The Last Week

Dearest Blog Readers,
I apologize for neglecting you, I have been busy and when I do have some extra time to myself I use that time to sleep.
It is Thursday evening of the last week of Summer School.  It has been a last-week sort of week.
Sunday was rather relaxing and I spent most of it alone.  I was able to sleep in and then do some much needed cleaning, taking out the trash etc.  I went to English mass at noon.  Before it started the priest came around and asked where I was from, I said the United States and then he said Oh, alright so you speak English well, will you do the first reading? Uhhhh... yeah I guess (I mean really, how do you say no to a priest when he is that direct and you have no excuses?) So I read during mass and then we had coffee afterward.  Two women from Kenya hosted in the basement of the church.  It was really quaint. It was a small affair, the two Kenyan women, a man from Somalia (I think?), an au pair originally from England but had been living in France for 15-16 years, a guy from Poland, my American friend Charlie and then me.  I'm glad that coffee after church is practiced world-wide.
After that I headed in the direction to get back to the dorms but my feet led me elsewhere.  I climbed to the top of the largest hill in Jyväskylä and then further up the tower that overlooks the city.  It is called Harjun Hill/Harjun Tower.  Wow. You can see a lot from up there.

The Tower

Like a good tourist that I am I took lots of pictures.  

The City Center

City Center/Main Lake/Part of Campus

Harjun Stadium

Dorms and the Ski Jump

After a peaceful walk and a nap I had dinner with Merle, we made French toast and an omlet.  It is a funny how everyone has their own version of the same food.  Before we met up and were in the planning stage she told me we should make pancakes.  From earlier meals I learned that pancakes to non-americans is the equivalent of a crêpe.  Turns out we made french toast.  She had a Dutch word for it but I don't remember it.  Doesn't matter what you call it, it tasted good.  Once our bellies were full we went and played soccer/football for about an hour.  Then sweet sleep.

My final class, Argumentation and Rhetoric started Monday morning at 9:15.  It is an interesting class.  It is offered from the Philosophy department, so lots and lots of thinking.  The amount of questions that can be asked leads to an infinite loop.  Just as you think you have something resolved another question comes up and breaks down your entire statement or claim.  I shall elaborate on this class later, too much to tell in this post.  After class my friend, Becca, from Kansas and I made a pasta something dinner together.  We talked about boys, ahhh one of my favorite subjects.  It was fun and refreshing to talk about such a light subject after such a heavy day of class.  

Tuesday was class again, heavy again, lots of thinking again, more philosophy, more listening (and not listening) to lectures.  That evening the free time program was to have Sauna in the student union and make "pancakes" which are actually crêpes.  The room that is the student union is swanky.  It is modern and feels young.  I liked it.  We were able to chat and listen to Finnish radio and enjoy various worldly versions of crêpes.  There are three new Dutch guys that are here just for this week of class.  We had some very intense discussions about politics.  Oh joy.  They are extremely anti-gun rights and just couldn't understand why it was even an issue.  I wasn't prepared to a debate and did not have energy after a day of philosophical questiony class.  I did my best though to get them to at least see the other view point.  So much learning going on over here.  It isn't just class, it isn't just the obvious, explicit stuff.  Mostly it is learning about people.  It was still pretty fun, regardless of the controversial topics discussed.  Bed.

Middle of the week, Wednesday, attended class.  Worked on some homework, took a nap, then we had a girl's night.  Lauren, the girl from San Diego, left today so last night was her last night.  She invited the girls over for wine, pizza and painting nails.  I ate some reindeer pizza, it was pretty delicious.  The wine was nice and sweet.  My toes and nails are ready for sandals and admiring.  It was weird to think that we have been here for so long, yet so short of time and we most likely never ever see these people again.  So much has been shared between all of us and just like a snap we'll all go our separate ways never to cross paths again.  So our goodbyes were said with Lauren.  I'm sorry that I was so harsh toward her in the beginning.  I did not fully understand all her story, I still don't but I have more information to formulate my opinion of her and in conclusion I don't mind her company.  I don't know if I would ever be her best friend but I could consider her a friend.  I wish her well in whatever the future holds for her.

Which brings us to today, Thursday, June 13th 2013.  I walked to class this morning and smelled the glorious lilacs along the way.  Their smell makes the walk about 20 times more enjoyable.  

Class, oh class, oh so very interesting Argumentation and Rhetoric class.  So far we have covered pragmatic dialectic argumentation styles and what makes a good argument, etc. etc. lots of jargony philosophical stuff.  Most of this stuff seems pretty obvious to me but it is important to define things and come to general consensus.  An example of something I found obvious and redundant to be discussing in class is the 4. Relevance Rule (Van Eemeren and Grootenberg, Amsterdam School of Argument)

"Standpoints may not be defended by non-argumentation or argumentation that is not relevant to the standpoint." My immediate thought was well, yeah, duh, you can't throw something irrelevant into a standpoint to make an argument or counter-argument.  It just doesn't make sense to do that.  Oh, aww that is the point.  It is logical to me.  Logic, what is logic? What is logical? What makes something logical? Why is it logical? How can we know it is logical?  And on... and on... and on... We have to define something, even though it seems simple, because without order, reason, logic, definition then there is chaos and argumentation with no end.  Accepted understanding gets us closer to solving problems and making decisions.  

The Classroom

Can you see how this class is exhausting?  Besides talking about the elements of argumentation we also have discussed the Milgram experiments and we were assigned to read the Petsko letter.  If you are not familiar with these things I suggest you use the very accessible internet to your advantage.  I specifically want to talk about the Petsko letter.  This is a letter written in 2010 by Gregory A. Petsko to the President of SUNY (State University of New York in Albany).  In my sense of goodness, I valued this letter as good.  Of course then you can ask what is goodness? What makes it good? How do you know it is good? Is it logically accepted as good? but we don't want to get into that.  In my opinion it is a good paper and I think you should read it also.  It talks about the importance of being educated in a wide variety of subjects and having a broad knowledge of sciences and humanities.  The context is that the president of SUNY is facing some serious budget issues and he has decided to cut some humanity departments.  Before reading this paper I probably would have sided with the president and used the same pattern of thinking as him to reach a decision.  However, this article was persuasive enough and I find his claims powerful enough to change my mind.  In the future I hope that I keep this in mind.  I hope I can see as many perspectives as possible and reach the best decision.  Tomorrow is Friday so we have an essay exam scheduled for class.  This one might actually be difficult.  I also have to finish the homework assignments.  

The free time activity planned for tonight is a pub-crawl/karaoke night.  As much as I enjoy socializing I think I'll turn in early in order to study and complete the assignments.  I'll let you know what I end up doing in future posts.  ;) Stay tuned for final weekend happenings.

Looking forward to returning home.

Cheers,

McCall