![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Zombie Limbs, Mindless Tutors
Mar. 11th, 2007 01:11 pmA couple of days ago, I woke up without an arm. So it seemed, anyway. I must've just rolled over, because I couldn't feel my right arm, but I wasn't lying on it either. And when I turned my head to look for it, it wasn't there. Reaching out with my other hand, I found it draped off behind my head somewhere, dead from fingertips to shoulder. The feeling of dead limbs waking up is excruciating, but I have never felt more grateful for it; the moment of panic I felt before I found my missing arm clung to me all that day, and I found myself randomly flexing my hand at times, just to make sure it was still there.
That evening, watching 'Romeo & Juliet', I empathised very much with Juliet's fear at the Friar's suggested solution to her problem:
When presently through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse
Shall keep his native progress, but surcease:
No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest;
...the very idea makes me shudder in remembered horror.
And on the topic of things that horrify me: I think I need to switch Modern Philosophy tutorials. In the first one, my tutor didn't really seem to know what he was talking about, but I figured I should give him a chance. Now, four tutorials in and too late to claim an unforseen schedule conflict, it's become all too clear that he had no fucking clue what he's talking about. In the Locke tutorial, he kept saying that one of the objections was actually part of Locke's Essay, despite repeated corrections from his students. He also told me that "All bachelors are unmarried" is not an analytic truth (one that is true because of the definitions of the words), because "it would have to be 'all bachelors are unmarried males'" *headdesk* Besides that being a mischaracterisation of analytic truth, 'unmarried male' is not even a complete definition of 'bachelor'! It would have to be 'unmarried man'--a subtlety he had previously refused to acknowledge.
But this last tutorial, on Hume, was the clincher. First he said that Hume's 'impressions' referred only to sensory experience, not emotions ("passions"). Then he raised the question of whether or not gravity was scientifically accepted when Hume was writing. When we pointed out that Newton had published on the subject about a century previously, he said that well, maybe Hume hadn't read Newton. WHAT? And this is the man who's supposed to grade my essay on Hume?
But... I'm not really sure how to go about switching. I could give Rhona some thin scheduling excuse, like the fact that my bike is broken so I keep being late to tutorials (which is true). I'm not sure if she's allowed to switch me just for my own preference, even if it is on the basis of serious doubts about my tutor's ability to teach (or even understand) the subject.
ETA: Why does Pandora have so many versions of 'Five Hundred Miles' (Hedy West, not the Proclaimers), and why (so far) aren't any of them any good? It's a pretty simple song. It amazes me that so many people have bothered to record it, but it absolutely astounds me that so many people have managed to fuck it up. I like that song. (But it's provoked me onto a distance calculator. Lord, I'm 3703 miles away from home.)
That evening, watching 'Romeo & Juliet', I empathised very much with Juliet's fear at the Friar's suggested solution to her problem:
When presently through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse
Shall keep his native progress, but surcease:
No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest;
...the very idea makes me shudder in remembered horror.
And on the topic of things that horrify me: I think I need to switch Modern Philosophy tutorials. In the first one, my tutor didn't really seem to know what he was talking about, but I figured I should give him a chance. Now, four tutorials in and too late to claim an unforseen schedule conflict, it's become all too clear that he had no fucking clue what he's talking about. In the Locke tutorial, he kept saying that one of the objections was actually part of Locke's Essay, despite repeated corrections from his students. He also told me that "All bachelors are unmarried" is not an analytic truth (one that is true because of the definitions of the words), because "it would have to be 'all bachelors are unmarried males'" *headdesk* Besides that being a mischaracterisation of analytic truth, 'unmarried male' is not even a complete definition of 'bachelor'! It would have to be 'unmarried man'--a subtlety he had previously refused to acknowledge.
But this last tutorial, on Hume, was the clincher. First he said that Hume's 'impressions' referred only to sensory experience, not emotions ("passions"). Then he raised the question of whether or not gravity was scientifically accepted when Hume was writing. When we pointed out that Newton had published on the subject about a century previously, he said that well, maybe Hume hadn't read Newton. WHAT? And this is the man who's supposed to grade my essay on Hume?
But... I'm not really sure how to go about switching. I could give Rhona some thin scheduling excuse, like the fact that my bike is broken so I keep being late to tutorials (which is true). I'm not sure if she's allowed to switch me just for my own preference, even if it is on the basis of serious doubts about my tutor's ability to teach (or even understand) the subject.
ETA: Why does Pandora have so many versions of 'Five Hundred Miles' (Hedy West, not the Proclaimers), and why (so far) aren't any of them any good? It's a pretty simple song. It amazes me that so many people have bothered to record it, but it absolutely astounds me that so many people have managed to fuck it up. I like that song. (But it's provoked me onto a distance calculator. Lord, I'm 3703 miles away from home.)
