SSC, BART and more stories from the Middle Ages
Mm, sometimes I can get very disappointed in my fellow students here.
In some cases it is like I'm back at school. Students, hollow-eyedly and rattle-brainedly staring in front of them/at the teacher's shoes (which just happens to be the same direction) as if they've ended up at university by accident instad of an eager mind and hard work (or whatever) ... while we have the privilege of being lectured/seminared to by an enthusiastic expert, flown over al the way from Canada, telling a fascinating and intelligent story about the interpretation of musical performance ... no one seeming to understand the issues that she raises, no one interested in the exciting debates surrounding the topic, no one attentive (in both senses of the word) enough to ask a question ... and if they do say anything, it is utterly unrelated to the discussion we (or rather the teacher) are having, but rather of a relevance and a level of "I think gigs are great." (class wakes up:) "Yeah, you really feel this atmosphere of... I don't know, like..." (gives up) (Please: why don't you try to think a bit first and formulate your thought before you open your mouth?) ... or, even worse, they have made no effort to understand an article, but rather skimmed it for words that might impress the teacher: "Well, when you go to a concert, you know, I've always thought it's all, like, a social construction permeated by cultural boundaries to negotiate the effects of the functional space for the reception of ..." (or any random jumble of those words that give my field of studies a bad name). Sod off. (sorry to use an expression of such questionable origins) In short, it was all rather embarrassing.
(If, by the way, you wonder what, then, my field of studies are: I will tell you next time, for you see: I'm only just finding out myself. But I think I'm on track.)
Maybe I'm being elitist, but is it wrong to be an intellectual elitist at university? Would anyone think it wrong to be a musical elitist at a conservatory? Or to belong to the sportive elite to be sent to the Olympics (to use a metaphor we have been analysing with regard to musical excellence today)? Am I the only one in that entire class to be surprised that no one present (with the exception of one boy - from France - who is afraid to ask questions because he thinks his English isn't good enough, which is a shame, for his academic English is a thousand times better than that of the others in class), no one seems to have the slightest interest for the fulltime occupation they have chosen, voluntarily (and they even pay for)?!
Fortunately it's just in this class that it's that bad.
Now I know that I'm much happier about the attitude of students at UC, so my first reaction was to attribute the difference to the special position of UC. But that would be unfair, and untrue. I'm afraid there's another distinction here that might account for it. My observations until now:
-in my history classes here in Exeter I do encounter interested students;
-id. for my music classes at the department of music at the University of Utrecht;
-id. for my experiences with you guys that study literature, linguistics, history, physics, mathematics, and even biology-related stuff ;-) at other places than UC;
-however, I had similarly disappointing experiences with UC-people in classes from a certain department that is not to be named here, because it's Social Sciences. Sociology, to be more precise (anthropology is an altogether different issue, because in fact it's HUM; in psychology and law I have no valid experience, but politics are part of the problem as well). And this is not because I was trained from the first day I entered UC that as a humanities person I should hate SSC. Far from that. I love the subject matter, I like many theories, I love the teachers. Actually, my thesis will fall under the SSC department.
But the students...
I have to note here that of course all these are generalisations and personal experiences. Not only are they not representative, but I also know they're not representative. This means that a) you of course are an exception and b) I'm still open to SSC persons I do not yet know, and will not judge them on the ground that they study sociology alone. So this was just to get rid of my feelings of frustration about my class today, and because I do genuinely believe that, statistically, sociology students are less motivated, since its big boom about twenty years ago. It's a general phenomenon that the largest and most well-known faculties attract the largest number of students that are just uninterested (and uninteresting) in general. I'm sure the fourteenth century school of theology in Paris was filled not with religious freaks (and when I call someone a freak, it's a compliment), but with adolescent good-for-nothings, sent away by their parents to go and bother other people...
Are you studying at UC? Then you must have noticed the anually returning event of ASIC scolding at SSC-students. For the other readers: every semester the heads of department offer their students the opportunity to discuss their education and suggest improvements. Imagine that at this UC, you have more than three hundred social science students, and about sixty in the humanities department, and this is what happens:
"On Wednesday, we held such a session for the social science department. We promoted this session through our website, the UCSA daily update and in flyers in Dining Hall, and yet nobody showed up for this session. This was a very embarrassing situation, not only for us, but also for you. If students show so little initiative, then how can a Head of Department, who came especially from Amsterdam for this session, take the students seriously?
Luckily, the Humanities Feedback Session was a success. Students and the Head, Orlanda Lie, agree upon that. She explained developments in the departments, the students came up with very valid suggestions and those are taken seriously. Therefore, we know that it makes sense to keep making the effort to organise such sessions"
Anyway: enough criticism for one day (or two).
Today I had to print my first essay, and... my first BART coversheet! A BART coversheet is a piece of paper, featuring my encoded identity (didn't know I have my own barcode) and the identity of the course and the essay (id.). Furthermore, it leaves space for the supervisor's grade, the second examinator's grade, and (surprise sursprise!), a negotiated grade (the mean, I assume). "This sheet is designed in order to provide an occupation and income for dropped out students of sociology. Moreover, it makes the submission of assessed work easier (?), faster (?) and more fun. Procedures are as follows: print one copy of your work, attach to a BART coversheet (always make sure the cover sheet is visible in front of your work, not behind it), staple, print out a second copy of your work, and and attach to the former USING A PAPER-CLIP. Stapled second copies will not be accepted. Submit this pile of bureaucratic shedder-food to the Office of the School of History (Amory 220; we will not be disturbed during lunch, between 12 and 2pm, and, oh, we only accept coursework on tuesdays and thursdays. We don't have a clue why either, because the other three days of the week always seem strangely empty....). Submissions without the appropriate BART coversheet will not be accepted. Nor will work handed in too late, too early, or written in Georgia 12pt, with endnotes instead of footnotes, using the wrong system of referencing (which varies from one subsubdiscipline to the other). You can print your work in any of the three hundred printing stations present on campus. You can give the print command from your home computer, if connected to the residential network. But we won't tell you how this works, so in the end you'll have to climb up to the fifth floor of the Laver Building, on top of the hill, to print your work. Where you will have to go anyway, because you need to top up your account (only we call it "increasing your purse" to confuse you French twits). You can do this by cash, cheque, or any debit card or credit card imaginable, only don't expect the receptionists to be intelligent. (Oh, and except for Dutch debit cards. But you'll have to find that out yourself.) One final word: when you finally manage to submit your work, we advise you to ask for a receipt.
By the way: there's something funny about the floor plan of Laver Building. Notice board on the ground floor says:
level 8: classrooms
level 5: IT reception
levels 4 and 6: toilets
Mm, wonder what those IT students do all day...
Another small thingy about the Middle Ages: you might have heard about the issue of the dichotomy of the public and the private. It's a big thing in anthropology, gender studies, etc. In any case, I can say now that in medieval village life, this separation of the private and the public realm did not exist. Everyone knew everything about everyone. Villagers were encouraged by their parish priest to eavesdrop on fellow villagers. Confession was a public event (quite different from present-day Catholic confession). Village life must have been rather oppressing, if only for this reason. No wonder people went on pilgrimages and crusades! No kidding: the author I read yesterday seriously mentioned this as one of the reasons for people leaving on a pilgrimage. On the other hand, medieval villages lacked something that nowadays is widely disapproved of when it concerns the Victorian Age: they did not have double standards. They were no sexual hypocrites. Now I hate hypocricy, but I do cherish my secret life much too much than to share it with the other villagers... Don't you agree that the most exciting things are those that are hidden? (And I have a Victorian text here that eloquently says just that, but it's too late to copy another lengthy quote. Maybe later.)
Oh, wait, I have another medieval story. Life was not just more local than it is now. Their lack of infrastructure is astonishing. In the eleventh century lived a king (I believe), named Henry (aren't they all?). Henry was very ill. Henry was gonna die. He thought. But God decided otherwise. Henry got a visit from an apparition, that spoke: "go to the tomb of Maximinus (relics were kinda' hot in the time) and you will be cured". Henry woke up and thought: now that's all very nice, but where is that tomb? He had never heard of it, nor anyone at his court, nor was it to be found on any map (not even Google Earth). To make a long story short: he travels around, finds a dead Maximinus in Trier, prays for three nights: nothing happens. He is advised to try in Chinon, some town all the way up in France, which, of course, was no kattepis in those days. Finally he arrives there, but it turns out that the local Saint was actually called Maximus, instead of Maximinus. He tries anyway, prays for three days, but then an angry angel appear, saying: "You fool! Do you really think God goes through all this trouble (right...) to help you, just for you to mock him by going to Maximus, while He had been very clear on the name being Maximinus! Now you shove off to Orléans, where, if you had any sense, you would have gone to in the first place!" Poor ill Henry returns to Orleans (which he had already passed on the way to Chinon), sees the Sinterklaas-like ghost of St. Maximinus, and lives happily ever after. The original rebuke (very comical) by the angel can be found on http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~thead/henry.htm.
Third thingy: I'm discovering a lot here, in books in England, about... France. And even about places where I've been. Unfortunately, when I still came there, in the South of France (on family holidays, between my fourth and sixteenth or so), I was hardly aware of all the wonderful things that can be seen. Ffor example (en jij bent hier vast al stiekem geweest, pa): http://www.conques.com/index1.htm#SOMMAIRE.
Oh, dear, there's something else: in some other book I came accross the journey-metaphor again. A biographer makes this beautiful exposition:
"Abbot Mayeul knew that life itself was but a pilgrimage and that man lived as a fleeting guest upon the earth. He would often undertake the hardships of a pilgrim's life, expending all his bodily strength [...] on travelling across the Alps to Rome. [...] tears would come to his eyes as he approached the city for he knew that he would shortly behold the glorious apostles as if he were standing face to face with them". Isn't that moving?
Here we see something that we stereotypically - and justifiedly - regard as typical for the Middle Ages: religious sensitivity. However, we see also something which we ourselves are so used to that it might surprise us that it was new at the time: that "life itself is but a pilgrimage". And, thirdly, we encounter something that instead clashes with a stereotype we have, since the Renaissance and even more strongly since Burckhardt's nineteenth century book about the Renaissance: the fact that apparently the medievals had enough sense of Individuality to write biographies. Actually, they wrote a hell of a lot of them!
I also encountered a nice bit of communism in a book (already quite old in the eleventh century I believe, but I can look that up if you like) about how to be a good pilgrim, following the example of Saint James: the Liber Sancti Jacobi: "In times past the faithful had but one heart and one soul, and they held all property in common, owning nothing of their own".
To come back to M's question about the radio: I have been listening to BBC radio more often lately. I haven't tuned into any interesting pop-music kind of channel (still have to look for it), but ("classical"/"world"/jazz/misc.) BBC radio 4 already offers a lot: yesterday they had a brillant Irish folk band on. Unfortunately I have no idea who they are, and their play list is rather obscure to me (I mean, I can't make out which would have been the band I heard, except that it was clearly not McCartney):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/latejunction/pip/00jy7/
By the way: the BBC have a Shakespeare month (or so). November 8th for example, BBC4 are playing an "authentic" (but that's a dangerous word: let's call it a reconstructed) Richard II, filmed in the original (reconstructed) Globe Theatre!
To conclude, here are some pictures taken on a November day one entire year ago (oh dear, how time flies) in the surroundings of Smilde, a rather straight village near Assen (Drente/the Netherlands). Thanks to M who sent me the photos, and also features in some of them. The other models are (f.l.t.r.) Y, S and A (for bookings contact Oh La La Agency).
And: smile!
Attention drops... (nr. 1:"Sorry, have to take this one"; nr. 4:"Look guys, if you close your right eye and firmly clench your teeth, your left eye still gets blinded by the light!"; nr. 2: Hey people! Could we please keep it focused? We're in a session here!"; nr. 3: "Now you mention it, d'you know if they pay us for this one?"
(Well, actually, this picture was taken before the other one.)
Er... Right.
Want a reason?
Testing the cohesion of snow as a function of geographical latitude and sanity of experimentor?
Rehearsing for my Siberian exile?
Desparate reaction to cameraperson's cue "do something interesting"?
But I can assure you England has made me a different person...
Want to know what it tastes like?
Try for yourself!
In some cases it is like I'm back at school. Students, hollow-eyedly and rattle-brainedly staring in front of them/at the teacher's shoes (which just happens to be the same direction) as if they've ended up at university by accident instad of an eager mind and hard work (or whatever) ... while we have the privilege of being lectured/seminared to by an enthusiastic expert, flown over al the way from Canada, telling a fascinating and intelligent story about the interpretation of musical performance ... no one seeming to understand the issues that she raises, no one interested in the exciting debates surrounding the topic, no one attentive (in both senses of the word) enough to ask a question ... and if they do say anything, it is utterly unrelated to the discussion we (or rather the teacher) are having, but rather of a relevance and a level of "I think gigs are great." (class wakes up:) "Yeah, you really feel this atmosphere of... I don't know, like..." (gives up) (Please: why don't you try to think a bit first and formulate your thought before you open your mouth?) ... or, even worse, they have made no effort to understand an article, but rather skimmed it for words that might impress the teacher: "Well, when you go to a concert, you know, I've always thought it's all, like, a social construction permeated by cultural boundaries to negotiate the effects of the functional space for the reception of ..." (or any random jumble of those words that give my field of studies a bad name). Sod off. (sorry to use an expression of such questionable origins) In short, it was all rather embarrassing.
(If, by the way, you wonder what, then, my field of studies are: I will tell you next time, for you see: I'm only just finding out myself. But I think I'm on track.)
Maybe I'm being elitist, but is it wrong to be an intellectual elitist at university? Would anyone think it wrong to be a musical elitist at a conservatory? Or to belong to the sportive elite to be sent to the Olympics (to use a metaphor we have been analysing with regard to musical excellence today)? Am I the only one in that entire class to be surprised that no one present (with the exception of one boy - from France - who is afraid to ask questions because he thinks his English isn't good enough, which is a shame, for his academic English is a thousand times better than that of the others in class), no one seems to have the slightest interest for the fulltime occupation they have chosen, voluntarily (and they even pay for)?!
Fortunately it's just in this class that it's that bad.
Now I know that I'm much happier about the attitude of students at UC, so my first reaction was to attribute the difference to the special position of UC. But that would be unfair, and untrue. I'm afraid there's another distinction here that might account for it. My observations until now:
-in my history classes here in Exeter I do encounter interested students;
-id. for my music classes at the department of music at the University of Utrecht;
-id. for my experiences with you guys that study literature, linguistics, history, physics, mathematics, and even biology-related stuff ;-) at other places than UC;
-however, I had similarly disappointing experiences with UC-people in classes from a certain department that is not to be named here, because it's Social Sciences. Sociology, to be more precise (anthropology is an altogether different issue, because in fact it's HUM; in psychology and law I have no valid experience, but politics are part of the problem as well). And this is not because I was trained from the first day I entered UC that as a humanities person I should hate SSC. Far from that. I love the subject matter, I like many theories, I love the teachers. Actually, my thesis will fall under the SSC department.
But the students...
I have to note here that of course all these are generalisations and personal experiences. Not only are they not representative, but I also know they're not representative. This means that a) you of course are an exception and b) I'm still open to SSC persons I do not yet know, and will not judge them on the ground that they study sociology alone. So this was just to get rid of my feelings of frustration about my class today, and because I do genuinely believe that, statistically, sociology students are less motivated, since its big boom about twenty years ago. It's a general phenomenon that the largest and most well-known faculties attract the largest number of students that are just uninterested (and uninteresting) in general. I'm sure the fourteenth century school of theology in Paris was filled not with religious freaks (and when I call someone a freak, it's a compliment), but with adolescent good-for-nothings, sent away by their parents to go and bother other people...
Are you studying at UC? Then you must have noticed the anually returning event of ASIC scolding at SSC-students. For the other readers: every semester the heads of department offer their students the opportunity to discuss their education and suggest improvements. Imagine that at this UC, you have more than three hundred social science students, and about sixty in the humanities department, and this is what happens:
"On Wednesday, we held such a session for the social science department. We promoted this session through our website, the UCSA daily update and in flyers in Dining Hall, and yet nobody showed up for this session. This was a very embarrassing situation, not only for us, but also for you. If students show so little initiative, then how can a Head of Department, who came especially from Amsterdam for this session, take the students seriously?
Luckily, the Humanities Feedback Session was a success. Students and the Head, Orlanda Lie, agree upon that. She explained developments in the departments, the students came up with very valid suggestions and those are taken seriously. Therefore, we know that it makes sense to keep making the effort to organise such sessions"
Anyway: enough criticism for one day (or two).
Today I had to print my first essay, and... my first BART coversheet! A BART coversheet is a piece of paper, featuring my encoded identity (didn't know I have my own barcode) and the identity of the course and the essay (id.). Furthermore, it leaves space for the supervisor's grade, the second examinator's grade, and (surprise sursprise!), a negotiated grade (the mean, I assume). "This sheet is designed in order to provide an occupation and income for dropped out students of sociology. Moreover, it makes the submission of assessed work easier (?), faster (?) and more fun. Procedures are as follows: print one copy of your work, attach to a BART coversheet (always make sure the cover sheet is visible in front of your work, not behind it), staple, print out a second copy of your work, and and attach to the former USING A PAPER-CLIP. Stapled second copies will not be accepted. Submit this pile of bureaucratic shedder-food to the Office of the School of History (Amory 220; we will not be disturbed during lunch, between 12 and 2pm, and, oh, we only accept coursework on tuesdays and thursdays. We don't have a clue why either, because the other three days of the week always seem strangely empty....). Submissions without the appropriate BART coversheet will not be accepted. Nor will work handed in too late, too early, or written in Georgia 12pt, with endnotes instead of footnotes, using the wrong system of referencing (which varies from one subsubdiscipline to the other). You can print your work in any of the three hundred printing stations present on campus. You can give the print command from your home computer, if connected to the residential network. But we won't tell you how this works, so in the end you'll have to climb up to the fifth floor of the Laver Building, on top of the hill, to print your work. Where you will have to go anyway, because you need to top up your account (only we call it "increasing your purse" to confuse you French twits). You can do this by cash, cheque, or any debit card or credit card imaginable, only don't expect the receptionists to be intelligent. (Oh, and except for Dutch debit cards. But you'll have to find that out yourself.) One final word: when you finally manage to submit your work, we advise you to ask for a receipt.
By the way: there's something funny about the floor plan of Laver Building. Notice board on the ground floor says:
level 8: classrooms
level 5: IT reception
levels 4 and 6: toilets
Mm, wonder what those IT students do all day...
Another small thingy about the Middle Ages: you might have heard about the issue of the dichotomy of the public and the private. It's a big thing in anthropology, gender studies, etc. In any case, I can say now that in medieval village life, this separation of the private and the public realm did not exist. Everyone knew everything about everyone. Villagers were encouraged by their parish priest to eavesdrop on fellow villagers. Confession was a public event (quite different from present-day Catholic confession). Village life must have been rather oppressing, if only for this reason. No wonder people went on pilgrimages and crusades! No kidding: the author I read yesterday seriously mentioned this as one of the reasons for people leaving on a pilgrimage. On the other hand, medieval villages lacked something that nowadays is widely disapproved of when it concerns the Victorian Age: they did not have double standards. They were no sexual hypocrites. Now I hate hypocricy, but I do cherish my secret life much too much than to share it with the other villagers... Don't you agree that the most exciting things are those that are hidden? (And I have a Victorian text here that eloquently says just that, but it's too late to copy another lengthy quote. Maybe later.)
Oh, wait, I have another medieval story. Life was not just more local than it is now. Their lack of infrastructure is astonishing. In the eleventh century lived a king (I believe), named Henry (aren't they all?). Henry was very ill. Henry was gonna die. He thought. But God decided otherwise. Henry got a visit from an apparition, that spoke: "go to the tomb of Maximinus (relics were kinda' hot in the time) and you will be cured". Henry woke up and thought: now that's all very nice, but where is that tomb? He had never heard of it, nor anyone at his court, nor was it to be found on any map (not even Google Earth). To make a long story short: he travels around, finds a dead Maximinus in Trier, prays for three nights: nothing happens. He is advised to try in Chinon, some town all the way up in France, which, of course, was no kattepis in those days. Finally he arrives there, but it turns out that the local Saint was actually called Maximus, instead of Maximinus. He tries anyway, prays for three days, but then an angry angel appear, saying: "You fool! Do you really think God goes through all this trouble (right...) to help you, just for you to mock him by going to Maximus, while He had been very clear on the name being Maximinus! Now you shove off to Orléans, where, if you had any sense, you would have gone to in the first place!" Poor ill Henry returns to Orleans (which he had already passed on the way to Chinon), sees the Sinterklaas-like ghost of St. Maximinus, and lives happily ever after. The original rebuke (very comical) by the angel can be found on http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~thead/henry.htm.
Third thingy: I'm discovering a lot here, in books in England, about... France. And even about places where I've been. Unfortunately, when I still came there, in the South of France (on family holidays, between my fourth and sixteenth or so), I was hardly aware of all the wonderful things that can be seen. Ffor example (en jij bent hier vast al stiekem geweest, pa): http://www.conques.com/index1.htm#SOMMAIRE.
Oh, dear, there's something else: in some other book I came accross the journey-metaphor again. A biographer makes this beautiful exposition:
"Abbot Mayeul knew that life itself was but a pilgrimage and that man lived as a fleeting guest upon the earth. He would often undertake the hardships of a pilgrim's life, expending all his bodily strength [...] on travelling across the Alps to Rome. [...] tears would come to his eyes as he approached the city for he knew that he would shortly behold the glorious apostles as if he were standing face to face with them". Isn't that moving?
Here we see something that we stereotypically - and justifiedly - regard as typical for the Middle Ages: religious sensitivity. However, we see also something which we ourselves are so used to that it might surprise us that it was new at the time: that "life itself is but a pilgrimage". And, thirdly, we encounter something that instead clashes with a stereotype we have, since the Renaissance and even more strongly since Burckhardt's nineteenth century book about the Renaissance: the fact that apparently the medievals had enough sense of Individuality to write biographies. Actually, they wrote a hell of a lot of them!
I also encountered a nice bit of communism in a book (already quite old in the eleventh century I believe, but I can look that up if you like) about how to be a good pilgrim, following the example of Saint James: the Liber Sancti Jacobi: "In times past the faithful had but one heart and one soul, and they held all property in common, owning nothing of their own".
To come back to M's question about the radio: I have been listening to BBC radio more often lately. I haven't tuned into any interesting pop-music kind of channel (still have to look for it), but ("classical"/"world"/jazz/misc.) BBC radio 4 already offers a lot: yesterday they had a brillant Irish folk band on. Unfortunately I have no idea who they are, and their play list is rather obscure to me (I mean, I can't make out which would have been the band I heard, except that it was clearly not McCartney):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/latejunction/pip/00jy7/
By the way: the BBC have a Shakespeare month (or so). November 8th for example, BBC4 are playing an "authentic" (but that's a dangerous word: let's call it a reconstructed) Richard II, filmed in the original (reconstructed) Globe Theatre!
To conclude, here are some pictures taken on a November day one entire year ago (oh dear, how time flies) in the surroundings of Smilde, a rather straight village near Assen (Drente/the Netherlands). Thanks to M who sent me the photos, and also features in some of them. The other models are (f.l.t.r.) Y, S and A (for bookings contact Oh La La Agency).
And: smile!
Attention drops... (nr. 1:"Sorry, have to take this one"; nr. 4:"Look guys, if you close your right eye and firmly clench your teeth, your left eye still gets blinded by the light!"; nr. 2: Hey people! Could we please keep it focused? We're in a session here!"; nr. 3: "Now you mention it, d'you know if they pay us for this one?"(Well, actually, this picture was taken before the other one.)
Er... Right.
Want a reason?
Testing the cohesion of snow as a function of geographical latitude and sanity of experimentor?
Rehearsing for my Siberian exile?
Desparate reaction to cameraperson's cue "do something interesting"?
But I can assure you England has made me a different person...
Want to know what it tastes like?
Try for yourself!
posted by Anna P.H. Geurts | 11:59 pm
