CTYI Day 11

We missed our bus yesterday so ended up a minute or two late for class, not really a big deal. 

We started with Hegel, who's apparently quite complicated but I found him alright most of the time. I also had the privilege of seeing the word metaphysico-religious and relearned what teleological means. Jason helpfully provided the Greek root, which I took as him being pretentious until I remembered that he is literally Greek. Oops. 

We then moved onto Schopenhauer, Philosophy's great pessimist. He was incredibly bitter and hilariously misogynistic, I laughed so hard when the instructor read parts of his essay on women. It's just so absurdly derogatory and sexist. Also, Schopenhauer gives huge clues that he wasn't loved by his mother as a child (it's actually right there in the text). 

The five volunteers who went off with B Psych came back and they asked for two more to do another experiment, so Jason and I went together and missed the remainder of the morning class. Doing the experiment was quite unpleasant, we had to do all these horrible concentration tasks. Missing break made me super hungry. 

We moved onto Nietzsche before lunch, which was fun because Nietzsche disses everyone and his books have chapters titled 'Why I Am So Clever' 'Why I Am Destiny' 'Why I Write Such Good Books'. 

We sat in the canteen at lunch. It was briefly sunny for the first time this session, but that's all I remember. 

In afternoon class we finished Nietzsche and then went onto Eastern (mainly Chinese) Philosophy. We covered Confucius, Buddhism and Shinto among others. 

I spent the start of Activities running around looking for Jason to make him enter the Talent Show. Eventually, I found that he had gone up to get his violin and, you know, was up for entering. Which was good. He's doing an upbeat piece though, unfortunately - I prefer his sad ones. He's practising the fingering on my ukulele right now beside me. By the way, Jason and I both qualified for the talent show!  

Here are Maeve and Niamh being cuties. 

I went to Tolkien Appreciation even though I've only read one LOTR book and didn't enjoy it, because my friends were there. I got two blog posts written and was surrounded by friends so it was grand. Also, Ben did a great Gollum impression, I was really impressed. 

A drink (Katie's?) spilled in Aaron's bag so the speakers got soaked and Cian and I cleaned them. I can't really remember what happened at dinner, but I think it was fun. Here's a photo with John Cooney, who's an incredible musician. He also looks Italian and about 20, in my opinion. 

Study and social time were great. I felt sick during study and had nothing to do so I just lay on the ground. The wonderful Eve took care of me and read me Nietzsche (that's a sign of love, right?). Eventually Jason came over and wrote his essay beside me. 

Someone threw a towel on me. It was in study that someone pointed out that the laces of my left shoe were gone. 

And then social time. I felt sick still for part of it (until I bought food) so I sat down and people took photos of me. 

Look how cute we are. 

My salute caught on!

I stole a kettle from some res friends at one point. 

Philip and Conal in domestic bliss:

Maeve and Teddy: the confrontation

Cathal found my shoelace in the grass in the Quad (how did someone steal my shoelace? How?) so here's a victory photo. 

Towards the end of social time, Jason gave me a private violin concert (she says dramatically) in the corridor. It was a very memorable experience. Sad violin music makes me happy, which is especially weird since I don't listen to recorded classical music. I love seeing talent. My ukulele got passed around a lot as usual and Oscar was great. To the approx twelve people who asked where my labcoat was: in the wash. Have you any idea how quickly it gets dirty? 

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