a table of contents and everything!) I went for the mindmap style summary. Basic topic in the centre, branching out to the sub-sections of each topic, and then the differing parts of that sub-section. I had a whole schematic system going (red arrows meaning sequential and blue arrows elaboration), which I was quite pleased with. Turns out it works well for some topic, not all. Theoretical ones, such as Cognitive theories, lend itself to thus, sub-sections being the theorists and branching off that the main parts of their theory and any models they may've used.

The first one was a disaster. I soon got the hang of it by the time I reached my 6th one. What's useful of these is that it forces me to diagramate the whole theoretical concept into a hollistic, structured order, such that everything is interlinked and woven together in a way that any point on the tree can lead me to anywhere else. The facts and nutes and bolts of the matter was the stuff I read and retained, while the diagram stayed within my kinaesthetic memory.

Armed with killer notes, I knocked on my lecturer's door, dead on time. She turns and looks at me, digs out her diary and says "You're Shanan Kan," to which I dumbly replied "indeed." Then she looks at me with a "what do you want" face, and I say "I'm here to do the make up exam."

"Did we agree to do it today?"
*facepalm*

Flustered, she digs around for the exam, prints off the sheet for me to answer on and tries to schedule a room for me to do the exam. In the end, I did half an hour in her office (more than enough time for me to finish) and the next hour and a half in a seminar room.

120 minutes. 60 multiple choice questions. Nailed it.

There were a few problematic questions that had ANSWER: C printed underneath it. Lucky for me, that was one I didn't know, but would've logically concluded. It was about stressed mothers and what chemical that would produce. Intuitively it seems adrenaleine would be the answer, which is why I trusted it.

Too bad for me the only person I know who did the exam, Connor, didn't remember anything. I was told I'd do another similar exam (to ensure I didn't cheat), but I'm fairly certain I got the exact same exam in her flusteration. I could've cheated, but I didn't :@ (Not that I'd want to, of course ;)).

Post-exam, I had tutoring tonight. Two people wanted help. And that was like 5 minutes work. The rest of the time I spent jsut generally hovering and watching people do work :\ But it was good to catch up with people.

Most importantly, I had my meeting with Jeanne today regarding our TV series. Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a meeting as much as it was a disquisition about Trio. I didn't even let one how much I had planned character-wise and their arcs, just the basic plot. I've yet to serve a final ending, but I know how it will end in terms of character development, I know where they are in their lives at the end, just now how they get there.

She also told me about her idea about a movie. Both our ideas, oddly enough, centre around boarding schools. Our mutual Grammar association must've titllated the Muse's fancy. Both of them involve power-play, which is interesting, dunno what that says about either us or our understanding of the other.

Either way, the conclusion of the brief meeting would be that I'd block out the first episode for her perusal, from which we've start writing. And for her to do the same with hers. I'm planning on doing a basic character profile as well as a thematic summary of what I see the show being as well, that's all outside the first episode.

What excites me most is that she wants 1 A4 page for the episode. That's my maximum. This excites me because I can write a page like that *awkwardly clicks fingers though no one is around just to give this post its due verisimilitude*. Also makes it a lot easier for me to write a while season. Or series at least, spreading it out over 24 A4 pages. If I really work at it, I don't see it being that hard. T'would be like a small novel, the whole story condensed to a coupla pages.

When will I do this? I really don't know. Once I get all my assessments done this week. I have an essay due next Friday and a presentation two weeks after, and an essay due last day of term. Maybe I can do something this weekend. Seems feasible. :D

The great future beckons with a grim finger.

Worst. Lecture. Ever.

"Note: LL main/ana?
*something that places
*justificant for do heirs and
*transmit knowledge -> main story philosophicate"

Do you have any fucking idea what that may mean? That is what I wrote during Epistemology today. I was in the 2nd row and I kept falling asleep. Was I tired? Was the wheelchair just not interesting today? Perhaps the subject matter was just plain boring. I noticed a lot of people were dozing off as well.

Anyway, the above quote is what I wrote as I was falling in and out of sleep. I would write, fall asleep and wake up at the end of the sentence and look down and think "wtf?!". I was also hallucinating ... I swear I saw a severed head rotating on the whiteboard and that my lecturer at one point picked up the monitor and was shining it at me.

*ponder* @ the meaning of my notes, I'm sure they reveal deep and dark unconscious yearnings, just waiting to come out in some Freudian slip moment.

The Good Son. The Good Grandson. The Good Nephew.

Spent lunch today with my mother, Grandmother and auntie. I really ought to see my relatives more often, considering I live in Canberra and so many of my relatives live here. Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if my parents lived in Canberra. We'd be seeing relatives every other day :P Which there'd be nothing wrong with, except sooner or later I know it'd become an obligation for me to go see someone within a certain amount or else it will amount to being rude.

Then I pretty much spent the entire day trying to make sure everyone got to where they needed to be. My auntie back to work, my mother, grandmother and I to the doctors (all three of us had appointments at the same time together ... The family that heals together...). After that I had to make sure my grandmother was on the right bus home whilst avoiding the riff-raff teens at the stop and making sure my mother and I made it back to Civic on the same transfer ticket ($$$!!!).

And I did all this despite having an Epistemology essay that was half finished and due tomorrow. You could imagine how glad I was when I found out the buses to Goulburn tomorrow were full. It meant I couldn't dinner with parents tonight, giving me plenty of time to write this essay AND I wouldn't have to frantically pack and give my luggage to my father to take back to Goulburn.

Then of course I found out that I *could* in fact, catch a bus tomorrow. At like 5:30pm in the afternoon. Father was due here at like 7:30pm.. giving me two hours to disassemble the fratpad and unmount my wardrobe. *sigh* Then we dinner and by the time I got back it was 10pm.

Resting for a bit, I started work at 11. I finished at 2am. Annoyoingly, I couldn't wrap my head around precisely how I wanted to go with Nozick's Tracking Theory of knowledge. I know I needed to disprove it to get to my main point.

I clocked in at 1800 words, though I had to remove a whole section that was like 200 words long, leaving me with 1600. I then spent half an hour just cutting and streamlining ... I though I got rid of so many.. turns out I only ridded myself of 4 words :P

Now I'm tired so I shall sleep. Tomorrow morning, I shall do my final edit, try to cut more words. Eat breakfast. Print it, then head to Stats and my Stats tute. Return Connor's textbook, hand in the essay. Then LOST LOST LOST LOST

OMFG LOST TOMORROW AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

(You need to have seen the preview for tomorrow's episode to know *why* I'm fucking cunting excited!!)

WEE! :D

A blog. A simple blog.

Haven't done a streaming consciousness type blog in awhile now. I seem to have focussed to much on the "article" type posts.

The past week has been my "week without internet" due to my Bigpond ADSL being capped. 25gb of up and download is really not enough to suit my needs. Fact is, Australia has the infrastructure to have much higher bandwidth limits, maybe not as high as America, but it's still possible. If the Government, run by the esteemed Mr Rudd, is seriously wanting to get broadband out to the country, their first step is to make good broadband available.

I'll never understand the corporate mindset. There are some things that just trump a net profit. It'd be like some corporation limiting our human faculties, something to which we are entitled, in order to make a profit. Furthermore, why are they so sure they won't make money if they lower the prices of these shitty plans?! If more people pick up broadband, then that will make up for it. It's not like 90% of my monthly fees are going away as expenditure. I'd wager something like 5% is more apt.

Of course I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about, but I'm purely making conjecture. Comit told me the other day that plans in the US don't even have contracts. Like I'm stuck with Bigpond for another year - can't even begin to browse around for cheaper plans, lest I renumerate them $300.

But yeah. Slow internet. Thus over the weekend I was forced to study in order to procrastinate and widdle away my time. This was a good thing, I guess. Neuroscience is a bitch though - there's so much to learn there. It's very factually based and not a lot of hollistic stuff. The only hollistic type thing I could find was the naming conventions. Almost all the names of the specific processes, reflexes, neurons/ganglions/nuclei are all systematically named. So even if in a test I have no idea what it is, the name will give me a fair clue.

But in terms of the actual content. *sigh*. The only saving grace is that when you're reading it, the examinable points make themselves quite clear. You'll know what will and will not be assessed.

More than can be said about Developmental Psych. Most of the textbook is just one long essay. Given the nature of the subject, a lot of it is wiffy-waffy, but the modality makes it very difficult to elucidate examinable content. Hidden within blocks of text are little gems of important points that one just glosses over.

Soemthing I've always wondered. Why is it that when one is reading something and then begins to think of another event, one's eyes still move as if you've read stuff? Is something actually be processed at an unconscious, automatic level? I kept finding myself at the bottom of pages, having not actually consciously cognisised anything on those pages, yet with some inkling of a memory of the words I read, without any specific meaning.

I know reading is automatic. You get presented with words, you will read it, nothing you can do about it. I also know cognition is the attachment of meaning to it. Is this phenomena actually your eyes making their saccadic movements becuase you are reading it automatically?? I'll have to see if I can find some research on this, if not perhaps I could ask someone. (Alternatively, I could use it as a basis for some research of my own, once my degree reaches that point).

Anyway. My quiz for Neuro was today and I was pretty happy with it. I knew pretty much all of it. Developmental should be around the same, I'm pretty satisfied with the study I did today.

My internet should come back within the next 20 minutes. Tomorrow I'll very likely verse Chris in some more Pokemon goodness. April 1st. I'm expecting a lot of lame April Fool's Jokes. I'm annoyed that I'm not in any social institution (say borading house or college) that enables me to fall prey to and play practical jokes. Thinking back to 2007, I can't remember anything specific that may have occured.

I'm going to go do my washing ritual before bed and then head to bed. Lunch with Chris and Charlotte tomorrow. Then lab. Then Pokemon. These Wednesdays and Tuesdays are the death of me, seriously. I stress out far too much with these assessments :P

When It Sucks to be Shanan Kan

Imagine that you take a class based around studying the biological processes of the brain. Furthermore, imagine that the course is fucking intense.

Fear not! There is a holy book to guide your way, an avatar for your weary person wading through the swamp of neurology.

Unfortunately, everyone in your class has also heard of this sacred text, this textbook. So they all flood to acquire themselves a copy. In your complacency, you don't bother to buy a copy. The reverent repository only has a finite limit to the textbooks.

By the time you get there, they run out.

Your panic and fears are immediately alleviated when your Godsend of a lecturer announces the first quiz shall not be based on the textbook, but only lecture materials!

(This turns out to not quite be true and you fuck up your first quiz. But not by much, but irrelevant to this story.)

This gives you another two weeks to purchase the books. And thusly, you await the new arrival of textbooks. You foolishly assume the Co-op bookshop will order enough copies to sustain the class, to not leave individuals in the lurch.

You wrongfully attributed to faceless corporate bookshop an ounce of intelligence. Second time around they ran out as well. You make an enquiry as to when more copies come in.

Ap-fucking-parently they shan't be making any more bulk orders. You'll have to specially order the book, but that will take two weeks to get there, even though you need it for the quiz in 4 days time.

This was me on Friday. I have a quiz on Tuesday. On 7 chapters from the textbook.

Hm. Damn. This is going to be tricky.

Luckily, I decide to contact Connor to see if I can borrow his textbook. Unfortunately, he won't be free over the weekend, meaning I could only get it on Monday morning, which is when he dutifully handed it to me. I had a little over 24 hours to study 7 chapters ... which ostensibly was 250 pages.

And this is what sucks about being Shanan Kan at times.

Despite the fact that the quiz is worth 5% and theoretically doesn't *have* to count. Despite you only having a finite time limit to study it in. Despite it being 250 packed pages. Despite 4 of those 7 chapters being stuff that was NEVER mentioned in the lectures and is therefore completely new and untethered. Despite it being 30 questions long (6 questions for 1%), meaning incorrect answers won't affect you much.

Despite all this, I was adamant to read all 250 pages. To study each one and to make notes. An impossible task.

I had tutoring last night, so I that took 4 hours off my study time. I finished dinner at about 12am when I got back and was about 30 pages in. I had like 6 pages of comprehensive notes typed up.

Then I made a bad mistake.

I went to study in my bed.

The result of this, as you could imagine, is that I feel asleep. I woke up at 4am, half my body just hanging off my bed, arm in an uncomfortable position and worst of all, the neuroscience textbook was poking me in the back with its corner. One of my ribs now has a bruise where it was assaulting me. Evening ablutions hastelly completed, I went to bed. I woke up at like 10am this morning.

I had about 200 pages left.

Longer story long, I made it to about chapter 6, whereupon I just stopped taking notes and started just reading and skimming for keywords and concepts.

What sucks is that I then spent the half hour before the quiz just panicking and wringing my hands, despite all my qualificaitons above. Knowing I irrationally set myself up for an impossible task and then fretting when I failed to reach my unattainable standard. T'is the way of the AbMo.

Since God is out to get me, and he now clearly has my lecturer working as his minion, the bulk of the quiz was on the sections I skimmed. I'm positive for like a 70% result, which is still, in hindsight, pretty darn impressive. Not every guy can pump through 250 pages and retain all that information in a systematic, hollistic mental framework.

Which is when it is awesome to be Shanan Kan.

Best. Tutorial. Ever.

I know I spent a lot of time harping on and bitching about the quality of philosophy tutorials. It sounds frightfully arrogant of me, but all of first year, I found most people to be real deadbeats. People who think it'd be cool to just do a unit of philosophy when they don't have the predisposition for the study nor given much thought to the things they believe.

I predicted that by second year, those dumbasses would fade away. For the most part, I was right. I still see a few familiar faces floating around, apparently a lot of people thought Epistemology was the best course for them to take on next. And here I thought it to be one of those subjects that would get like 10-15 people, instead we have about 50 people.

My first lecture wasn't the best. The lecturer was lacklustre, seemed confused by the whole process and was just apathetic. I had hoped to get a new lecturer. Seems like God heard me and delivered upon him some immediate medical condition that has incapacitated him for a month. In the mean time, we've got a new, vibrant and interested lecturer.

Oh and here's in a wheelchair. That's probably not the kind of thing one ought to point out in our increasingly politically correct society, but when have I ever been PC? I think'd it be doing him a greater disservice to act as if the wheelchair was there at all, when his paraplegia is very much a part of him. Anyway, what I thought was most interesting was that this guy enjoyed pacing, even though he technically wasn't pacing. His lil' hand would move the level so he'd roll back and forth as he talked and he walked.

To me that suggests that at an unconscious level, he associates the movements of his hand on that lever as movements of the body. Which I just think is awesome. Much like when I found out that babies learning to speak in sign language will also babble, just like they do learning a 'sounded' language, they babble in grammar and in spelling. This often serves as my argument against the morons who believe learning language is all about copying what other people say - when it's both biologically and logically incoherent.

Anyway, we had the first tutorial today. Without the old lecturer, the new administrator had to shift the times, so  that was annoying, that I had to wait an extra hour to get down to the tute. But as I learnt, it was well worth it.

A rivetting, all bouting discussion about precisely *what* Knowledge is and why on earth we value it. In talking about the first point we had some great stuff about the Gettier problem. It also gave me muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch though (I was thinking about it for the next 3-4 hours (all through my tutoring)). I might summarise that here on this blog, if not, I'll be using it as the backbone of an essay for the course.

The plan was for me to treat this blog as a type of synthesis of what I learnt in the course and read in the textbook. But due to massive amounts of apathy, I'ven't the energy to write up a detail blog post when I could just do it in my mind. I am still endeavouring to getting this task underway, I think it'll be worth my while. I remember writing in here all about the essay I was gonna write for first year philosophy on this blog, and it really helped to not only synthesise my thoughts on the matter, but to be able to actually articulate it into a communicable form.

Not much I can say about my day except how much more awesome it became because of that single hour in the tute. A class that were all intelligent adults, each person able to come up with positions and perspectives I had yet to think of, a tutor that knew the subject very, very well (not that my previous tutor ever didn't)... <3

Sunday 22 February 2009

Tomorrow is the first day of uni. I'm happy about that. What irks me is my timetable ... 9am starts on Mondays and Wednesdays? Eugh. At least I had my Tuesdays free. Oh wait, that's right, I can't because I have to schedule a three-fucking-hour lab for my Tuesdays. And I've opted to do this for several reasons, most importantly so Connor and I are in the same labs for two classes. Secondarily, it makes all my other days less cramped.

I've decided to avoid the situation I had first semester last year, which was not to have any classes right after one another, giving me an hour in-between. I've come to learn this was stupid because 1. you get enough time to move in-between classes, 2. I only ever went back to the AbPad to waste time anyway, and 3. doing it like that meant whole days were gone.

The way I've planned it means I average about 3 hours per day, which isn't too bad, especially considering how two of my labs are bi-weekly. This means a 12 hour week followed by an 18 hour week followed by a 12. So it's not too bad. The only bad thing about it really is that I lose days (like I have a class in the morning, then in the afternoon. Meaning I couldn't just take off after classes nor can I sleep in. This annoys me).

I should be getting to bed. 3+ months of sleep at like 2-4am = my body clock is totally fubared. I'll be tossing and turning all night tonight - the fact that it's fucking hot isn't going to fucking help either.

[/generic-moaning-blog] (I had to change <'s to ['s because apparently it upsets blogger)

On an up note, I'm really looking forward to my subjects. They all seem pretty interesting and advanced enough for sufficient stratification (meaning I'll have to find myself at the top), rather than the bland "everyone's a winner!" approach of first year.

I'm hoping for a more competitive year - give me that high school feeling again. That'd be great, I do miss that. I do miss being the best. ;)