Letter to The Prospective Philosophy Student

Dear Prospective Philosophy Student,
Your experience in the philosophy in literature class will most likely vary widely depending on which teacher you have, as well as which group you would end up in, so there's little I could really say to prepare you for it. If you end up with circumstances similar to mine, you will have more than a couple units which aren't typically included in a philosophy in literature class. In a way, philosophy is too vague an idea to have a set curriculum between teachers, but this class is an example of one which uses completely different course material than most other philosophy classes. Almost all of the authors that typically come to mind when one thinks of philosophy are only briefly mentioned if even that. That's not necessarily a bad thing - there is philosophical value in every work, undoubtedly - but if you're expecting Nietzsche or Rousseau, you may be disappointed. At very least, the class wouldn't interfere with any of your philosophical pursuits outside of school significantly, except for perhaps in terms of the opportunity cost. Everything is what you make of it; you can learn a lot from any situation if you're willing.

Thoughts About Earlier Thinking

Taking "earlier thinking" to mean earlier blog entries, I actually have been thinking of using them in some way recently. I think some of the earlier entries which I actually bothered to write well could be used to apply to a creative writing program. They aren't fantastic, so I'm not sure exactly what the outcome would be, but I need a couple writing samples and this blog seems to be a good place to pull them from. I remember some mention of a former philosophy student using her blog posts to get some internship or something like that, so maybe I could do the same. My earlier thinking isn't really very well demonstrated in my earlier blog posts, I think.

Surrounded by Cuckoos, but I was the crazy one

I've never really felt I've been surrounded by cuckoos, or really that anyone is really any more crazy than any other. Everyone functions differently in some way, so to say some certain way is crazier than any other lacks basis in anything very substantive. Craziness is in the eye of the beholder.

There's an artist named David Firth who has created videos which I think are particularly deranged in an intriguing kind of way. For some reason the disturbed nature present in all of his works is oddly calming or pleasant. He's probably most known for the video series Salad Fingers, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg. I first discovered him when I was much younger, and while a few of his videos were somewhat terrifying for me, I didn't want to stop watching. I just recently re-watched a few of the videos in question and had nearly the same reaction.

If my situation is as the title of this blog implies, I suppose I should feel privileged to be the only crazy one among the cuckoos as craziness can be enjoyable.