It's 11:31 pm and I have to be at the hospital at 6:30 am to discipline a night shift employee. Tomorrow's a 14+ hour day, that starts with said meeting and ends with a class I am co-teaching on Health Outcomes for IU's MHA/MSN students. I'm thrilled for the opportunities in my life but I just wish they were spaced out a bit more!
So I started this grad school class yesterday (as in, the class opened Monday at 8 a.m). I quickly read and digested the syllabus like any over-achieving student would do, and learned that the first paper was due Wednesday at midnight. A scant 60 hours after the course began. Um, whaaaa? Some of us, you know, work for a living??! To make matters extremely worse and acid-producing, the 1000 word paper is over two questions in the Summa Theologiae.
Am I burning off some time in purgatory?
So after working 7 am - 6 pm, I begrudgingly jumped on the treadmill with my iPad to start reading the selection. This was about 1/80th of what I had to read tonight (verbatim, from Part 1, Question 3).
"First, whatever a thing has besides its essence must be caused either by the constituent principles of that essence (like a property that necessarily accompanies the species--as the faculty of laughing is proper to a man--and is caused by the constituent principles of the species), or by some exterior agent--as heat is caused in water by fire. Therefore, if the existence of a thing differs from its essence, this existence must be caused either by some exterior agent or by its essential principles. Now it is impossible for a thing's existence to be caused by its essential constituent principles, for nothing can be the sufficient cause of its own existence, if its existence is caused. Therefore that thing, whose existence differs from its essence, must have its existence caused by another. But this cannot be true of God; because we call God the first efficient cause. Therefore it is impossible that in God His existence should differ from His essence."
So....God's His own Essence? Yeah...Got it.
The rough draft I just eeked out is 1005 words long. A first for me, I'm NOT editing for content so as to jeopardize my word count!
This semester is going to suck. No wonder all the students have been calling this the weed-out class. Too bad I'm already too invested now.
I'll see you in May (if I live that long!)
I just got my course syllabus, and I'll share a couple gems ...
ReplyDelete"Any class canceled as a result of bad weather, instructor illness, terrorist activity, or other emergency will be made up on a Saturday morning or at the end of the semester." <- Humorous, but on a Saturday? I've never ever had a professor try to make up courses for those reasons.
"If a student’s cell phone or pager goes off in class, or I see a student attempting to read or write text messages, that student will have the choice of either a) immediately lending the offending device to me for the next three months; or b) taking an “F” in the course." <- Just. Ugh.
Thank goodness for graduation in May ...
~ K
I had a stodgy, legalistic prof a few years ago. He posted something similar in the course syllabus about cell phones going off during class. His policy was that, if your phone went off in the middle of class, you would lose 10 points from your overall score (taking you immediately to a max grade of 90 in the class). We were all so nervous about it that we stopped taking phones to class and left them in our cars instead. Then one day, in the middle of his lecture, a phone went off. We all looked around at each other in sheer fear. He turned around with a smile like the Grinch, eager to blast whomever had violated his sacred rule.
ReplyDeleteThen he realized it was HIS phone that went off. And yes, he gave us all 10 points on our grades. I think that's the only reason I got an "A" that semester!!
That's awesome! Now I kind of hope that happens in our class ... though I'm pretty sure he wouldn't automatically pass us all. :)
ReplyDeleteGood stuff. Wish I was slogging through it with you, though I'd rather read Kant: IN whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of know-
ReplyDeleteledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it
is in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a
means is directed. But intuition takes place only in so far as the
object is given to us. This again is only possible, to man at least,
in so far as the mind is affected in a certain way. The capacity
(receptivity) for receiving representations through the mode
in which we are affected by objects, is entitled sensibility.
Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone
yields us intuitions; they are thought through the understand-
ing, and from the understanding arise concepts. But all thought
must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters
relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensi-
bility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.
The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation,
so far as we are affected by it, is sensation. That intuition
which is in relation to the object through sensation, is entitled
empirical. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition
is entitled appearance.
LOVE YA!