2nd entry for 25th Sep.

Honestly, I hadn't been quite comfortable about choosing any topics for my journal, so it came to my mind to introduce something for this purpose. This something, this 'anything [what the journal should be about]' is going to be a novel (so far), The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I did not have the faintest reason to choose this one in particluar, I can't even remember how did its title took my attention last week. Usually that's the way I find good ones.

I'd like to tell I'm quite fond of handwriting (you'll be absolutely unsure about it upon having a look, though), but I would digitalize the journal anyway, and that'd be extra work. Certainly, I'm not going to write strictly about the novel, but about all the things coming to my mind while reading it.

The first surprise was its vocabulary. Ten new words per page! I've been concentrating, let's say, only on British English, ever since I've got seriously interested in English. That was when I had been studying at SEAS ELTE for two semesters, 4 years ago.

All the text is filled with words I'm not used to (however, they're definitely not solely AmE words), it's something I didn't experience with Bram Stoker, for example, I was fairly comfortable with his style. (On the other hand, I must admit I've never read a whole book in English.) It might be as well, that Stoker and some others weren't that demanding about their language, talking about a kind of 'quality pulp fiction' from the XIX. century.

I'm wondering if it's only a slight 'culture shock' for the beginning.

1st entry for 18th Sep.

About “What True Education Should Do” by Sidney Harris

I've always found it a shockingly ignorant custom of humanity to destroy the natural senses of youngsters while bringing them up. As if society wouldn't need anything but well-conditioned, well-informed brains to work in already built-up systems.

I've heard about people considering childhood merely as a state of insanity. It's just amazing how fast a single conception can occupy a whole human mind, which used to be wide open before. I'm talking about the conception of 'educated thinking', or 'being a regular adult', for example, but it applies to even more simple ones.

The article, however seems to point out there's not any need to educate people in the regular way.

So we've got two conceptions here about education, the first seems to tell us we were all born with rubbish in our heads, and the second seems to tell we carry the seed of perfection inside, which doesn't actually need to be expanded further.

I would say, neither view is balanced, but indeed, one is less unwise.

Vocabulary on this article:

to elicit: to extract some information/reaction from someone
controversy: public argument
succinct: brief and clear
dunce: a wrong student
to sift: to separate the rough from the fine, the necessary from the needless
to assent: to agree or approve something
oyster: a clam

ardour: enthusiasm

How to get from the Resource Center to the Rocky?

First, find your way out to the big hall with the nice flooring. Then you turn right, find the exit to the streets and cross the parking spot, you find yourself at the main road where the buses run. Now you've got two options. You can follow this main road passing B/1, A/1, and you have got the Rockwell in front of you on the left.

Or, if you'd like to walk less, you can go ahead, across the road, then a little left, towards the Library. You pass it to the left, follow the path to the main road, and if you don't get lost (which is fun anyway), you'll see the Rocky a little further on your right, at the opposite side of the road.