Diameters

In this post I shall demonstrate the highly intellectual study of the Em-Diameter. That is what it is called now. Normally I refer to it as "my diameter," however, in an intellectual post it ought to have an intellectual name, and that is the best I can do on short notice. This is a theory developed by yours truly. It involves the diameter of space in which people feel comfortable moving their arms.

Let me clarify.

Some people of big diameters:

Note the outstretched arms, the full circle of width, the joyous expression. Some people have large diameters and that's wonderful. 

Other people have small diameters:

These people's expressions of excitement will look something more like this. Please note, the still joyous facial expression. This is also perfectly acceptable. 

And then there are people like her: 

No comment.

You may ask how the knowledge of said diameter is of use for any practical application. Let me explain. Knowledge of your diameter can be both enlightening and edifying. You will feel exuberant as you breach your diameter in a moment of pure confidence. Try it sometime. Spread open your arms and burst through a set of doors with one true blow. However, I recommend starting slow. Pushing yourself too far can have a disastrous affect on your mental stability. It will lead to questioning your very identity. Therapy will be necessary. Let me refer you to our local therapy expert: stop by and ask for Ally sometime.  (Disclaimer: she will probably only tell you that you need therapy, so if you're looking for more than that please see an actual therapist. Which Ally is not.) 

In other words, your diameter can be the object of much self discovery. It is at least as valuable, and probably more so, than many personality quizzes to be found on the Internet. Let me remind you that the theory of diameters is still under much research, and subject to change. If you are interested in furthering this science please contact me. I will be very interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter. (Please do not contact however if you intend to express undo bias towards diameters that have a tendency to either extreme. All diameters are beautiful. Do not discriminate against people of the opposite size diameter than yourself. Such attitudes are unwanted. Thank you very much.)

Finals.

So Finals. The last six days are upon us. We are eagerly anticipating Summer. We are scrambling to memorize notes and learn syllogisms. We are writing in blue-books and trying not to hyperventilate thinking about tests. Why am I taking the time to write a blog post then, when I clearly haven't had time for the past couple weeks? Why now, during the ominous week of finals? Balance, my young friend, balance. That's what finals week is all about. Study, take a test, relax and recover, and repeat. I'm in the recovering from a test stage so I need to spend some time regaining focus and re-motivating myself. The end is in sight.
This is the first finals week where I've been able to get into a more balanced schedule (granted, I've only had two in college) however, the last one was awful. I didn't realize till the Friday of finals week that I was fourteen hours behind on work, so in addition to my regular nine a week, I was catching up on those fourteen. Finals week was a blur to me. I honestly don't remember much about it, except the day in the middle where I was getting lunch and Dr. Cuddeback came and said hi to me. I might have told this story before, but it is worth retelling with the context of finals. The way the conversation went was "Hi Emily, how are finals going for you?" A very flustered and nervous wreck of an Emily answered (now, I want you to picture a sleep deprived, shaking, wide eyed girl who was splitting her time between working fourteen hours and three days and trying to study, okay, got that phantasm firmly cemented in your little noggin?) "Oh dear, well good, that is, I JUST CAN'T WAIT FOR IT TO BE OVER AND I'M JUST PRETENDING IT ISN'T HAPPENING." Dr. Cuddeback "...well don't ignore finals." At which I felt very embarrassed and promptly dropped my soup and he cleaned it up for me.
I can thankfully say that I am not a nervous wreck this time round. At least, relatively so. It's nice being able to relax and breathe and then study hard because I have taken that good break and feel refreshed. Yesterday we went swimming in the river and it was such a good way to break up the afternoon between studying theology and studying more theology (I had a theology exam this morning.)
So yeah. Finals. That's happening.

Emily's Random Stories

At the Library:

Carrot top boy: "Emilia, how art thou?"

External Emily: "verily well, I do indeed have the Latin book you seek."

Inward Emily: I have long dreamed of this day when I will be spoken to in a manner befitting a young woman belonging to a novel. Only at this school. I love my life.

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Note to self: avoid sitting next to Jason of the golden locks. (Okay, fine, that was a bad reference to Jason and the golden fleece, I don't know why I thought that would work. It was funny in my head.) The fact of the matter is he cannot sit still. Seriously, he's as bad as sitting next to Eli. You would think he would have learned to control the wiggles by this point, but no. Shift, shift, wiggle, wiggle. Sit still Jason. First he was leaning over to my side of the table (and when I say my side, I'm not being selfish, this is a crowded class, there's only so much room at the table. You have to claim your writing space, and that was my writing space) and here's Jason leaning in on that, and suddenly he's rocking back in his chair, then he's chewing on his pen cap, then it's shift, shift, wiggle, wiggle. Inward Emily: No, you cannot elbow Jason and hiss at him like he was your brother. 

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12:33 AM. Emily walking Monica back to her dorm (unrelated note, no she is not wearing a jacket or shoes, but IT'S LIKE TEN FEET, OKAY?)

Emily: "Goodnight, Monica."

Monica: "Goodnight, Emily."

Emily walks back.

Male voice "Sweetheart, you're going to catch your death of cold."

Exterior Emily: "Er, okay. What are you doing still out and about?"

Male voice transforms from creepy to goofy: "The night is still young, the night is still young."

Interior Emily: ARE YOU TRYING TO GIVE ME A HEART ATTACK? I THOUGHT YOU WERE A REGENCY VILLAIN LURKING IN THE SHADOWS CALLING ME SWEETHEART. SWEETHEART YOURSELF. I JUST ABOUT SWOONED OR STARTED SHRIEKING. NEVER AGAIN. I DON'T CARE THAT IT'S ONLY TEN FEET TO THE OTHER GIRLS DORM. NEVER. AGAIN.

-------------------

There I am sitting at my nice little corner desk in the computer lab, typing away, like the good little student that I am, and in walks Jason.

Jason sees Ruby sitting at a computer.

Jason opens his mouth.

Jason proclaims loudly "RUBY. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? THAT IS MY DESK. I SIT THERE EVERY NIGHT. YOU KNOW I DO. WHY WOULD YOU TAKE MY DESK?"

Emily hums happily to herself: happy little Emily typing away, good little Emily minding her own business, nice little Emily doing lots of work.

Jason turns, sees Emily. "EMILY. YOU SAW ME SITTING THERE LAST NIGHT. TELL HER."

Emily:

Emily:

Interior Emily: Don't you go involving me. I got nuthin' to do with this. Nuthin' at all.

Exterior Emily: "No comment."

----------------

Emily walks into a room and hears uproarious laughter.

Interior Emily: *sniff* Oh the unrestrained vulgarity of the modern age, with it's unrestrained laughter and boisterous common folk. Peasants. 

Emily walks out of the room.

----------------

Emily walking down the dip (the downward path) in the dark:

Upperclassman: "hi Emily."

Exterior Emily: *nods* "Hey."

Interior Emily: WHO ARE YOU? DO I KNOW YOU? HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME? HOW CAN YOU SEE ME? I WALK IN THE DARK, HOW IS IT THAT YOU CAN YOU SEE MY FACE?

#over-analyzing

(I USE THE HASH-TAG IRONICALLY, OKAY?)

Basically, I think the answer is laser vision. Everybody has laser vision but me.
----------------
Emily, musing: "hey, so you know that guy? Of course you know that guy, everybody knows that guy. ANYWAY. I think he's a werewolf. That is, he's not right now, but he has the potential of being one. He looks just like the sort of character in a book that would become one. The solder like coat, the hair that sticks up, the overly large smile when he walks by you. WEREWOLF."
-----------------

Just Another Day in the Life of Emily

It's that time again!

What time?

Story time with Emily! (As you probably know by now that often takes to form of me regaling you with embarrassing stories. Perhaps I find further mortification edifying, perhaps I want to read upon my misfortunes in my old age and weep, perhaps I simply have a strange sense of humor and find myself humorous. There is humor in the ridiculous. Methinks the last explanation comes closest to the truth, but I will leave you to come to your own conclusions.)

As you know, I recently went on a ski trip. The following is a take away story from that trip and I wish you joy in it. Most people when they go skiing tend to have the normal accident stories that go hand and hand with snow sports. "Whoopsy-daisy, I fell down!" That sort of thing. Not Emily. For a good hour and a half I was accident free (surprised? I thought you had more confidence in me than that! Ehem, who am I kidding?) Honestly, I might have been getting a little bit over confident. I hadn't been skiing in three years and I was speeding down the slope with the greatest of ease. I started composing poetry in my head, I started gazing off in the distance dreamily, I started telling myself I was quite the little skier. I should have known it wouldn't last for long. Now, if we are going to take preferences into account, I'd like to state here and now that I would have preferred to have my comeuppance out of the site of man and beast, but then, our preferences in such cases often don't count for much. My story was not a little fall, it was not a little bump, it was not something that people say "Whoopsy-daisy" about. Oh no, when I fall I take out three people in the process. That's just how Emily's roll. (That was a pun, hardy har har, as you will soon see.) That's right I barrel-rolled. And took out three people. Don't forget that fact. I was just minding my own business, skiing along like the little skier I was, and then I came to the chair lift. Now, let it be known, I don't like getting on chair lifts. Anyways, there was a guy from school waiting at the bottom and I went to say hello because I'm polite, or try to be. So after I finished talking to this guy I said in a chipper tone (because I'm a chipper sort of being) "Well, I'll be seeing you, I'm going to go down again!" Little did I know, that he was the one that would be seeing me: barrel-roll under a chair lift. That's right. I misjudged the time. What can I say? I never had a good sense of timing. There were three innocent looking fellows about to get on a chair, I thought I'd get on the next one, I misjudged the time and skied in too fast and knocked them down like bowling pins. (What's ironic about this is that I'm not good at bowling and I get gutter balls more often than not. That is unless I am the bowling ball. My new mantra in life is don't be the bowling ball. Be anything but the bowling ball. Just don't be the bowling ball.) So the chaps went down, I rolled, I apologized profusely (probably a bit too much, in fact), and now I'm wondering how I can avoid the group of people from school who witnessed the incident for the rest of my college career.

But really, skiing was amazing. I want to go again. Nobody can say I'm not resilient.

My other random story for today is to comment on the young man who walked past the library desk while I was working last night. I don't think you understand, Sir, the complete in-decorum of singing that particular Seven Brides for Seven Brothers song in public. I realize it's a catchy tune, but you might want to remember that there are young ladies present and it might come as quite a shock to one of them to suddenly hear "Bless your beautiful hide wherever you may be..." (you know the rest) sung in a deep voice as you wander your way through the library. Just a suggestion, don't take Adam as a role model. Things turned out for him, but he was very lucky. Very lucky indeed. 

Philosophy and Jane Austen

Beware, the following post may get a bit involved and lengthy, but it's a post I've been meaning to write up since mid-semester last year. Dedicated to my darling Dr. Cuddeback companion: the lovely Alexandra.

In Philosophy class Alex and I like to make connections to Jane Austen. That's just what Austenites do. If something is worth mentioning, it is worth mentioning with reference to our noble patroness. So naturally, when we got to the part of the class where we talked about Plato's Allegory of the Cave, we looked at it in the eyes of dedicated Austenites and drew a most brilliant connection. For the purpose of this post I must first make some explanation of what the Allegory of the Cave is all about, however, and as I don't feel up to the task myself I have found a brief (yes, this is the briefest one I could find) explanation of it. (You'll thank me later, if I put this into my own words you would find yourself in the greatest muddle.)

The Allegory of the Cave

1. Plato realizes that the general run of humankind can think, and speak, etc., without (so far as they acknowledge) any awareness of his realm of Forms.
2. The allegory of the cave is supposed to explain this.
3. In the allegory, Plato likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire.  Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk. The puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, that pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see. Here is an illustration of Plato’s Cave:
4. Such prisoners would mistake appearance for reality. They would think the things they see on the wall (the shadows) were real; they would know nothing of the real causes of the shadows.
5. So when the prisoners talk, what are they talking about? If an object (a book, let us say) is carried past behind them, and it casts a shadow on the wall, and a prisoner says “I see a book,” what is he talking about?He thinks he is talking about a book, but he is really talking about a shadow. But he uses the word “book.” What does that refer to?
   
6. Plato gives his answer at line (515b2). The text here has puzzled many editors, and it has been frequently emended. The translation in Grube/Reeve gets the point correctly:

   “And if they could talk to one another, don’t you think they’d suppose that the names they used applied to the things they see passing before them?”

7. Plato’s point is that the prisoners would be mistaken. For they would be taking the terms in their language to refer to the shadows that pass before their eyes, rather than (as is correct, in Plato’s view) to the real things that cast the shadows.If a prisoner says “That’s a book” he thinks that the word “book” refers to the very thing he is looking at. But he would be wrong. He’s only looking at a shadow. The real referent of the word “book” he cannot see. To see it, he would have to turn his head around. (http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm)

So basically, there are several levels of knowledge. There is the looking at shadows and believing them to be reality, there is the turning your head and seeing the shadows for what they are, there is the emerging from the cave and seeing reality (but after being in the cave so long your eyes are going to be blinded by the light and you aren't going to grasp it all) and then there is the moment where your eyes have adjusted and you finally take it all in. 

Now comes the moment where I get to explain our Jane Austen comparison. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are many different kinds of Jane Austen fans, and there are many different levels of comprehension for her work. These levels of comprehension correspond with the levels of knowledge. So first we have, what I will call the

LOST IN AUSTEN FANGIRL

She professes to be Jane Austen's biggest fan. She proclaims she has read Jane Austen's books so many times she has lost track (please note, she only ever mentions Pride and Prejudice.) She talks about how she dreams of living in the regency era (and yet, she has practically speaking no knowledge of how to survive in that time period) The fact of the matter is that the Lost in Austen fangirl talks about being obsessed with Jane Austen but what she's really obsessed with is Colin Firth in a wet shirt. Example A.

If you've seen Lost in Austen you will know what I'm talking about..

By this time you can probably guess what level of knowledge I'm drawing this comparison to. The Lost in Austen fangirl is like the person absorbed with the shadows on the wall. They see, but they do not see. They cannot get past Mr. Darcy in the wet shirt, and they cannot get past the shadows of what is there to be seen. It is a superficial knowledge, a knowledge that does not get past the very cover of things.

We then proceed to the second level.

THE BBC PRIDE AND PREJUDICE FANGIRL

This fangirl watches the BBC adaption of Pride and Prejudice on repeat. She adores everything about it. Now, don't get me wrong, the BBC adaption is the best of all adaptions. It is the one that comes closest to capturing the essence of the story, but in this fangirl there's still a lot of obsession with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.

Then we have:

THE FIRST TIME READER

Now, I don't know about you, but the first time I read Pride and Prejudice I just thought of it as a ripping good story. I wasn't looking for deeper meanings, themes, or motifs, I was just enjoying it for the storyline. It amused me and I laughed with the characters but it didn't lead me to deep arduous contemplation on humanity or human nature. You see the reality, but it's too bright to take everything in.

last but not least we have:

THE DEVOTED AUSTENITE

The one who read Jane Austen and see all that is there. They who look beyond the portrayal of the characters from movie adaptions, beyond the story itself, and look for the world as seen through Jane Austen's eyes. This is the reader who is trying to learn from what is written, finding depth and finding meaning. 

In short, this has been a comparison between the different levels of comprehension in the Jane Austen reader, and Plato's Allegory of the cave.

So...That Happened.

1.) On the first day of school I thought I would be well-rested, well-prepared, and punctual. With these good intentions I started out for class well ahead of time. In fact, I was doing brilliantly. I surprised even myself! I arrived a good ten minutes early, found a desk and started laying out my pens and books. I was quite proud of myself (because, to be honest, I'm not known for my time management skills.) Only then did I start to look around my classroom. My thought process went something like well, this is a nice classroom. Not bad, Emily, not bad. You're doing all right here. Ten minutes early, your pens are all nice and symmetrical on your desk, you're doing all right. Hey, that's funny, you know, there's a lot of upperclassmen in my English 101 class, that's not real promising. Actually, I don't see any faces I recognize. That's weird. Where are all the freshmen? So by that time I'm beginning to realize there's something fishy going on. I turned around in my seat and asked resignedly of the girl behind me "this isn't my English 101 class, is it?"

 

2.) On my first Saturday at school I spilled a glass of milk. I spilled a glass of milk all over the table. I spilled a glass of milk into a boy's lap. It was all quite by accident. They asked me to pass a napkin box. I was paying attention to the conversation! They should have known better than to ask me to pass a napkin box! They would learn to know better. Whoops, went the napkin box! Whoops, went the glass of milk! I spent the rest of the meal alternately apologizing and turning beet red.

 

So then I almost got run over by a car. I decided it was a good idea to start a conversation with the boy I had spilt milk on. Play it cool, try and show I wasn't a nincompoop, I could hold a conversation without spilling milk! We're walking out into the parking-lot, I'm not looking where I'm going, next thing I know he's saying "Look out! There's a car right behind you!" I twirl around and realized I just about died. So that story adds a new meaning to "no use crying over spilt milk."

 

3.) I forgot someone's name. That's a natural enough thing to do, we met a lot of people in those first couple weeks of school. The only thing was, instead of doing the normal thing and simply asking for a reintroduction I just pretended I knew it...for a couple of weeks...

 

Until finally someone said it and I had an Aha! moment. Not doing that again.

 

4.) On my last day of the Semester my favorite teacher came up to me and started a conversation. It made my day. I dropped my soup. That did not. I think I just got really interested in what he was saying, or maybe I was just excited, or maybe I was flustered. WHO KNOWS. All I know is one minute I had a cup of steaming soup in one hand and a spoon in another, next thing I knew both were splattered on the floor!

 

5.) So in math class one day the professor was talking about ancient mathematicians, and we came across the quote about the "Moving Finger" and he asked what book that reference was from and I must have been daydreaming because I got really excited and shot my hand up and was like "SHAKESPEARE." No, Emily, this was before Shakespeare. Long before. This was THE BIBLE. I'm sorry, I was just thinking about how Agatha Christie's book was named The Moving Finger and she got that out of Shakespeare and he must have got that out of THE BIBLE. Duh.

 

6.) Italian night I was swing dancing with a boy and my shoe came right off my foot and went flying across the room. "Just a second" I said, trying to muster what grace I had left as I trotted off to find my shoe and return to my partner to finish our dance. He just looked at me with his eyes round, as if to say how did that just happen.

 

7.) One night when I was on the phone with my Mom I dropped a cement block on my foot. Don't ask me how. Again, it was one of those situations, where I just don't have a clue. Anyhow, my foot was quite bruised, and then I was shelving books at the library and I found the biggest book possible (it was one of Michelangelo, and you know how big those get!) and proceeded to promptly drop it on the same foot. Why, Michelangelo, why? Why would you do that to poor little Emily?

 

8.) Did I mention that at the end of last summer I smashed my thumb in the car door? I nearly fainted. Literally. So during school my thumb nail fell off, I decided my thumb without it's nail looked like the Phantom of the Opera's face, and proceeded to sing Phantom of the Opera songs to my roommate. I hope she appreciated that. It took effort.