Journal 10.20

October 20, 2009

 

 

I don’t know if it’s my kit or anything else, but my Smart Bro sure is expensive, slow and more erratic than dial-up here in Bacoor… I really hope to get a faster and more reliable broadband connection before my 22nd birthday (yes, VZ, I’m turning 22).

 

*****

 

I’m getting a lot of problems with my STS magazine article. I have all the materials at hand and even have a well-constructed sentence outline but I still find it difficult to write. Probably the trouble is that I don’t have much quotations to put (magazine articles are full of quotes) and I don’t know how to make my sentences and paragraphs shorter. It’s just now that I realized that a good magazine article is so different from a research paper, and my training hasn’t readied me for the journalistic style of writing.

 

I should try to surmount this problem. According to my most eminent professor (VZ don’t ask me who he is, he might well be your idol too!) a social scientist should be a good writer too. A good writer does not only write social science research papers or monographs – he must be ready to produce essays for editorials, student-oriented magazines, anthologies, etc. In short, a social scientist should be able to speak to different people. After all, social scientists (per my social science research term paper) should be with society, a service provider or frontiersman, not a tenant in an ivory tower.

 

*****

 

The best professor isn’t someone who is always correct, but someone who is open to corrections.

 

The best professor isn’t someone who tells you things as they are, but someone who transforms things. The best professor transforms knowledge and transforms society, one mind at a time.

 

The best professor isn’t someone who believes in an ideology, but someone who has faith in the people. The best professor supplies the people with best tools and options he knows.

 

The best professor’s greatest skill is not in writing, speaking or listening. It is in making people think.

 

The best professor isn’t a professor at all, but a fellow learner too. The best professor does not aim to be the best himself but cultivate students who’ll become better than him.

 

*****

 

My digital library is going to undergo a major operation next week. I’m cramming the basics of library science so I can organize them. 1,000+ e-books, e-magazines and e-journals are not that easy to manage.

 

After that I’ll have them burned into DVDs for posterity and possible (free) distribution to trusted customers.

 

*****

 

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

 

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, AD 200