on slander

right, so, after an argument with one of the girls after class, i decided to post the following disclaimer to the group (wherein i'd posted this):

as a self-defensive measure (someone mentioned libel / slander today) - nothing that i have said about [hatman] has been said in bad faith. i really believe that he is a terrible teacher. i can't, however, *prove* that he doesn't understand the things he talks about, only that it doesn't seem so. i don't think he's evil, or a monster; but i also don't think it's alright to have him "teaching" first years.
in particular.
i will not withdraw the poem i posted earlier - it's my perception of events, and entirely subjective.

although it was nice to see that a number of my fellow students have my back on this one, i didn't expect the following private message from the girl i'd been speaking to:

i'm sorry if what i said after the exam offended you.
and i thought the poem was truly awesome - even if i don't share your dislike of [hatman].
so, just wanted to say that i'm sorry and i didn't mean for it to be so aggressive or to attack you personally.

there was no way i was letting a misunderstanding of that magnitude slide!

what?! *HELL* no!

listen up:

1) you weren't aggressive at all

2) you are completely and utterly entitled to your opinion, and i would have been upset with you if you HADN'T shared it

3) it *is* personal :P

4) what you said is totally valid, and it's what got me thinking about libel.
unless someone else actually said the word, but that's neither here nor there.
either way, i did need to make everything clear. and something you said is totally correct - everyone saying "fire him!" is not the way it's meant to be. i would be totally satisfied if he were to remain here, and teach anthropology instead. in fact, as long as he's not teaching stuff he doesn't get (or seem to get, he says, covering his ass) i'm totally fine with him. i don't think he's a bad person, but i do believe that we deserve better lecturers.

5) i really appreciate your appreciation of my poem ^_^

6) *I* apologize if you thought this was about you - i'm really grateful that you told me something i needed to hear :)

have a great evening!

since then, situation normal :))

---
today began with a failed attempt at using pre-mixed pancake batter - pg's was excellent, this stuff stuck stubbornly to the pan. that was followed by a flurry of last-minute definitions on the bus to campus, and then a debate outside that largely revolved around preparing to take the supplementary exam. pre-exam coffee was spent discussing japan with the girl who dreamed about me; it turns out she lived there for five years - pretty crazy.

the exam itself was tough. aside from the bureacratics of it being a bit tedious - boy, was i glad that the girl two rows ahead of me had tippex - the identifications weren't so bad, the short questions were a bitch and the essay choices *sucked*. i must have spent about fifteen minutes just figuring out what i was going to write about, and another half an hour sorting out how much i could talk about anything.

my essay was so cheap that i will be greatly surprised if it scores me so much as a passing grade, never mind the 100% that i need :/

my brain was so overtaxed by the time i was done that i was wondering if it were possible to get the extra credit question wrong: "what was your favourite work, and why?". i answered the rime of the ancient mariner, but refrained from supplying the actual reason: because it's piratey, and reminds me of the comic-within-a-comic in watchmen.

apparently a few of us made a lot of noise outside, reviewing the exam. when we were told to shut it, i could only hope that it was the other part of our class that we'd been disturbing, and that they'd managed to glean something useful from us :P

i was mentally exhausted after the exam. work would've been mundane if i hadn't spent the few hours there in a meeting which went almost nowhere, or fighting with the SVN. rebasing manually took so long that as soon as i finally had everything sorted out i fled the office to call it a night.

i only stopped to talk to a co-worker, who's a music major and might be interested in joining forces. that would be really cool.

i went book shopping to burn the rest of my birthday gift cards: this time i got mary shelley - frankenstein and robert louis stevenson - dr jekyll and mr hyde, grimm's fairy tales, dostoyevsky - crime and punishment, oscar wilde - the importance of being earnest, robert louis stevenson - treasure island and jonathan swift - gulliver's travels. now i've been online *way* too long, and have to run to pg's. tomorrow morning's the *DUM* *DUM* *DUM* freud narrative analysis exam. my first take-home :)