Lit Apropos of Nothing - ACKBAR IN CAPITALS - The Lit Forum Social Thread, v2.0.15

I'm not poor.

 

History, specifically post-Cold War U.S. military history and foreign policy. I am (hopefully) going to write my Masters thesis on U.S. interventionist policies. As for food, I'm currently living on what my parents sent with me. It is decreasing at a rather faster rate than I thought it would. Thankfully I get my first assistantship check at the end of the month.

On a semi-related topic, one of the books I'm reading (The History of White People) has introduced me to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germaine_de_Sta%C3%ABl]Germaine[/url] de Staël. I'm going to be most upset if she isn't at least mentioned in Assassin's Creed: Unity.

 

I hear ya man.

 

I have been drowning in grad school for over a year already, so I know the feeling.

 

I can't swim, so I know the feeling, too.

 

Heh, imagining Zsinj drunk is great... I wonder how many of the curse words in his rant he would have slurred?

 

Richard Harrow as Stephen Strange!

http://www.nerdist.com/2014/08/boardwalk-empire-actor-jack-huston-might-be-eyed-for-doctor-strange/



This is like when it was leaked that James Gunn was involved with GotG: Not everybody knew who he was, but the excitement among those who did was 100%.

 

So, I have finally settled in here to Hawaii to start my PhD and can start talking on the internet again.

I have also have been catching up on my historical reading, and let me just say that reading about the historical White Lotus rebellions, especially the origin of the term Red Lotus, has been especially interesting in light of Korra.

 

Gorefiend

The piece on the Slavic Federation for Civ Beyond Earth just came out. Looks like there will be a little bit of a Soviet influence.

 

A friend of mine got to play it at Gamescom and said he had a blast and had to be dragged away by the Firaxis people because he just wanted to keep playing.

 

I think I'd have a problem with the "then you are nothing" part. Sounds painful.
I am tutoring new students who start next week. I believe the correct beginning speech is "Hahahahaha" and then telling that you should not drink alcohol the night before tests.
Funnily enough we are told to ask of their views about consuming alcohol, the student organizations are trying to move slowly away from the drunken student imago. Meanwhile the technician student songbook is about 70% drinking songs, the rest are humorous songs about funny parts of human anatomy.

 

The thing I hated most about freshers week was... it was the first week, and you had reps constantly forcing you out until god knows what hour... but then the university still expected you to show up for 9 o'clock registration things. And, it's like, "What? But I was out until 5 and I need to unclog the sink of violently pink vomit! And I need to get the stains out of this pirate costume before I return it!"

They should have just made the first week pure hedonism with no work and started all the serious academic stuff the week after.

 

The freshers week here is mostly some introductory lessons in the middle of the day with your tutor group. The first parties are when the actual lessons start.

...there's a reason here somewhere. But I have never liked the late hour parties so that was not a problem for me.

 

That was actually what Imperial did when I was there: the entire first week was non-academic.

 

I went to a uni students' club meeting thing as a special guest and it made me miss being at uni (although it wasn't the uni I went to).

 

If I ever win a lottery (hard because I never bet) I would stay a student but wouldn't stress up of courses so much. Maybe take a couple courses per semester, study different fields and so on, without being afraid that I get my allowances cut. Studying could be fun (see everyone's knowledge of SW here) if there was less of it.

 

Helan går,
sjung hopp falleri faderallan lej,
helan går,
sjung hopp faderallan lej
Och den som inte helan tar
han inte heller halvan får
Helan gåååååååår
sjung hopp faderallan lej.

Halvan går
sjung hopp falleri faderallan lej
halvan går
sjung hopp faderallan lej
Och den som inte halvan tar,
han heller inte tersen får,
Halvan gååååår,
sjung hopp faderallan lej.

 

Vi ska dricka hela natten alkohol
Vi ska dricka hela natten alkohol
Vi ska dricka hela natten
Vi ska dricka inte vatten
Vi ska dricka hela natten alkohol!

Dinners are certainly the best student parties there is, they even end early in the evening so you know when you should stop. One time I went to a bar afterward and beside finding it to be much more boring (it was impossible to talk over the music) I also found the next day be absolutely dreadful. I'm never drinking again. If people had to suffer hangover before they were allowed to drink they would drink a lot less.

 

If only Nottingham had been so sensible.

I had the opposite experience. The year I did my MA was when University finally became what I had expected, instead of just "slightly harder A-Levels in bigger lecture halls".

A much more intimate environment, where the lines between teacher and student were blurred. Our seminars were frequently in held in the staff club (a private pub on campus, more or less) and we'd lounge around discussing the subject matter with cheeses, wines and/or ales. Superb.

Or sometimes we'd just discuss the graphic novel I'd lent my phenomenology tutor the week before.

 

The history department at my university is so small that most of the classes are pretty tiny with frequent socializing at both the undergrad and graduate levels between students and professors. Its worked out pretty well for me like that: I know all the professors in the department pretty well because I've taken at least one class with all of them, so I know what to expect from their grad level assignments (except for the head of the department, but that's what happens when the only undergrad courses he teaches are on ancient China and Japan at 8 am).