ENG 105 Notes, 11/10/08

...post-class rambles. This is basically to make everything solidify in my head... :D sorry to be confusing!

I like Dr. Rivers. Granted, his class is my literature fix, an excuse to sit and analyze words for three hours, so I could hardly be too disgruntled. :) But he is also very honest, which, as I am discovering, is a rare quality...perhaps he must be, after forty years of telling countless half-asleep college freshman to seriously look at their assumptions, but even so - it makes everything that much more palatable. He does admit when he doesn't understand something, or when there is a flaw in his theory, and never quite falls into political correctness - one of his continual subjects is negative vs. positive freedom, the freedom to dissent vs. the freedom to assent. He doesn't ever come down on one side or the other - one cannot - but he does point out that common assumptions will ignore the latter. I am less prone to that fault, thanks to my Bible-thumping background, ;) and he has graciously admitted as much and taken me - and how that Absolute Truth I took pains to present from the beginning affects my vision - quite seriously. For that, Dr. Rivers earns a few cookie points.

And, just this evening, he's finally come out and stated something, in quotable, question-able black and white, that I may ask for clarification on. Of course, the entire semester, he has spoken of the notion of us coming to the University to be educated, and so - since we're paying for this, it's something we freely chose - we ought to swallow it all. Allow ourselves to be subjected to the scrutiny that analyzing difficult texts is. Katharine nods agreeably, but her eyes glitter - University is well and good, but where do they come from? Which higher being decided what we little students needed to know? And Dr. Rivers has finally said something clear enough that I may ask about it (we are allowed to submit questions relevant to the lectures with other assignments). He said that the goal of the University education, with relevance to this particular class, is that we be made selves who "are no longer bored by pieces you used to be bored by, and no longer interested in pieces you used to be interested in." All very well and good, if one is speaking of reading an entire Melville novella - and being interested in it. But who determines what we should decide to like? - there's still some absolute about it somewhere...

...am I entirely evil? :D I think so, sometimes...this is likely why He is sending me to the Academy. I don't need to sit around and play head-games, intellectual fencing, for four years...much too easy, much too entirely in Katharine's comfort zone. :) I do not need college to make me critical and analytical; that comes much too naturally. Instead, I need to learn love and compassion for the people...