We’re off! The first logic lecture of the year done. No disasters. The data projector behaved. The last slide popped onto the screen with one minute to go. I talked mostly good sense. Bits of explanation had a beginning, middle and end — even sometimes in that order. Phew. After all these years, the first lecture is still nerve-racking. Piece of cake from now on.
But the lecture room doesn’t look much like that picture (of a scene that should really gladden the heart of Steve Jobs). I noticed just one laptop — odd, as I think a lot of our students have them, but they just haven’t yet got into the habit of bringing them en masse to classes here. But give it another year or two …
I dunno – prior to getting a laptop I tended to resent the students that tap away at them in lectures because a) they make considerably more noise than pen scratchers and b) they thereby have lecture notes in an easy-to-distribute format but then DON’T* which b1) is anti-social in a sense but b2) is exactly what I’d do.
So in order to avoid hypocrisy I don’t use my laptop in lectures, even when I have it with me.
Besides which, tripos is still – for reasons unclear to me – handwritten, and as I type my essays and, indeed, everything else in my life, I need all the excuses I can get to actually write by hand.
I cannot, of course, guarantee that the other philosopher students share my various neuroses, but that’s why at least one MacBook isn’t seen in lecture rooms.
* – Colin Hoad had a website with his revision notes up at one time which was very useful. It’s the kind of thing I’d /like/ to do if my own notes weren’t near enough entirely gibberish. What I might do at some point is – as it were – retrospectively put some together to stick online after I no longer need to worry about /actual/ revision (good exercise over the summer, maybe).