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Still not dead. Although home alone on Friday night with only dial-up, with a cable so short I have to sit in the hall with my laptop running out of battery, using webmessenger because the XP on this computer hasn't got a service pack yet (I think that's the problem, anyway) home alone, without any prospects, and OF COURSE nothing good on television...

... let's just say maybe the netherworld isn't so far off right now.

Other than that, though, life is good, albiet rushed. Am pretty much totally moved into the best little flat this side of the Pacific, inhabitants: yours truly,

sixth_light,

ladylarla and the very timely Hayley, who's at teacher's college and is into Invader Zim and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. She adds spice to our harry-potter-young-wizards-smallville-jossverses-and-dcu panfandom blend, the one that leads to hourlong conversations on why trying to write Nita is like trying to write Harry and why trying to write Lex isn't like trying to write Draco unless you're thirteen and can't read, and why buffy as a source is still producing fresh fiction years after the canon is complete, while in HP it already feels like most stuff has been done. Also, we already broke my bed by trying to pack three of us (and we're not really heavy: I'm blaming shoddy bedmaking, even though I love my bed) onto it for a couple days straight to watch S2 Buffy. Go, us.

University-wise, some last-minute course changes mean this is what my year currently looks like:

Semester 1
FREN201: French Language
MATH221: Algebra and Cryptography
PHIL208: Logic A
PHIL233: Epistemology and Metaphysics

Semester 2
ENGL115: Childhood in Children's Literature
PHIL209: Logic B
LING202: Semantics
HIST127: American History

For those of you playing along at home, I have dropped my linguistics major and look to be settling down into a BA/BSC in Maths and Philosophy. Um, I think. What I've been thinking of lately is looking at trying to get into the BSC Honours postgrad programme in mathematics and philosophy, which they actually offer as an honours degree at Canterbury. The prospect of it kind of terrifies me though. Obviously I'd want to finish up with a BA/BSc (HONS) but the honours programme looks demanding- and I'd have to take a lot more maths than I was planning on. In fact if I decide I want to do it, I have to drop American History, like, yesterday and pick up 222, which is Groups and Systems. Then next year- in my third year of study- I'd have to do MATH264, as well as as much third-year PHIL and MATH I could pack in to get all my undergrad papers with done in four years, and then maaaaaybe I could do all the honours stuff in my fifth year.

Maybe.

Maybe I should look a BA(hons)/BSc, since I don't know if I'm interested in the Maths more than the Philosophy. I know that the courses I have enjoyed most intensely have all been Logic papers- those who know me at all will, I'm sure, be vastly amused by this.

Anyway, that's enough of me blehering, so I'm stopping now- although I will take a few seconds to comment on my Logic A class this week (we have three hours on the one afternoon. I actually kind of like it except that it means I only have my favourite class once a week. Anyway, Logic A manages by dint of much effort to be four separate classes: PHIL208, MATH208, PHIL308 and MATH308. Math students have one extra class a week, which I'm not going to, and each of the four classes have slightly different assessment- PHIL208 students have two tests, everyone else has two tests and some assignments, basically. He sarted off by saying a whole bunch of crap about how it's because it's all maths-intensive and Phil sudents are going to find it hard which, whatever. I haven't paid attention to profs telling me suff is too hard for years, thank god. (Clue: if you want to do it enough, just do it. They're never right.) Anyway, I'm doing it as a Phil student and we were doing some reasonably basic propositional logic.

We're starting with truth-functional propositional logic using conjunction, exclusive and inclusive disjunction, negation, equivalence and conditional connectives (&, v, -v-,-, <-> and ->). He said that since & and - are both truth-funcional, if you can write the other connectives using only & and - they too must be truth-functional. So okay, we started with v, which is inclusive disjunction: in English, "either, or." So A v B means "either A, or B, or both is true." So A V B is basically saying at least one of A or B is true, and maybe both; or to look at it another way, A and B are never both false. So you can symbolise it using only - and &- which mean "not" and "and"- like this: - (-A & -B), or not (not A AND not B); or in English, it is false that both A and B are false.

Now, this is all cool and fun, and he starts to get the class to offer suggestions for the translation of A v B. He's looking for the one I just gave above, and he doesn't get it for about ten minutes. I did PHIL134 where we've already gone over a lot of symbolic logic, so I'm pretty confident with it, so I have the answer quickly (Did I mention this was my best subject? Because it was, I just really really really love this stuff.) He doesn't pick me, which is cool, whatever. Finally, ten minutes later some guy gives him the right answer: hooray for us, we can all move on to the next translation, except the lecturer says "Very good, I bet you're a third-year Maths student!"

GRARR. PHIL STUDENTS ARE SMART TOO, THAT WAS NOT A DIFFICULT PROBLEM, AND I- AND PROBABLY TONNES OF OTHER SECOND-YEAR PHIL STUDENTS IN THE ROOM- HAD HAD THE ANSWER FOR TEN MINUTES ALREADY.

Gods, I cannot stand people who say crap like that. Can. Not. Stand. It.

The guy who answered turned out to be a third-year phil student, so he ddn't totally get away with it. But man, what a prick.

Uh... he's otherwise a really great lecturer though. We have a one hour class, then an hour's break, and then a two hour class- and the two hour class I only looked at my watch twice, when generally in a one-hour class I'll look at my watch about fifteen times. So. Um. Good lecturer, shame about the GIANT HONKING PREJUDICE. >:O

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Oooh. Philosophy sounds like a great major, though I've never been a math fan. But to each their own, ect.

(Childhood in Children's Literature...? Sounds like a cool course. But then again, I'm hoping to be an English major, so there's probably some prejudice there too ^^.)

Heh, yeah. I like maths, especially algebra and that kind of think, so. You know. Hee. But you're so right, there are SO many English and History papers tha I want to do that every time I think about all the maths I also start going "... but my precious English papers!1!!11" Like there's this one on Love and Desire in the English Renaissance that I would have KILLED to take this year. *sob* Next year, I guess.

Dude, yes, I'm excited about it because it's like The Borrowers, Swallows and Amazons, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, Ozma of Oz- PLUS an excuse to buy The Annotated Alice which I covet but haven't been able to justify on account of I own a beautiful blue leatherbound copy of Alice and Looking-glass together. *sigh*

Ah, sounds like so much fun. There's a course I want to take at my weirdo private highschool that's called Revolution and Romanticism (another good thing: you get an English credit and a History credit for the class), but it's only taught when there's enough interest in it. Hm. Plus, I've somehow already got my schedule for next year filled up, unless I take courses over the summer. Gah.

Anyways, good luck with all, and I hope you do get to take the Love and Desire class next year :)

Dude, that also sounds so interesting. I'm at the embarassing geek point where I kind of want to take summer papers, but can't afford to (I need to work over summer, unfortunately, or starve. Sigh.) I get half-way through explaining this to people, though, and they sort of give me disturbed looks and back away. I don't really blame them, either; I'm sort of disturbed myself.

Hee, to you too.

Yeah, I'm really hoping things work out so I can take R&R.

I'd probably go with feeding yourself, even though the idea of taking summer english/history classes ("papers"--I love your New Zealandian speech patterns) is rather tempting. I completely understand.

Glad you're still with us, math geeks notwithstanding...

:) and good to see you too.

Hey, what are you trying to say about maths geeks!?

Childhood in Children's Literature -- what a cool course.

Well, I'm hoping so. :) My English papers are like my treat-to-myself papers, as they're not going to count towards my degree really or anything. *sigh* so I better enjoy it- I think I will, though. We're doing a whole bunch of mostly older kids' books, something like six out of eight of which I've already read (and all the sequels.) I really do hope it will be interesting- although at least 20% of my reason for taking it is an excuse to buy The Annotated Alice.

Algebra and cryptography sounds awesome!

Well, I only had two classes so far, but they were kind of interesting. It's especially cool because the lecturer is this older, kind of fogey guy who keeps talking about the enemy, and making sure the enemy isn't inside your office and papers and what to do if the enemy does have spies in your organisation.... it's all so war movie!

Haha, brilliant. I might sneak in one day.

You do such cool subjects....and I've decided to take French at Uni. We've got a new teacher this year, and she's wicked awesome :) :) (Not that Mme. Morrow and Mme. Goldberg weren't, but I think we needed a change of teacher to "re-invigorate(Sic?)" the course.

Good luck for Uni and flatting :)

oh my god, mmes morrow ans goldberg both left? *falls over* NOT that it isn't completely time for a change- i mean i adored them both but they couldn't really teach- just, dude, that's a big loss. that's awesome that the new teacher's good though, i always thought french kind of couldn't be taught well cos i've never really been taught it well lol.

Thank you! XD good luck with oh my fucking god I can't believe you're seventh form. Duuuuuuuuude.

Bah elitists. Apparently you've finally got Teh Broadband though. Woo hoo!

heeee yes!11!!

Elitist? moi? how?

The teacher people are elitists.

By the way, do you have any strategies for dealing with hallmates who are your friend for a week then suddenly refuse to talk to you?

As in, a couple of them start joking about me being annoying, then I make friends with this other guy and so the whole group uses that as an excuse to give both of us the evil eye whenever either of us even looks at them...

*shrugs* Just ignore them. Unfortunately, when mobs behave like that, there's not a lot you can do to change their minds. Stick with the people who don't move in groups.

It may just be my anxiety talking, because it's been fine the past couple of days.

Glad you're not dead. That's always good to hear.

I wish I could have geek conversations like that with my friends. I mean, I have geek conversations with my friends all the time, but not geek fandom conversations. Which means I'm reduced to LJ blathering about Firefly and The West Wing (which is really good and I highly recommend it).

Also, American History? I'm prematurely embarrassed for my country. Unless it means like North and South America and I'm being really self-centered.

Sort of feel like every second post lately has been the over-verbal non-cardboard equivalent of "I (still) aten't dead", you know? :P

It's one of my favourite things about my friendships, I have to admit. My geek-geek conversations, as opposed to my fandom-geek conversations, tend to be slightly less than thrilling, though, because they tend to occur between me and my ENG/COSC student friends, who I love but man, it goes right over my head. :P

*grin* Oh, it's okay, I know all the embarassing stuff already... it is USA history, yes. I know it covers the Civil War but I don't know how far forward or back it goes... I admit, I took it less because I have a deep-seated interest in US history than because I had a space I didn't want to fill up with anything else and did want to fill up with something History-ish. :) but I'm still looking forward to it, unless I drop it for MATH222 which I don't really want to do but we'll see, I guess.

WAR OF 1812.

When you get up to it I'll give you the song. And then we can mock in unison. :D

Canada: the only country to successfully invade the United States and burn down the White House.

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