Midterm crisis?

Midterm crisis?


Episode 1:

On the phone with Mom, our communication was more diplomatic than profound. She went through the usual questions about my meals and weight, about weather and clothes: my only vocabulary left, well practiced and repetitive like some verses from an absolute beginner. Then, she said:" There was a good TV program last night. A young literary critic wrote something and became national wide famous."

"What did he write?"

"Books. Something new."

"O...K..."

"He reminds me of you. Young and studies literature."

"Yes..." I felt that maybe I should give some positive feedback, but I did not know what to say.

"Anyway, he was on a talk show and it was very educative."

"What did you learn?"

"There are young people who do new researches in books and all."

"It is seldom to find educative programs on TV..." -- give me credit for trying.

I suddenly thought of food.

* Pizza Spinoza ( à la hollandaise? with spinach on the side.)
* Foucault focaccia (The truth about erotic sandwiches?)
* Leibniz Cookies (two sides of the story: chocolate and vanilla. If a proposition is true, then its negation is false and vice versa?)
* Kant in cans (What is Enlightenment? The magic of storing food for ages and ages and ages in a tin.)
* Hegel Bagels (It is human nature to keep bagels in mind?)
* Etc.

I thought about telling her my thoughts but we ended up talking about how much snow we got this year.


Episode 2

Raumkonzept Seminar

Everyone sat in the classroom with think bubbles in a form of a fast-going clock. We had another hour left.

The teacher checked her cellphone and said: "I have been thinking about Wellbery's Sense of Room and Room of Sense this weekend. And I believe that we don't have to understand the text as two different ideas but it would also be OK to think of it as relapses ... the idea to be applied ... well, then, I think, can be, through New York or through a text..." -- she was talking as slowly as she could. The times goes faster this way.

I wondered if she listened to herself when she spoke.

Then someone said that in his course of philosophy studies, there had been incidents where the discussions were so escalated until someone called the police.

"What was it about?" we asked.

"We were talking about Foucault. Then someone felt insulted so the police came. For a periode of time we had guarded classes. Some students were thrown out of the room." -- This is what our teacher dreamt of, maybe, some action is better than half of students on Facebook and the other half picking on their cuticles.

It is hard to imagine calling the police on a Foucault related discussion though. How did you tell the policeman? What would be the first thing to write down on their notes? Foucault is spelled with silent "-lt"?

Then the class continued.

"conceptual definition of a room... emotional coloring of a text ... witness of simulator ... "

We nodded periodically. Felling bad for all the silence in the room, but besides smiling and nodding there was nothing we could do.

Maybe the philosophical food joke would come in handy in this situation. But I did not want her to know that I understand "emotional coloring of a text" as literally taking a highlighter and mark the paper.

"OK." she checked her cellphone again. "This is our mid-term discussion. I hope that it has been helpful to you all."

We nodded.

"And next time, we will REALLY put something VERY concrete on the table."

I haven't heard this sentence since the second session of the semester.