an open letter to a very dead philosopher.

Dear Aristotle,

Why do you keep insisting that things are "evident," "clear," and "obvious"? No, it is not clear to me that "the law is impartiality," nor is it exactly evident how "the virtue of the good man and the good citizen is the same or different"! It may be obvious to you, Aristotle, that happiness is the same for an individual and a city, but some of us are still a wee bit unsure on that particular point.

Seriously, Aristotle, if anything was at all obvious, clear, or evident about your work, do you really think I would be reading it 2,300 years later? Do YOU? Yeah, I thought not. Now quit trying to make me feel dumb.

My deepest, most sincere philia,

Julia

the good, the bad.

The good news: Lockers at the library here are opened with keys, instead of combinations. My brain is very thankful that it has one less thing to remember.

The bad news: Lockers here are the size of a shoe box. A shoe box that only fits flats. So I guess this means I can't store my gym clothes in my library locker anymore.

More good news: I am finally reading the Nicomachean Ethics, Calvin, and Luther. Turns out that grad school might actually make me smarter! Useful!

More bad news: The City of God has come up approximately seven zillion times in the last three days. My adamant refusal to read Augustine in college is really coming back to bite me in the ass. If only the damn book wasn't so long.

mind vomit.

Grad school makes brain mush. But here are some thoughts:

1. 97.6% of the undergraduate student body here wears flip-flops and JCrew, simultaneously. And roughly 88% of the female undergraduate population carries a Longchamp bag in brown or black. (I also have a feeling that irony is not widely understood here.) My question is: Who are these pod-people, and what should I do with them?

2. I am not smarter than I was as a senior in college, and yet as a grad student I think people expect me to be smarter than seniors in college. This is problematic.

3. I need to find a 4th class that won't make my brain explode. PhySci is, sadly, no longer an option.

4. Junior mints: brain food or poison?

reprogression.

Grad school started yesterday, and at this very moment, I am in the library. It's a pretty hideous building, designed in the brutalist style and made of concrete. I am in the basement computer lab, searching for articles on JSTOR, and in a minute I will go upstairs to the student coffee shop, where I will drink watery but caffeinated sludge and read Tocqueville.

Is it 2007? Because, as far as I can tell, I'm back in college.

Grad school: tentative progress or huge regression? The jury is still out.