5 pages

I had a meeting with my thesis promoter.

AGAIN.

I didn't prepare for it for more than an hour and a half.

I thought he was going to yell at me again because I clearly didn't get it.

I thought he was going to fire me.

We had a great chat about Augustine, and I left with a very clear picture of what he wanted.

He only rubbed his forehead in frustration once. I feel like that's a new record, especially with no yelling involved.

I stayed up all night.

My thesis promoter didn't show up.

I sent him an e-mail.

Maybe we'll meet eventually.

Brennan so tired and full of crying because he went and photocopied articles and the bright lights hurt his eyes. His very very dry eyes.

I am screwed.

It's 4 am.

My notes are terrible.

I have a meeting with my thesis advisor at 11am.

I have class at 9am.

I am drowning in articles and secondary sources.

In other words, I'm currently living out my thesis. This happens so often with philosophy lately that it's starting to make me motion-sick. I write an exam on Spinoza, all I can do is think like Spinoza for a week. I sit in a class on psychoanalysis, everything is a cigar. No, wait, the other way. Whatever. The point is that I want to have a good meeting, but I'm not ready. I know what I have to say, but I know it can't be ready by 11am, even if I did feel like working on it.

I'm now going to go and write something about how smart I think I am.

Please excuse me.

Thesis meeting consisted in

Him telling me he didn't like it
come back next week

And, I suck.

ad infinitum, 15 minutes.

I think I will be happy if I can have a thesis meeting where I don't manage to get my thesis promoter into an apoplectic rage. Because I bring out the best in him. Really.

Although my friends tell me that if I listen and do what he says, that's all that really matters. I think they're right, but I was hoping I had nailed some of what he wanted me to say.

Hit and miss...or, rather, miss, miss, whiff, dislocate arm swinging, go to hospital, more missing, get hit in the nose with the ball, bleed congenially-to-death.

Today I read a really stupid article, and I thought it was going to be great. What a let down.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with my thesis advisor.

It's nine-thirty at night.

I'm exhausted.

I want to go for a run.

I ate too much today.

And I have no idea what I'm going to say because I'm so tired.

WORST POSSIBLE DAY EVER TO HAVE A THESIS MEETING=TOMORROW.

Thank you, thank you.

Now going to cram for thesis meeting.

Sigh. =)

This week I

e-mailed my thesis advisor
read a bunch of articles (I don't remember how many)


Of the current research material left to read I have

five articles
8 books (pieces)
6-8 books chapters I photocopied, maybe three of which I'll use.


Then go photocopy some more articles (about 25-35, I think), and then I get about three or four more books, and then I find some theses in the library, and then that's it. Pretty much half way there.

Today I

finished 2/3rds of 2 Phd applications
read 2 articles
flipped through a book I should really be reading
tore my hair out looking for contact info on the GRE website to get my scores again
ate pudding.


The last was less fulfulling than you would think.

And I really should have made it 2/3rds through ALL my PhD applications tonight.I still have 2 or so more to do. I think I'm dropping SLU as a choice. I was gonna, but no real Augustine scholars there. Instead, the list looks like:

Norte Dame (just because)
Villinova (Without them, no Augustinian Studies journal)
KU Leuven (Because I have very good reasons for not wanting to move, like, if I can, the funding is great and so are the people...generally speaking)
Vanderbilt (Which would be a change of major, but a sweet, sweet program, and a REALLY great promoter, I think. Happiness ensues.)

So, that looks like the final list. (Aka. I just don't have the effort to do more, and as it is, I'm going to have to ask for people to write me four reference letters as is. That's stupid. But I have three references, I think.)


Which reminds me, I need to make a small document stating how great I am and what I have been doing this past year and blah blah blah. Geez, boredom. I hate this stuff. But, as long as I get in somewhere and there is money included, sounds alright to me.

I had to cancel a meeting with my thesis supervisor because my boss signed me up for working all day in Brussels. In other words, I'm starting to let other things affect my thesis.

This really wears me out. I REALLY want to be doing nothing else but working on my thesis. But, I also need to apply for PhDs. I don't know what to do with myself sometimes, honestly.

Theatre is going alright, although I don't know where I'm going to find the time to do anything other than write a play, work, go to class, read for my thesis. I think it's all going to be the same as when I lived in Canada. It's strange, because now that I feel like I have my life in Canada back. I can't decide if I like it or if it's unhealthy. I'm not sure, but it's certainly culturally against the grain, I'd say.

Today

I started 3 Phd Applications

Man, I hate it. It's so many numbers and I can never keep track of anything. The amount of time I am going to have to spend to finish these is painful. I'm really exhausted, so I don't think I'll get to anything else on my list, not even articles, maybe just some letters I've been meaning to send. A couple things here and there. But I work tomorrow at 9am. Eh heh. Sigh. In Liege.

But I think I'll work on a couple things artistic this weekend. Just for me. To make me feel better. Especially since I feel sick. =)

Today I


read 5 articles, 3 of which were useless.

Yay.

=)

I was supposed to do PhD stuff, but between being stupid in random ways, and being tired and kinda sick, and needing nap every two minutes, there just wasn't time. It's killer, really it is. But since I don't work tomorrow, I will do them then.

Today I read

5 articles

wrote up my final draft of my proposed thesis

Sent my thesis advisor an ultimatum to meet with me next week

included the attachement for him to read. (Le stress.)


So, yes, now I'm making him read things that he probably thinks are useless. I'm sure it' s a waste of his time, but my grads studies reference books says that an outline really helps to clear up any big misunderstandings at the start of the thesis, so it seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm of the opinion that no matter what I say, I'm not sure I'll impress him. On the bright side, I had a reason to be suspicious of my writing...I spelled 'office hours' as 'offive hours' in my e-mail to him. I nearly died because I almost DIDN'T spell-check it before I sent it.


I honestly don't know how grad students survived before spell checking. I'm assuming they had real brains. I know mine's fake.

In other news, I'm going to bed. I'm so tired it hurts. Again.

Yesterday I

Read some...stuff....mostly grad school PhD stuff. I e-mailed about 5 people about doing a possible PhD with them before I realized I had made a critical mistake of leaving out a 'that' at some point in one of my e-mails. On the bright side, it wasn't a GLARING error, and really, I did look it over several times quickly to scan for errors. It's much better that I thought it would be as an e-mail, really. Also, three people have already replied!!!!!!! But I have no idea what they said yet. I don't really want to look, but then I do. I swear, it's like wondering if there is a boogey-man in your closet. I probably shouldn't talk about closests...ok, similie over. And I just found out what a pataphor is. Definitely not a pataphysician.

OK. Back to writing e-mails for Janus Theatre.

Today I read

3 articles

I would have read a 4th but I forgot half of it at home and brought scrap paper instead
Lame.

Also, I have books majorly overdue.


Also lame.

Today I

Photocopied articles, many of them that were photocopied badly the first time, about 9 of them, and I read

The Myth of Augustine Being a Great Sinner
A Response article on O'Connell's Work on Augustine's Early Theory of Mankind.

Titles sort of mixed up, don't remember them, don't want to open a document or search the web for a title.

Oh, and I typed up four pages of biblo, although it's not hard, since most of it is from the same journal. Crazy. I feel silly about that, but I guess I can't help it if no one wants to write about my guy. That's academics for you...it's all in a central field, and then that's all. =P

Tough stuff. Especially when it's so easy to find the bib info on the web, since the journal that I'm using publishes all their info on the web in pretty much copy + paster-able quality so that I can do all the biblio really quickly. It almost feels like cheating...except that I know that I'm saving time that is often wasted on details like this.

I'm falling asleep at the computer again. Time for bed, yes?

This week I

read somewhere between 8-12 articles.

I am 2 articles below what the average should be, but it's alright because a large portion of this week and last was spent photocopying.

Today I go and see my promoter and tell him to sign yet another useless thesis form, because I am not ready to say anything significant yet. While I do have ideas, I'm just not at the point where I can articulate myself as if my thesis is already finished.

Today I

photocopied 100 pages worth of secondary reading, all of it from Augustian Studies.


I have about 2 more journals which I plan to ravage from 1970 onwards, and then I have to start picking through dissertations. I am going to have to read all of this as well. Eh heh. Go me.

AUGH! I JUST CREATED A TABLE OF CONTENTS AND IT SUCKS! AUGH!

In other news, I had another wash over feeling of "There is so much to do, my eyeballs are going to bleed from the pain of it all." That happened while I sort of skipped around to a grad website and e-mailed them about applying. Yay.

I think I will go and get some books after I send some more e-mails to grad schools, and then go read some.

OK,

I MAY have an idea about a proposed outline...here's my first attempt

-I want to say that Augustine is wrong in a certain respect because Augustinian thinking about sin and evil remove the goodness completely from human nature. Since we are made from nothing, human nature basically is nothing. While this makes sense when taken to its extreme, it's still a little strange. How can we talk about any sort of goodness at all if it's all grace? Augustine seems to change his mind about the effectiveness of grace and the effectiveness of free will later in his life.

-I want to say that Augustine's change in thinking happened because of battles between the Manicheans (which the original thesis of evil is founded) and the Pelagians (where it gets a bit too practical and not exactly solved, either) and that he could never quite resolve the problem because the Pelagians were asking a question about the human being and its nature, and this has to do with Augustine's thinking on how he thinks original sin is transmitted.

-From this I want to glean that every evil for Augustine is a moral evil, and that this means that evil is a justified concept for Augustine, and an explainable one. I think I need to look up some stuff on Augustine and theodicy, here, since I am wondering whether or not people would consider Augustine proto-theodicy, or perhaps even having a theodicy of his own. This seems strange to me, (my gut instinct tells me) but I'm not sure.

-As well, I want to say that Augustine makes sin a moral concept, and evil a theological concept. This is what will actually require an argument, the rest is merely historical interpretation of philosophical disputes and texts. This would be my one thought, if it can be called that, dealing with the problems and ramifications of how every form of sin is a form of moral evil. Other than that, I don't think I need much.

So, maybe my thesis will look like this:

-stages of Augustine's thinking, rely on texts that point out the changes in his thought (that article in the bookmarks should help.) This needs to be precise, and therefore briefer than what I think.

-Augustine on evil from a Biblical(Starting with the Garden of Eden, but moving elsewhere), theological (the Garden of Eden), moral (lying, for example) point of view.

-From the moral stage, we can see that every form of evil is a moral form of evil, and that this means evil itself is explainable only theologically, since evil requires first origins, which Augustine locates in the Myth of the Fall (Might need to look at Ricoeur again, here). Sin, however, is the human problem of badly willing, and this makes sin a moral problem, not a theological one. By shifting the grounds like this, it is easy to make the link that every form of evil is a form of moral evil, since the explanation of why evil happens, has a moral cause, but that every form of sin, um......um.....ok, I started at my computer screen for about 7 minutes blankly. We'll figure this part out in a bit. Back to writing and reading.

I started working on my thesis again, after an extremely long hiatus, while I tried to get everything figured out for my job and stuff. I started writing on September 18, 2006, and I wrote about a page for the preface-esque like part.


Today, however, I JUST REALIZED WHAT PROF. STEEL WAS TALKING ABOUT. I should feel smart, but OH MY GOSH DO I FEEL STUPID. IT TOOK ME 6 MONTHS OF READING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT PROF. STEEL WANTED ME TO PUT IN MY THESIS. THIS IS GOING TO BE MUCH, MUCH EASIER.

The argument goes as follows. The Manicheans say that there is a substantial difference between good and evil, and Augustine claims that the Manicheans ask the wrong question first, starting with 'where is evil' instead of 'what is evil.' Augustine starts with asking what is evil, using the framing and explanation of this question to refute the Manicheans, and eventually we come to the idea that evil is a corruption of our natures, because we are made from nothing, not directly of God's nature. So our nature is from nothing, not from God directly. So, corruption is natural, and therefore part of our natures. This means that corruption is purposeful, and as Augustine says in the 'Against the Fundamental Epistle of Manichaeus' corruption is used to chastise sinners, and therefore every evil is a form of moral evil, since corruption serves the purpose of chastising us and bringing us closer to God. In other words, corruption is meant to bring us back to God, every time. This is huge because this means the question of evil becomes one of finding meaning in evil, and this could mean the beginning of theodicies, the start of the idea of Heidegger's idea of truth, everything. This has huge ramifications for how to think about the history of philosophy, and what connects where. This not only solidifies the link from Plato, to Augustine, to Descartes, to Derrida/Heidegger, but almost dwarfs Plato in creating the first real link of philosophy since ancient Greek philosophy. This is because the problem of evil has its first real start in Augustine, and this means that philosophy ever after is indebted to this sense of 'sensible moral evil,' which has shaped centuries of philosophy. This could mean that the real start comes from Augustine, and through Augutinian eyes, we look back to Plato to re-examine these texts. For surely, every problem of looking at Greek philosophy has been a problem of somehow separating the Christian lens from the Platonic lens. And who created this fusion and confusion better than Augustine? Whether this is good or bad is hard to say, since it's had such a huge impact on history, I guess, but man, nothing like figuring out way too late that your thesis advisor is saying things that make perfect sense and that you're a complete dummy.
Oy.

OK, back to reading.