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Sep. 21st, 2004 03:00 amEven though posting in LJ may not be the best idea when I seem to be too tired to think coherently (although not necessarily falling-asleep tired enough that I could actually fall asleep right away if I went to bed...), I guess I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway, since there's a few things that have been bothering me lately that I want to rant about.
The central one...I'm really wishing right now that I had decided to live in ML. I notice that when I'm hanging out in ML, almost no matter what, I end up happy. Usually, it's because Jonathan and/or Susan is around to hang out with, but even more, ML just exudes fun and happiness... On the other hand, whenever I'm in my room here, I end up just feeling sort of lethargic, not wanting to do work and without any fun to really have here.
I think one reason is that because of the way this dorm was built, and especally because the doors on all of the rooms automatically close, it just feels too quiet. Even though I actually do know a few people on my hall well enough to have a short conversation with them, there's noone that I would necessarily hang out with for very long. But still...even last year, in Parrish, the loud sounds of rugby players going through the paper thin walls of Parrish at least made it feel sort of alive, even though I really didn't talk to any of them. Of course, another reason why my room this year seems worse than last year might be because this year, I keep this glorified image of ML in my mind where everyone is always happy, and that I would be too, which I didn't have last year. And, maybe it's also that the fact that there are so many people on my hall who I sort of know, but aren't really friends with, makes things worse, not better.
The other thing is that I also haven't felt like doing much work when I'm in my room. ( Why I think this is... )
And the other thing is my course schedule. ( Complaining about animal behavior )
( Other classes, which haven't been as annoying as animal behavior has been at times, but also haven't given me enough structured work to have something interesting to do )
I do still need to figure out exactly what my topic for my history paper will be pretty soon, too... I've found some really fascinating stuff on the history of Swarthmore that I think will be a substantial part of my paper. My original topic was how scientific knowledge has been approached as compared to Biblical knowledge in Jewish cultures, which I think I've narrowed to mostly looking at how early 20th century American Jews (mostly Orthodox Jews) approached teaching scientific knowledge to their children. But I also decided to look up how Swarthmore's fairly strong emphasis on science fit in with Quaker tradition, for comparison. And one thing that I saw was that while Quakers thought science was important because they liked the idea of practical education, science education actually was starting to seem incompatible with Quaker eduation by the late 19th century. That's because modern science required critical thinking, and they really didn't want kids to question Quaker doctrine, and so to make sure of that, they didn't want them to think too much at all. (Well, it's clear that Swarthmore deviated a bit from that ideal... ;) But it is still really interesting, and I need to read more on that to fully understand it.) But anyway, according to one source, Haverford also emphasized science at first. They were founded in 1833, where Swarthmore first held classes in 1869. And when Haverford began to see that science was becoming more critical...they "imperceptibly became more classical in character" (in the words of one of my secondary sources). So, they deemphasized science, but Swarthmore didn't, which is a really interesting distinction.
( More thoughts on the history paper )
So, back to angsty ranting... Between not having all that much work this semester anyway, and trying to avoid going to my room whenever possible anyway, which I've had to do whenever I want to get work done, it looks like some of the advantages of living on campus are sort of reduced. And at the same time, because I'm aware of how much more fun I'd probably have living in ML, the disadvantages of living on campus are looking really big right now. Well, there is always Jon's offer to move to ML second semester. But if![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gerbilicious85 is definitely going to Germany, that'll get rid of a significant amount of the happiness of living in ML. So then it probably wouldn't be worth the schlep of moving. But if I do stay here...hopefully I'll at least get into that seminar that I want to take (Hormones and Behavior), which probably isn't all that likely, since then that will give me something really interesting to be working on. Where this semester, the interesting stuff is too unstructured, and the tedious stuff is very structured. Which leads to not being very happy. Now see, this is what happens when I decide that I won't need to use an add/drop form... (Well OK, I still think this was probably the best schedule I was going to have this semester, so I can't blame it on that. But I do think last semester was a whole lot more stimulating, even though I was really busy, after I had to agonize over what classes to take. Of course, I was also really sleep-deprived, and the semester definitely had its bad moments. But...I think if anything, being very sleep-deprived (ie. 4.5-5.5 hours) is better for me than getting like 6-6.5 hours of sleep, which is what I got last night at least. Sometimes I've actually been getting 8 hours on school nights, which I never, ever got last year (unless I accidentally fell asleep really early or something), but...I haven't even managed it as much as I should have with this schedule. Well, I could have gotten 8 hours of sleep tonight. But that's looking a bit less likely than it did before I decided to write this post. But ah well...
( Rant on my mother not being a good Swattie, basically... )
So, I guess that's enough for now, since this is pretty long even with cuts, and I should really go to sleep...
Edit: Just one more rant to add here... I think some of why I'm all of a sudden feeling this more than before is that I'm fully aware that I only have one more year here, and I really want to make the most of it. And I could be enjoying the company of Jonathan, Susan, and other people in ML, which I won't really be able to do like that after this year, and I would probably still be finishing the work that needs to be done with this fairly easy schedule. But instead, I've been here in the new dorm, sitting at my computer doing nothing, way too often...
The central one...I'm really wishing right now that I had decided to live in ML. I notice that when I'm hanging out in ML, almost no matter what, I end up happy. Usually, it's because Jonathan and/or Susan is around to hang out with, but even more, ML just exudes fun and happiness... On the other hand, whenever I'm in my room here, I end up just feeling sort of lethargic, not wanting to do work and without any fun to really have here.
I think one reason is that because of the way this dorm was built, and especally because the doors on all of the rooms automatically close, it just feels too quiet. Even though I actually do know a few people on my hall well enough to have a short conversation with them, there's noone that I would necessarily hang out with for very long. But still...even last year, in Parrish, the loud sounds of rugby players going through the paper thin walls of Parrish at least made it feel sort of alive, even though I really didn't talk to any of them. Of course, another reason why my room this year seems worse than last year might be because this year, I keep this glorified image of ML in my mind where everyone is always happy, and that I would be too, which I didn't have last year. And, maybe it's also that the fact that there are so many people on my hall who I sort of know, but aren't really friends with, makes things worse, not better.
The other thing is that I also haven't felt like doing much work when I'm in my room. ( Why I think this is... )
And the other thing is my course schedule. ( Complaining about animal behavior )
( Other classes, which haven't been as annoying as animal behavior has been at times, but also haven't given me enough structured work to have something interesting to do )
I do still need to figure out exactly what my topic for my history paper will be pretty soon, too... I've found some really fascinating stuff on the history of Swarthmore that I think will be a substantial part of my paper. My original topic was how scientific knowledge has been approached as compared to Biblical knowledge in Jewish cultures, which I think I've narrowed to mostly looking at how early 20th century American Jews (mostly Orthodox Jews) approached teaching scientific knowledge to their children. But I also decided to look up how Swarthmore's fairly strong emphasis on science fit in with Quaker tradition, for comparison. And one thing that I saw was that while Quakers thought science was important because they liked the idea of practical education, science education actually was starting to seem incompatible with Quaker eduation by the late 19th century. That's because modern science required critical thinking, and they really didn't want kids to question Quaker doctrine, and so to make sure of that, they didn't want them to think too much at all. (Well, it's clear that Swarthmore deviated a bit from that ideal... ;) But it is still really interesting, and I need to read more on that to fully understand it.) But anyway, according to one source, Haverford also emphasized science at first. They were founded in 1833, where Swarthmore first held classes in 1869. And when Haverford began to see that science was becoming more critical...they "imperceptibly became more classical in character" (in the words of one of my secondary sources). So, they deemphasized science, but Swarthmore didn't, which is a really interesting distinction.
( More thoughts on the history paper )
So, back to angsty ranting... Between not having all that much work this semester anyway, and trying to avoid going to my room whenever possible anyway, which I've had to do whenever I want to get work done, it looks like some of the advantages of living on campus are sort of reduced. And at the same time, because I'm aware of how much more fun I'd probably have living in ML, the disadvantages of living on campus are looking really big right now. Well, there is always Jon's offer to move to ML second semester. But if
gerbilicious85 is definitely going to Germany, that'll get rid of a significant amount of the happiness of living in ML. So then it probably wouldn't be worth the schlep of moving. But if I do stay here...hopefully I'll at least get into that seminar that I want to take (Hormones and Behavior), which probably isn't all that likely, since then that will give me something really interesting to be working on. Where this semester, the interesting stuff is too unstructured, and the tedious stuff is very structured. Which leads to not being very happy. Now see, this is what happens when I decide that I won't need to use an add/drop form... (Well OK, I still think this was probably the best schedule I was going to have this semester, so I can't blame it on that. But I do think last semester was a whole lot more stimulating, even though I was really busy, after I had to agonize over what classes to take. Of course, I was also really sleep-deprived, and the semester definitely had its bad moments. But...I think if anything, being very sleep-deprived (ie. 4.5-5.5 hours) is better for me than getting like 6-6.5 hours of sleep, which is what I got last night at least. Sometimes I've actually been getting 8 hours on school nights, which I never, ever got last year (unless I accidentally fell asleep really early or something), but...I haven't even managed it as much as I should have with this schedule. Well, I could have gotten 8 hours of sleep tonight. But that's looking a bit less likely than it did before I decided to write this post. But ah well...( Rant on my mother not being a good Swattie, basically... )
So, I guess that's enough for now, since this is pretty long even with cuts, and I should really go to sleep...
Edit: Just one more rant to add here... I think some of why I'm all of a sudden feeling this more than before is that I'm fully aware that I only have one more year here, and I really want to make the most of it. And I could be enjoying the company of Jonathan, Susan, and other people in ML, which I won't really be able to do like that after this year, and I would probably still be finishing the work that needs to be done with this fairly easy schedule. But instead, I've been here in the new dorm, sitting at my computer doing nothing, way too often...
