Yo Ho Ho

One paper down, and one more to go before I can put a close on last semester. So, out with Aristotle and Machiavelli, and in with pirates.



I have decided that Villains of All Nations has to be the best title of a research book I've used. Pirates make everything more enjoyable.

And of course, pirates (and the House Hunters International from Argentina I watched yesterday) remind me of the very important shout out this post needs:

Happy Birthday, Amanda. I don't know if you'll see this before you hop on your next plane, train, automobile, boat, burro or tuk tuk on your grand adventure, but just know that I'm raising a glass to you even if I'm not there to do it in person. You deserve both the yo ho ho AND the bottle of rum :)

St Leonard's Dinner

It's thankless to be a postgrad, really. You look out your window to see undergrads running around outside, making fools of themselves (I'm looking at you, Raisin Weekend), while you're cooped up inside, reading book after book that only tangentially relates to your paper/discussion/dissertation in an attempt to not sound like a fool when someone questions you about your program.

However, this can all be fixed by the wonders of free food and wine.

One of the traditions of St Andrews is the St Leonard's Dinners. St Leonard's College is the postgrad college here at the University of St Andrews and once a semester the Provost will host a formal dinner for postgrads lucky enough to get a ticket.

And by lucky enough, I mean awake early enough on a Saturday morning to send an email at a specific time in the vain hopes of getting a ticket.

Which, because they had me at free, I was indeed one of them who got her stuff in on time to get a ticket to last Wednesday's dinner. A handful of us from IPT got tickets and while I've pretty much given up on the hope that more than three IPT students can get together and have a gathering with pleasant conversation (by which is mean the American Southern definition with everyone ignoring topics that are known to cause glowering across the table) it was a fun night. An excuse to get dressed up is always appreciated.


The IPT group after dinner.


Sadly, getting tickets to this dinner means that we aren't eligible for next semester's dinner, but they did mention something about a ball...

It's All Greek to Me

(Scene: Library. Hours, hours, of reading. While the classmate I'm with has been so proud of finding a book and keeping it and waiting to get around to it.)

Her: 'Ah, I think I'll move on to Seneca and work on that essay.'

Me: 'Cool that you found all of the epistles in one place. Since I know you hate citing the web.'

Her: 'Nice, big print... okay, let's open this up...' (pause)

Me: '...?'

Her: *headdesk*

Me: 'What's wrong?'

Her: *hands me the book without saying anything*

Me: '... omg it's in Latin??'

Her: 'How am I supposed to read Latin?'

Me: 'Um... poorly?'

Grad school win of the day: Realizing the that primary source you need to complete a paper is NOT actually available in English anywhere in your library. Or not backordered on Amazon.

Bonus

Other Classmate: 'What's wrong with her?'

Me: 'She just realized the only text available here is in Latin. And Amazon's backordered.'

Her: 'Who buys up all of the copies of the English translation of Seneca's epistles??'

Other Classmate: 'Well, Christmas is coming up soon...'

Open Letter to Grad School #1

Dear Grad School,

It was a lovely weekend in St Andrews. The sun was shining after a bout of rain, it was chilly but not cold, and all around there were happy people enjoying their time outside.

Unfortunately, you let me enjoy only the briefest of it in order to walk to the grocery store yesterday and back. Instead, you wanted me to stay inside and read and write and read a bit more so that hopefully I can have my essays done by next Monday and not sound like an idiot in class tomorrow morning. While it was a lofty goal, I'm still irritated that you picked a nice weekend to demand that. This is not how I wished to spend my evening again.



Aquinas isn't that interesting, even if he will be the subject of one of my essays. Therefore, I'm calling it quits tonight. I'm done. I'm done reading, I'm done thinking about Natural Law, and I'm done trying to make your verbose logic arguments make sense after reading so many that they all start to run together. It was a nice ride, but I'm done for the evening. We'll reconvene tomorrow and make some real headway. But for now? I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Or at least hide under a pile on my desk to be found later.

To put you out of my mind, I propose the following. First, a snack.



Said snack will be of the easiest things to pull out of the fridge/cupboard. Cheese, an orange, and Hobnobs (which seriously need to be sold in the States -- oat cookie dipped in dark chocolate ftw). This will be accompanied by tea, Earl Grey since it's amazing.

Second, television of the American variety. Choice should include attractive men, fun, stories as deep as mud puddles, and nothing depressing. Bonus points for suits and style.



White Collar it is. (Mad Men, you were a close second. Alas, you didn't fit the 'nothing depressing' qualifications this time around.)

In exchange for the respite, I promise to hit the books hard tomorrow. Cross my heart.

Thanks bunches,
Me

Misogyny and the American Male

"I think that the modern feminist movement has been a big party in destroying modern dating and the family and it's not so bad for women to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, you know what I mean? Cause that's their choice. I mean, don't you feel your biological clock ticking? Tick tick tick..."

The students in my course (the whole 14 of us) often go out for a drink at a pub after class once a week, and in an attempt to find a new time, we went later on a Thursday. Which meant that the group was very small, but I live close to the pub that was picked, so I figured why not. I like to be social.

I get into a one on one and make the comment that the hardest thing I find about reading non-modern sources of political theory is the rampant misogyny. All of them use the term 'like a woman' to be derogatory, and while I'm aware that it was a different time, it still always pings me in the back of my head going 'this guy is completely dismissing the value of half the population' -- and even more, if you want to get into ideas of citizenship in the polis and women and children and slaves, etc.

So he's all 'so you're feminist' and I reply 'yes' because I have no shame in that. I think that women should have control of their own destiny and be able to make their own choices about jobs, reproduction, education, dress, livihood. Just as man gets to make his choice, choices for women should not be artificially constrained by society.

So he comes back with the above statement.

... WTF?

I have NEVER in my life had someone 'tick tick tick' at me. Number one, my biological clock is none of your damn business. Number two, the modern feminist movement destroyed dating and you want to back to the barefoot and pregnant model?

Seriously? A boy (because I can't call you a man right now) like you actually exists in the modern 21st century? Modern feminism means that I get to pick my mate just as much as you do, and that I get the choices to study just like you, and get to express my mind just as much as you do.

I was actually struck dumb when he said that, and as much as I hate it, could only just roll my eyes instead of hauling off and hitting him. He then had the nerve to say 'I mean, don't go burning bras or anything' to which all I can say is 'no, I like my bras, but thank you'.

He then lectured me on pieces that I need to read talking about 'manliness' and how women can be manly and that's a good thing but it's essentially a male characteristic, and one on courtship because it's interesting to see how modern feminists have destroyed the sanctity of dating like they had in the 50s and now women are just sluts. I'll read your articles, if only to refute them to your face. Because I can guarantee you this, nothing in your articles (written by men) of course, are going to make me change my mind. My mind's been opened -- there's no reason to close it again.

I then get the talk on how there are fundamental differences between the sexes, and I say 'there may be differences, but the value of feminism is in bringing different voices of experience to the table'.

He asks 'well, if women's voices are actually different than men's, why are there no women philosophers'?

You want to know why there are no popular and well read female philosophers? Seriously, you are so blind to privilege that I have to spell this out for you? Okay, there are no widely read female philosophers because men have controlled access to education, men have controlled the publishing industry, men have controlled the political sphere, men have decided who the men they should listen to are. Men did this. You know why there are no widely read female philosophers? Because men for centuries have declared that women say nothing worth listening to -- not because they haven't had anything to say, or because they weren't trying to say it. They were drowned out by boys like you who insisted that women have nothing of importance to say.

There are so few women studying International Relations (the largest concentration are in Peace & Conflict Studies) because we are discouraged from joining into the international debate because voices have been traditionally men. And it's discouraging when you don't see your own experience valued. We are discouraged by boys like this. Boys who think that it's cute to say things like 'barefoot and pregnant' or using the argument that there are no female philosophers so the female experience is inherently either the same or less valuable than the male.

Well guess what? I didn't hit you this time. I gave you a pass to be polite. But I'm done being polite. I came to Scotland to try and expand my horizons, and instead I just get the same old American man trying to explain to the silly little woman why he's right and she's just cute.

Study Group Wednesday

After realizing that all of the other M.Litt programs had study groups while ours had none, the four women in my program decided that we needed a group. So the four of us have declared Wednesday study group day for ourselves. The readings are dense enough and numerous enough that it's always a good thing to have a second, third, or fourth opinion before we go into class and attempt to be the one to yell the loudest so as to get the floor and present an idea.

Plus, and this may be the women's college grad in me talking, but I think it's important for women to have a place to share ideas without having to yell over men in an attempt to be heard. We're four out of fourteen, and while that's more women than are usually in International Relations programs, it's still only four out of fourteen.

So Wednesdays will be ours.

That made for a productive afternoon, so what could make for a productive evening?



Fajitas!

One of the girls and her flatmate and I went out to dinner at The Grill House here in town in the search for something delicious. Now, there is a decided lack of Mexican/Southwestern/Tex Mex/whatever food here. This is understandably, as we are no where near that area. But you'd think with the obscene number of Americans here that someone would get on the ball and open up a Chipotle or something -- they'd make a killing. And of course as soon as something is out of sight, that's all you want. I'd been craving this for weeks now, and we stumbled in and found fajitas and enchiladas, and while no where near as spicy as the ones back home, still pretty darn good considering the alternative is nothing. Here's to you, fajitas.

I still plan on making you soon with my own recipe, though. You were good but not THAT good.

End of the World

Days with class are always interesting -- I wonder if the other groups in International Relations feel exhausted when they leave class or if they feel like they've learned something and built upon new idea. We yell. And argue. And most classes I leave feeling exhausted and wondering if anything was actually gained that I didn't have beforehand. Hmm.

But it was Augustine, and I'm familiar with Augustine, and at least can join in with some of the yelling, even if I hate that it had to be yelling. And next class is Aquinas, so we're good with that as well.

It is classes like this that make me miss the Religion classes from my undergrad. It was a big debate in my mind if I wanted to go back to grad school, would it be for Religion or Politics. Politics, or at least Political Theory, won out because all of the Religion programs are housed within Divinity programs who are looking for people who want to become pastors. As I have absolutely no desire to become a pastor and whose interest is in the academic study of religions and their impact on societies, there's doesn't seem to be any encouragement of that in Divinity programs. So IPT seemed to be the best fit.

Alas, each time I tried to bring up his gnostic heritage, or the importance of his theories of grace and predestination and the elect, and the fact that the City of Man can't be Rome because neither of the Cities are earthly cities and are ideals and consequences, I get shot down.

Victory in class is the victory of the loudest, or victory of the most bullheaded. I'm not sure that's a victory I can attain.

It's the after class that's most interesting -- usually a most of us go for a drink, but with the main coordinator of that out, three of us went to get a bite and some tea after class and again end up talking about the victory of the loudest. All philosophical discussion should take place over food and drink, I think. It helps people lower inhibitions and maybe not be so uptight about being 'right'.

In the food and drink and discussion we learn that one of the girls hasn't actually seen the sea here yet. Which is boggling for me to believe because I go down there most evenings, and am only a couple streets over. But then, I guess that's what you get when you don't actually live in town. Which meant that I got to show off the sea. And the most beautiful part about water is that if you go a bit into it -- down a pier, out in a boat, in the right spot at a cliff -- it feels like you're standing at the end of the world.





I think it's one of the things that people who grow up someplace other than near water have a hard time understanding. Standing out on a pier, or sailing out in the sea/ocean/whatever, that's freedom. That's feeling that you could just keep going. It's much more than just an open road. An open road has an end, a destination. There may be another shore, but that's not the sea's destination -- that's just where a few waves crash up when they get too close.

And that makes up for a hard class any time. At least I think I got a few points across, even if they were drowned out and quickly forgotten. At least I got a few.

Reading is Fundamental

When I decided to do an M.Litt, I was aware that there would be a lot of reading. I went into with my eyes open. I have no one to blame but myself. But when it gets to the point that even pulling up BBC News and cringing because, ugh, you have to read to get the news...

My friend tonight is St. Augustine. Good old City of God. All 1,200 pages of him. And maybe the Confessions if I have time, since I... sort of enjoy the Confessions. At least I've read some from him before, unlike me showing my ignorance before with the collected works of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Cicero, and Seneca. Perhaps if I'd done my undergrad in Philosophy, however they were not popular additions to Political Studies or Religion, so I was touch SOL. But it's all good -- we have St. Augustine now. And Aquinas after that.

I never thought I'd be so happy to read Aquinas again. Even typing out that sentence seems slightly wrong.

And while it would be nice to call it a night, I think getting a little further in Augustine is a good idea. Grad school is exciting, can't you tell?