Good to wake up on a Sunday morning with a head-full of ideas and a proper old-fashioned big red glow across the horizon. Even if I don't have to be up for several more hours. Even if a red sky in the morning is proverbially not good news for shepherds. Heating on for an hour, down in the house, and I shall light the stove in the barn in a few minutes. Red to bright red and orange, with a kind of purple and blue effect on the banded wisps of cloud above. Listening to the lady in the art department at the Truro College open day yesterday. Students do weeks of colour early in their course. I suppose I must have described weeks' worth of sunrises here. Won't look back; fear of lack of variety.
And the man in the archaeology department, very enthusiastic, infectiously so, about how they lived, the evidence that could be found, what it told us and how our ideas had changed. He doesn't get many students dropping/switching out, because only enthusiasts apply in the first place. And, come to think of it, the lady in the Eng. Lit. department, pitching Frankenstein, Dracula, Dorian Gray, The Handmaid's Tale as set books - and gently pointing out that her course wasn't the media one. Not sure what you can get from an open day beyond a feel for the place and an impression of the staff. And I suppose enthusiasm is about the best impression, if you're prepared to be an enthusiastic learner.
How infinite is self-discovery? We seem to inhabit types, and our questions, assumptions to/about each other seem so often to describe "the other" as a component of our selves. There's an implied "Given", in the sense: "Given you are this person (the sum of my current assumptions about you), what is the answer to my question, from the limited set of answers my assumptions make available? If that isn't too convoluted, and I suppose it is, but if the proper approach to a day's thought is to unravel it - perhaps it's the right kind of tangle. I wonder if self-discovery begins as an exercise in seeing through our assumptions about others.
And the man in the archaeology department, very enthusiastic, infectiously so, about how they lived, the evidence that could be found, what it told us and how our ideas had changed. He doesn't get many students dropping/switching out, because only enthusiasts apply in the first place. And, come to think of it, the lady in the Eng. Lit. department, pitching Frankenstein, Dracula, Dorian Gray, The Handmaid's Tale as set books - and gently pointing out that her course wasn't the media one. Not sure what you can get from an open day beyond a feel for the place and an impression of the staff. And I suppose enthusiasm is about the best impression, if you're prepared to be an enthusiastic learner.
How infinite is self-discovery? We seem to inhabit types, and our questions, assumptions to/about each other seem so often to describe "the other" as a component of our selves. There's an implied "Given", in the sense: "Given you are this person (the sum of my current assumptions about you), what is the answer to my question, from the limited set of answers my assumptions make available? If that isn't too convoluted, and I suppose it is, but if the proper approach to a day's thought is to unravel it - perhaps it's the right kind of tangle. I wonder if self-discovery begins as an exercise in seeing through our assumptions about others.