Published on Wednesday December 4, 2002 .
While idly flipping through my notebooks with the pretense of working on my Lakoff term paper, I found these two quotes in my notes. I really like this first one, because if there's one thing I've learned as a CogSci major, it's how to be skeptical.
"It's your job to be skeptical. That's why you're a student at Berkeley. When you go and get your id card, they're supposed to have you say, 'I agree to be skeptical.'"
-- George Lakoff
And from the first day of class:
""And a minus -- [cell phone ring] -- means that you didn't turn off your cell phone."
-- George Lakoff, on his plus/check plus/check/check minus/minus grading scale
There are things I'll miss.
Published on Thursday October 31, 2002 .
Whew, today's midterm was a killer. I only had 75 minutes to do a test that I think would have taken me about two hours to do well. Needless to say, I felt a little rushed. And on top of it being too long, I just wasn't entirely sure what kind of answers they wanted on a lot of the questions. The problem was I just had too much to say about any given thing they asked, so I wasn't really sure how to reasonably constrain it to what they were looking for.
I've got the feeling that I'll get the test back and for most of the things I got wrong, I'll say "Damnit, I knew that, but didn't think that's what they wanted." If it'd been an interactive test (like an interview), I know I would have been able to show that I knew what I was doing.
Bah, grumble. I'll just have to wait and see.
In other news, tonight finds me working on my Ling 106 midterm. Here's a Lakoff quote about the topic of one of our three midterm questions from yesterday in lecture:
"Doing a metaphorical analysis of the etymologies of 150 or so words would make a great dissertation, but it would also take some real intellectual courage. Indo-European etymology is a nasty field. It's a cutthroat business. You'd be attacked by pretty much everyone."
-- George Lakoff
Published on Thursday October 17, 2002 .
Bah, Richard Stallman is speaking in Soda on Tuesday at 4pm, but thanks to my new attendance policy, I find myself in a bit of a quandry. I could go to part of my 3:30 class, I suppose, but I'd only be able to stay for about 10 minutes if I wanted to get any kind of seat for Stallman. And I know for a fact that Lakoff doesn't take well to people leaving his lectures early.
So I could go see Stallman speak and break my streak, or I could continue with the perfect attendance. The real problem is, if I break my streak, I know I'll start missing many many more classes, and that's just no good.
I suppose the answer's obvious, but it still bums me out that I'm going to miss seeing Stallman speak again.