You're Deep into the Humanities when:

10. You hear the name Levi-Strauss and you think of anthropology before jeans.

9. You've made up your own hyphenated word that makes less sense than the two words separately (ie. socio-structural).

8. You're sad and confused when people don't understand when you say "J-Stor it" instead of "google it."

7. You make a top 10 list of humanities jokes.

6. You a priori assume ipso facto that people will understand the latin phrases you use ad nauseum.

5. You wear an "Aristotle is my homeboy" T-Shirt

4. You do 15 minutes of research to write a one paragraph email to your mom.

3. Your photocopying habits border on breaking intellectual copyright law.

2. You have ever attended or thought of attending a presentation entitled something like "self and the creation of the selfish: narrative construction in East Andean villages" (or close enough that you get the joke)

1. You say that you disagree with someones argument even though they are just explaining to you how to cook spaghetti sauce.

Dr. Jones, the ultimate example for every humanities major.

A Few Things I'm Glad I Learnt While at Briercrest

As promised, I've finally gotten around to writing a few things that I'm glad Briercrest taught me. It seems as though I only post here when I have a paper I could be writing but after about a 12 hour day in the library I really feel the need to write stuff that doesn't make sense (or makes too much sense for nearly nobody to handle). <-- Point Made That Newer is not Always Better

We read a lot of classic works at Briercrest and I feel like I have a much better foundation in Greek and Medieval thought than many of my peers not specializing in this area. I've heard people talk about reverse chronological snobbery (sounds like an A+ phrase to throw into an otherwise mediocre paper--maybe I'll include it in mine...) but this seems to be far from the case at U of M. If it's more recent it's almost certain to be better, but I think that not having this as an automatic assumption helps me to think critically about recent findings.

How to Work

This may be surprising but Briercrest is at least as hard at as University. Things are a bit harder for me now because I'm in 4 Joel-F. heavy reading classes but I have no problem finding what seems as much if not more free time than I had while at B-crest.

Knowing Literature and Philosophy

Though I might not have as much of a history background as some of the honours students I definitely have a broader background to draw from in philosophy, literature, and theology. It might be surprising, but knowing a bit of theology has really helped me understand some of the concepts in my history classes.

Recognizing that there is something more important than the political:

It seems to me that the political situation represents the be-all-end-all of history. Though I think it would be good for political thought to become a bit more mainstream at Briercrest, (a poli-sci professor in the future would be cool) its nice to rest assured that even if the political situation is far from ideal there is hope beyond the present. Teleological or eschatological are pejorative terms it seems and it seems really hopeless for the third world. I guess the flip-side of this though is that it prevents the political passivity that can result from viewing the future as more important than the present.

That Profs are people:

I probably would have learnt this wherever I went but I think the opportunity of working as an FA and taking NUMEROUS classes with the same professors really allows some great relationships to develop. Even year-long classes with the same prof is hardly enough time to develop a relationship so I really enjoyed this about B-crest.

P.S. Here's a link Dr. C. shared with me about Derrida. It's a good read if you are interested.

That academics can have meaning:

Now that I'm outside of B-crest it seems hard to see my work as having value. There is no Kingdom work to be done only paper after paper. It's nice to share a collective goal with other students even if you don't know who they are.

I wish I would have been a Physics major:

Math hardly seems like work compared to writing a 12 page paper. Just kidding though, being able to talk about anything is probably more important than knowing the Avagadro constant. I will retract this statement once I'm done my paper.

There is a lot more that I'm thankful about as well: Friends, Faith, and Philosophy, but the internet is no place to talk about that unless you are getting paid or have a readership beyond your mom.

Hi mom.

If I were to do it over again I think I'd take physics--but maybe I'd still show up at Briercrest first...

Tenure

It's been a while but I have been busy studying for and writing the LSAT. It felt slightly above average on 3 of the sections and below average on another so hopefully things even out to result in the kind of mark I was getting on practice exams before the real deal.

My prof said something funny the other day about being able to call the President of the University a "pipsqueek" or something because they had tenure--it made me think of this comic.

(Click to Read)

In the near future I'll post the things I was glad I learnt at Briercrest but I'm currently in the middle of doing footnotes for a paper and needed momentarily release from the shackles of tediousness.

A Few Things I Wish I'd Learnt at Briercrest

Today I wrote my first short reading response for a U of M class. I wrote about articles on Edward Said's Orientalism, and while writing I started thinking about a few things that I wish I'd learnt about while at Briercrest.

Here they are in order of importance:

Anything about Derrida:

I've heard the name Derrida mentioned about as much as I've heard people talk about United Church theology--it happens but when it does things move on quickly as though you were talking about how much chest hair you've recently been growing and then a girl walks by...

Anything about Foucault:

Except for maybe the odd time from JSP, A.B. (either), or JF, I'm not sure if I've ever heard anything about Foucault. He creeps around in that sketchy area between philosophy and history that you don't take the bus to late at night. I think since I've been at the UofM I've heard him mentioned at least 5 or 6 times though -- after this maybe I'll wikipedia him and get the relevant details.

More about Marx:

I feel like I have a decent grasp of Marx from a few Bcrest courses and my time in Russia but there are a few Marxistish profs at the UofM who really focus on it. It would bring a tear of joy to J. Wollf's face. I feel like I know Marx but it would have been nice to read another author or two that interprets history Marxistly.

Suffixes that can be added to Marx:

Self-explanatory.

More discussion of Community beyond B-crests boundaries:

Community was a huge focus while I studied at B-crest, but there isn't too much talk about what community should look like once you are outside of the actual community of Caronport. I suppose it's kind of assumed that community will already be established when you move back to where you are from, but there is a hugely different dynamic when moving from a Christian community of learning to a secular one. This was addressed a bit when people talked about problems Briercrest grads face after graduation, but outside of the few alumni events and publications it seems that proving and understanding the community at Briercrest was more important than transitioning communities afterwards.

Who wrote Little Red:

Graduates should be given one of those folders with CLASSIFIED written on it with a piece of paper inside listing the Little Red writers. I've always wanted to get an envelope with CLASSIFIED on it.

When thinking about these I also thought of a list of a few things I'm glad I learnt while at Briercrest--maybe that will be the next entry.

First Day of Classes

Here is a picture describing my first day of classes:

I had a dream about class the night before and the professor just introduced himself and then said, "Let's free-associate." Hands shot up across the classroom as students yelled useless words like statue of liberty and economic prosperity.

The real classes were much better than that though. They were long and I made a joke about brass-knuckles in one of them, but I think all things considered, it went decently.

New Blog Begins Today

After talking about blogging for about 15 seconds with a few friends I decided to begin a new blog and update it every so often with information in order to produce a cool looking Google analytics graph.

Here is a cartoon that describes my current stage of life:

The future looks bright.