| I do not think like other people, apparently |
 I do not think like other people, apparently
|
Jul. 29th, 2009 @ 01:18 pm 
|
|---|
The other day, after class, a couple of my fellow Field Linguistics students and I were discussing the recommended readings for the course - apparently there's some issue with the availability of one of them in the library. The reaction of one bemused me.
Me: I haven't really looked in the library, I ordered them online.
Her: You bought them? They're so expensive!
Me: They're actually about half the price if you order them from America.
Her: They're still expensive.
Me: They look really interesting, though, so I wanted my own copies anyway.
Her: But all that money for books you'll use for, what, four months?
Me: But this way I'll have plenty of time to read them.
Her, looking vaguely horrified: What... in your own time?
Me: ... Yes.
Am I the only person who majors in subjects I find interesting? Doing units at university gives a structured approach to learning, and give you guidance in what to look for and in the relevant skills to the discipline, and all that, but they can't teach you EVERYTHING. It's not possible. What university really does is give you the necessary framework for working in a field - you have to go further on your own. If I want to be able to consider myself a trained linguist, I can't just do the necessary minimum to pass the unit...
Today's photo, chosen for relevance though it was taken yesterday, is the decorative statue outside Winthrop Hall, at UWA, which was the subject of the photo from which I took this icon. I took that photo about eight years ago - then, there were bushes around the statue, so it was half-hidden and seeing it, finding it, had felt like a discovery.
|
![[User Picture Icon]](https://v2.dreamwidth.org/86758/119696) |
| From: | ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) nicki |
|---|
| Date: |
July 29th, 2009 08:42 am (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
Read? Books?! Clearly the act of a crazed madwoman.
(I'm rereading the Iliad, shhhh, don't tell anyone.)
I kept the books for almost all my English classes.
Diotima is lovely.
I generally sold the books for classes in subject areas I wasn't majoring in back to the school bookstore, but I still have almost an entire bookshelf of history books, plus the two volumes of the Norton Anthology of English literature. And all the Society of American Archivist-produced manuals I bought when I was studying for an MLS (though the most valuable tool for keeping current there is a subscription to The Archivist and the ARMA electronic records listserv).
I always keep course books I think are good, especially once I started graduate school -- you'd have to pry John Dower's War Without Mercy and Eric Foner's overview of post-American Civil War Reconstruction off my bookshelf with a crowbar (after all, I may go back and finish that History masters someday, and if I do, I'll need the two shelves worth of books on WWII and the American South).
|
|
| Top of Page |
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios |
