General RML Thread [2]

[Bomby von Bombsville]

The Real World: Because college is a magical land of faeries and ice cream volcanoes.

[Rj123541]

The Real World: Because college is a magical land of faeries and ice cream volcanoes.

[Sailor Star Dust]

I just want to graduate as soon as I can and get into the real world.

From personal experience, a lot of the real world is what you make of it, you learn how to handle different situations as you find yourself in them. For me at least, it was initially a shock to the system to realize that "adults" aren't automatically prepared for any and all life situations. Instead, you learn through life as you go.

[Trajan]

The Real World: Because college is a magical land of faeries and ice cream volcanoes.

College is a fairytale land. By definition it is isolated from everday life.

[Bomby von Bombsville]

To expand what SSD said about learning as you go along: I think you'll find that, once you graduate, the stresses of this "real world" you long for are just as big as the stresses of college. College will at least get you prepared for those stresses and responsibilities. It's all a balancing act. I don't know what your major is and what your requirements, but I recommend taking at least a few classes in the humanities/liberal arts areas if your workload allows. The right classes will help you open up your mind to become a well-rounded intellectual. I'm also a big proponent of meditation.

[Rj123541]

I wonder how it will go for me, seeing as how I am going to be in my HS health academy next year I might have some type of advanced health class in university.

[Bagheera]

Three things are ruining it for me:
1) Stress
2) Introversion
3) Roommate

I just want to graduate as soon as I can and get into the real world.

I sympathize on all counts. College is a lot less fun for introverts, and most people don't understand why since we're so damn rare.

To expand what SSD said about learning as you go along: I think you'll find that, once you graduate, the stresses of this "real world" you long for are just as big as the stresses of college.

I haven't found that to be true at all. The big stressor for me was finding a job; once I did that the lack of homework, lack of exams, and freedom to do what I like when I'm done for the day make work life much less stressful than college life ever was. There are downsides of course (personality conflicts, management being generally clueless about day to day necessities, etc) but these are all present in the college environment as well. The only thing I really miss is the dynamic environment, where it's easy to meet new people and try new things. Not having access to that bites. But everything else? No contest.

[Sailor Star Dust]

College is a lot less fun for introverts

That's probably why college (and high school) were just "okay" for me.

[Mr. Tines]

As an introvert myself, high-school was pretty rough, but at university, once I'd discovered the antics of the SF society and then the D&ampD exiles from the wargames soc, my student years were a blast. It helped that the only room sharing I did was voluntarily, with someone I was also sleeping with at the time.

[Trajan]

For those wondering what my major situation is, I'm trying to get into the business school which requires a 3.5 to be competitive but really a 3.7 to be seriously considered. That's a lot more pressure than most other kids are having to deal with.

Maybe it'll be better sophomore year when I don't have to bust my ass worrying about my GPA all the time and a different roommate, but right now I work fourteen hours a day and I'm be woken up every morning at 3:30 by said roommate because he is rowing. Plus, from my perspective at least, when you have a job you're getting paid and you don't have to work off the clock to the extent that you do in college.

Looking back at all the things I wrote, maybe I should have posted this in FML. But RML because for 48 hours at least, I don't have to stay on-campus and can eat some real goddamn food.

[Defectron]

So anyway yeah the other day I got a mysterious box up in chicago, I would tell you guys more, but you know it's mysterious and stuff. Anyway some people at work asked me what I was doing over in chicago and I didn't feel like explaining the mysteriousness of the box tot hem so I just told them I got a haunted box and wouldnt explain anymore to them. Anyway the girls who worked there got all scared when I offered to show them my haunted box. That was funny. Truth is I got the box to put haunted stuff inside of , it's not haunted in and of itself though there is some other mysteriousness about it which I won't explain here.

The next day we got a giant party come in to the restaurant late at night and they were all freaking out thinking it was because I opened the haunted box. But yeah I'm going to be opening up some other mysterious things soon, so maybe I should tell them and see if they freak out some more, could be fun.

[Guyver Spawn]

It looks I haven't been on the forums for a long time now. I don't think I have miss much. Right now, I have been taking manga art lessons for my night time classes.

[CJD]

So anyway yeah the other day I got a mysterious box up in chicago, I would tell you guys more, but you know it's mysterious and stuff. Anyway some people at work asked me what I was doing over in chicago and I didn't feel like explaining the mysteriousness of the box tot hem so I just told them I got a haunted box and wouldnt explain anymore to them. Anyway the girls who worked there got all scared when I offered to show them my haunted box. That was funny. Truth is I got the box to put haunted stuff inside of , it's not haunted in and of itself though there is some other mysteriousness about it which I won't explain here.

The next day we got a giant party come in to the restaurant late at night and they were all freaking out thinking it was because I opened the haunted box. But yeah I'm going to be opening up some other mysterious things soon, so maybe I should tell them and see if they freak out some more, could be fun.

...what?

[Defectron]

...what?

I'm also going to open a dimensional gate in the near future, I'm kind of debating if I should tell them or not. My theory is if I can get them paranoid enough their reality tunnel will cause stuff to happen even if the things i deal with don't cause trouble. I know the stuff in my haunted box didn't do anything, cuz those guys are my homies and homies don't do shit like that to homies. But they don't know that which could be fun. Only worry is this could possibly backfire if they run with their reality tunnels too much. Oh well, we'll just have to wait and see.

Also I'm going to be going to look for phantom wolves and sasquatch this haloween, almost did this last haloween but the forces that be gave everyone involved in the trip a dream warning not to go, so we didn't. but this years different cuz I leveled up and now I am one bad motherfucker!

[Sailor Star Dust]

Entering NaNoWriMo. Going in blind. This should be interesting and give me the serious motivation to actually DO something with writing. Nervous and excited. I don't expect a masterpiece, I tend to give myself low expectations.

[Blue Monday]

Shit cunt manager at work is away for five weeks. FUCK YES - Don't have to see him until after I get back from Japan!

[Dream]

My deppression went away for the moment.

RML.

[Xard]

Well given all this college talk going on right now I might as well finally write the post I've ment to write for a while.


That is to say: I'm really digging my life as philosophy student in here. RML

My new study friends are nice. Turns out philosophy students are pretty chill and likeable bunch with that slight touch of eccentrity in interests brought on by subject choice. Lots of somewhat hipstery dudettes, musicians and green world savers. Also folks capable of having fun discussions.

Given that in finnish universities there are (very strict) entrance exams all who made it in share at least some genuine interest and smarts for philosophizing so I guess it isn't too surprising. We're also very small group, obviously, so the sense of community between philosophy students in general is clearly pretty high in comparison to bigger groups. Nice folks. There's also this one super intelligent but also very autismal animefag 3rd year student I'm sure goes to /a/. I haven't dared to ask him about it yet though given that he apparently has a habit of inviting people over to "masturbate with him", presumably to dick girls or lolis or something.


The courses I'm now attending are all really easy and basic stuff, consisting of general introduction course to philosophy, history of philosophy, social philosophy and logic and argumentation. Only course to offer any new stuff to me is the logic and argumentation course because I've never studied formal logic systematically before. Turns out I really like it too because it's about as purely intellectual, rational and, well, sense making subject there can be. The exercises are great fun and offer some nice challenges now and then. We just finished with proposition logic and last week started predicate logic.

While trying to keep my head cool and as unassuming as possible I must admit that I've been making, uhh, something of a reputation so far as some kind of "super freshman" in lectures and with co-students which of course makes me happy as that means something has stuck to my head after all from all the stuff I've read over time.

In fact you could say that I'd assumed philosophy students in the university were all like Alemann when it comes to knowledge and rigor of thought (though he hasn't really flaunted all that so much here) - turns out most philosophy students are much more usual, smart young people so it's been me who has bit unexpectedly stood out. It's been bit funny meeting some n year students for the first time and have them go "oh, so you're that guy I'd heard about". Flattering. (The most surreal moment was at this one party with one blonde (psychology major, phil. minor) I'd never talked with before going all giddy about how I'm "smartest guy she's ever known" apparently based on my comments and questions on the phil. history lectures. Since my ego is kept well in check by screwing up various things in hysterically incompetent ways and having bouts of massive loseriness I ended up fucking up big time one unrelated thing later that evening which just goes to prove the balance of yin and yang will hold :P)

After the meeting with faculty members they actually praised our group to high heavens as probably the brightest bunch of freshmen they'd seen in ages and given that I made most of the questions asked to them tutors came to thank me later.

I've also got told by some that I'd belong straight to second or third year studies as I am which of course feels good but I'm quite skeptical of that to be honest. Loux's contemporary introduction to metaphysics (book for Metaphysics I looming in spring) covers largerly what I know about contemporary metaphysics as is so assuming I'd be ready for Metaphysics III fresh faced and without any additional own studies is pretty hubristic - and while I might have considerably deeper understanding on philosophy of mind (in fact I noticed I've read most stuff they use on those courses in later years back in high school ) and - to my mind related - areas of will and religion than with modern metaphysics I've barely read any eg. philosophy of language beyond introductionary stuff so


The one thing that really makes me feel both grateful and nervous about this all is that I got invited to this reading/debate circle by the unofficial, cranky asshole "genius" among us some weeks ago. He's 3rd year student with difficult personality but you can tell with just one meeting there's a lot going on behind his forehead and as far as I know he has never got less than perfect score from any exam. The so-called "circle" is one post-graduate, him and his friend who is working on his ph.D right now so getting invited there as freshman is quite intimidating and stressful but also a honor in a sense, I guess.

The first meeting is this wednesday.

But enough about me. If there's someone among us first year students I've been hit by it's this one blonde woman who is like 5 years older than me. She's prime example of education etc. not necessarily having much anything to do with intelligence. She never went to high school and has worked past years as seamstress before getting interested in studying philosophy. To keep it simple: she's very intelligent, much better/more disciplined student than I and on top of that has the looks and the personality. Also takes singing lessons and is interested in visual arts. She by far surpasses pretty much everyone I knew in high school, including those perfect A students.


I'm also very happy with our faculty. Now there's two finnish universities that make the usual "best universities" list, Helsinki and Turku. This is cool in itself but our philosophy faculty (despite its small size) makes it much higher on list of philosophy faculties than the university on university lists, into top 150 if I remember correctly which is very impressive.

It looks like there's especially much specialist talent in early Modern philosophy. Our faculty head and professor of theoretical philosophy (the distinction between "theoretical" and "practical" philosophy is a nordic thing and as far as I know no such distinction exists elsewhere) Olli Koistinen is apparently one of the leading Kant and Spinoza experts in the world, for example. The best lecture so far was pretty mindbending summary of Spinoza's thought given by guy who has written the introduction to Cambridge Companion to Spinoza's Ethics alongside with aforementioned Koistinen. He's also done some pretty terrifying tome named "Spinoza's Geometry of Power".

I had a chat with the guy after the lecture which was really cool. I've finally met philosophy inclined person who is way more talkative than even I which was kinda terrifying It was also pretty difficult to follow where he was going at times given how fast he talked and how deep his knowledge on the guy and stuff discussed in the lecture obviously was but nevertheless these are sugary moments for me.

Too bad all this (not at all unusual) focus on contemporary and early modern philosophy means there's little focus or courses avalaible on classical (ancient and medieval) philosophy which have increasingly drawn my interest within last year or so. As is sadly common among modern philosophers in general here too Aquinas is not too well understood, for example. I've seen two presentations on his famous Five Ways, for example, on introduction to... and history of philosophy courses and turns out I have much better understanding of these arguments than they.

Apparently this is very common outside those who are specialists with Aquinas and/or scholastic thinkers in general. Oh well, can't have everything I guess.


Leaving the humdrum of university behind I've also finally managed to start my get-back-in-shape project after years of mostly sitting in front of computer screen (that's what having borderline disabled legs for years does). My end goal is to get back to level of fitness I had back when I used to play football. My constitution has already risen noticeably from what it was mere month ago :)


I think I also finally have time and motivation to start taking guitar seriously, after dragging my acoustic one around for couple of years without touching it much.


All in all, I for one enjoying my student life at the moment. :)

[Merridian]

^Way to go, man! I'm really happy things have managed to come together for you, and I'm impressed you finally went into philosophy as a field of study. I hope things continue to turn out well in the future, given that philosophy degrees don't tend to have too much opportunity in the work force, but hey, more power to you. :)

[Xard]

^Way to go, man! I'm really happy things have managed to come together for you,

Thanks :)

and I'm impressed you finally went into philosophy as a field of study.

I just wish the final decisive reasons had been better than "I haven't had time to read for any entrance exams shit shit shit" and "oh fuck there must be something I should have pretty easy time getting into despite not having time to r- oh right!"

I'm most happy with the freedom that comes with uni life and own apartment in general. It was pretty hard to get used to being back in home last summer after my Japanese studying gig came to end.

I hope things continue to turn out well in the future, given that philosophy degrees don't tend to have too much opportunity in the work force, but hey, more power to you. :)

I guess I should also mention I made it into Business administration too so thinking commercially about it I made some horrid choice


Seriously though, lol what is job. Ten years from now I'm probably reading poems and strumming guitar in public parks.