Cogs can think.

It is The One Question. The question that has boggled the minds of men since the dawn of time. Well, at least ever since we set foot on the New World. And consequently destroyed it.

I already knew that the world’s sexiest English accent is that of a Southern girl from the States. Texas, that sort of thing. So incredibly sexy. However, I never knew what was sexier: an American accent, or a British one?

Presentations were held today in class, and it was an all-girl cast - a multicultural one at that. One girl tried very hard to sound British, while another girl was straight from the States. I finally had a real-life comparison right in front of me. As a result, I had zero idea what they were presenting, seeing I was focussing so much on the accents. You have to have your priorities straight, you know.

And the American girl won - hands down. The American variant of English is simply much, much sexier than British English. Glad I got that off my chest.

I speak with a distinctively American accent, by the way. You can barely hear I’m Dutch.

Yesterday at university, during an English course, I wanted to hand in a short assignment I was unable to hand in last week, together with this week’s assignment. I walked up to my professor (he’s from Texas, by the way), and said:

“Here’s last week’s assignment. I’ll hand it in now, apart form this week’s, so you don’t mix them up.”

Smiling, he replies:

“Erm, you wrote the week’s number on it. I’ve got a PhD, you know. I’ll figure it out.”

“Good point.”

My professor switches his attention to the beamer he’s setting up for class, and grumbles:

“Now, why won’t the damn picture show up!” Silence. “Oh wait. The cap’s still on…”

I couldn’t resist.

“A PhD, you say?”

I learnt something about myself today. I probably already knew it (I know my friends certainly did), but got it confirmed in a rather… Interesting way.

I will go to whatever lengths necessary to defend my own opinion. In a discussion, I will never admit it when I’m wrong. I redefine stubborn. The only way to get me to admit I am wrong is when I can gain something from it.

Today, a certain lady held a presentation in class. It was the first time since all the shite happened that I was sort-of forced to communicate with her - during a presentation, a presenter actually communicates with his or her listeners, mostly non-verbally. But I couldn’t do it. I still have a lot of… Weird feelings about this case, I’m just not sure what to do with all this. We were kind of really close. I’m certainly still extremely angry, but I consider myself to be above public displays of anger. I always opt for the ignore option. Control über alles. It’s better for everyone. There’s no need for me to act like an angry child.

So, I didn’t look at her, I ignored her. Sheer disapproval. The good thing about this option is that you really need to know what has happened between that lady and I to know I am actually ignoring her. And that’s good.

But to get back to that thing I learnt about myself - at one point, someone in the audience critiqued one of her statements. Yours truly, however, had to agree with the presenting lady. And so, my instinct to defend my own opinions overruled my anger with regards to the lady - I opened my mouth, defended the lady’s statements.

And it actually made me proud of myself. Not only does this mean I’m really willing to defend my opinions, it also means I can sever my personal emotions regarding people from the things they are saying.

And yeah, I’m proud of that.

Seeing I’ve already spent four years at university, as well as six years at Latin/Greek school, I’ve certainly had my share of academic articles, in many different fields, ranging from hardcore neuropsychology to conversation analysis. And as the weeks, months, and years of my academic career pass me by, I’ve come to thoroughly hate the writing style employed by many academic writers and scientists. There are two things that annoy me more than anything.

For the time being, it is useful to think of moves as discriminative elements of generic structure and strategies as nondiscriminative options within the allowable contributions available to an author for creative or innovative genre construction.

1. Cramming as many difficult words into a sentence as possible does not make you smart. In fact, it only makes it apparent you need to compensate for something.
2. If a sentence is so draconian that fairly educated folk such as yours truly (I never said I was humble, did I?), and one with a thing for language at that, needs to read them 244345 times before the actual structure (so not its meaning!) becomes apparent, it probably means you have written down a very bad sentence.

All these articles that I’ve read over the years have shown me one thing: academics are lousy, lousy writers. The fact that these articles are supposed to be read by peers is not an excuse to abuse language in the way so many academics tend to do.

It hurts.

I speak and understand Dutch, English, and German (my German is not that good, by the way - I refuse to learn its conjugations). I can understand French if spoken slowly, and can read a bit of it too - I can barely speak it though. On top of that, I have a basic understanding of Latin and ancient Greek. I study English in university now, and it really shows; my English has made huge strides the past two years.

In addition to all this, I decided not too long ago that I wanted to learn an exotic language. Seeing my interest and love for the British isles, it only made sense to pick a language spoken there, and there is of course a variety of options to choose from.

Gaelic. More specifically, Scottish Gaelic - about 100 000 speakers, mostly in Scotland. Today, I made my first, very, very, small baby steps into the language.

It’s going to be an interesting learning process.

Soon, my dear beloved readers, I will explain what this was all about. Events are currently unfolding, but one thing is already clear: someone did a really naughty thing to dear ol’ me.

And that’s generally not a very wise thing to do. Because I bite. I kick. I scream. I fight until I get even. And even I will get.

Will somebody please take that knife out of my back? Some backstabbing bitch put it in there.

Thank you.

The 2nd attempt at assignment #6 was not good enough, he said. I’m giving him one more chance to reason, and if not, I will write an official complaint to the exam commission.

Dear XXXX,

With all due respect, I find this a highly dubious course of events. We hand in our work and 2nd attempts on time, we hear nothing from you the past 6 months, and all of a sudden we receive an email which states we only have a few days to redo assignment #6 - which essentially means I have to relearn the entire course and book, because after 6 months I sure know nothing of it anymore.

You should have contacted us sooner regarding assignment #6. We handed it in 22nd December 2006, so there was enough time to do so.

At this point I am not exactly sure what to do with this. Statistics has long been a done deal for me.

Kind regards,

Thom Holwerda

God, I hate teachers. Seriously, I really hate teachers.

First, a few days ago, we have a teacher of mine who insists I hand in a paper copy of one of my reports, despite the fact she already has that report in electronic format and all she has to do is press that goddamn print button. This means that I have to travel for two hours (by car, it’d be even worse (3-4hrs) via public transport) just to hand in a damn paper copy.

And to make matters even worse, I just got an email from my statistics professor, addressed to me and the girl I cooperated with during the course. The statistics course ended on 23rd December, 2006. I passed the exam with a high grade, and that girl and I finished all our assignments on time. We had to redo two of the assignments, which we did, again, on time. After the course, we heard nothing from the professor. We assumed that everything was okay since he didn’t contact us in any way.

Until today, almost half a year later. He just sent an email in which he stated that we still had to redo assignment #6. I was flabbergasted. Apart from the fact that we had already redone that assignment on 22nd of December 2006, he dares to contact us six months later saying we have less than a week to do the assignment!

Seriously. The guy can suck my big fat cock. There is no chance in hell that I am going to dive back into statistics again, six months after having closed that book (and especially not with that girl). I politely returned his email, pointing him to the 2nd version of our assignment, which has been sitting in the digital drop box for six months. If he returns that email saying the 2nd attempt was not good enough either, and that we have to redo it again, I will contact the exam commission. He should have contacted us in a timely fashion, a few weeks after, at worst.

This is exactly why I fcuking hate teachers. They have the authority to demand all sorts of unreasonable stuff from their students, they are almost always inflexible and unforgiving, but when it comes to their own tasks and duties, they just don’t give two shits. And as a student, you haven’t a fcuking leg to stand on.

Together with criminals and people working for local and central governments, teachers are at the very bottom of the social pyramid, if you ask me. I have such a deep disdain for those people.

The Girl With The Red Hair. Her character has reached mythical proportions in the folklore of my friends and I.

It all started early last university year, during a course about writing scientific papers. The professor in that course was an asshole, to put it mildly, because all he did was cuss at us and blame us for his own incompetence in teaching us how to write scientific papers. And I can know, because I did just that for two years when I was studying psychology. Anyway, he refused to help anybody with our assignments, except for that one girl. The Girl With The Red Hair. He always helped her. He was always kind to her.

And in an inexplicable way, I was attracted to her.

Fast forward a few weeks into the course. My friends and I were at the university pub, having a few drinks, at a standing table. We were talking about said course. I went into bitching mode, complaining about our teacher, how he never helped us, how he hated us, how fcuking unfair it was that he would not help anyone except for The Girl With The Red Hair. He helped none of us, I said, except for The Girl With The Red Hair!

As the words came out of my mouth, I saw Martin’s face turn pale. I saw Levi’s eyes swivel from left to right, and back again. I saw the faint contours of a smile appear on Marco’s face, after which he made a nodding movement with his head to behind me, to the right. Completely unaware of the historic event about to happen, I looked in that direction.

Only to stare straight into the eyes of The Girl With The Red Hair, who was sitting 1.5m behind me. For all this time.

In panic, I looked back at my friends, hoping they would kill and eat me within the next 1.3 seconds. When I turned my head to see if The Girl With The Red Hair was still there, she was already standing right in front of me. She was about 20-30cm shorter than I was, carelessly holding a cigarette in her right hand. Looking straight into my eyes, she spoke the line which would make her immortal.

“So, what about me?”

And that’s how The Girl With The Red Hair achieved her mythical status. We never spoke with her afterwards, and now we rarely see her in university.