It’s 9:30. I’m at home, sitting at my desk, looking out over the neighbourhood. Everything is covered in a thick layer of snow. At the end of the road, a chimney is exhaling white smoke that looks almost like a cloud of rising snow. On my balcony, a chair has fallen over. Its back now covers the floor, itself covered by a good amount of snow — as a matter of fact, despite the snow on the perforated chair back surface, the ground beneath it appears to be snow-free. It is, however, odd that the chair is lying down — was it like that before? Did the snow’s weight make it collapse?

This week, I’ve ruined all my good habits save for going to the gym with Philipp. I’ve been staying up until midnight and waking up without an alarm. I’ve skipped every lecture save for Physics and LinAlg, and I’m missing even that today. But I’ve made sure to do all the Serien — they’re the only time-dependent thing. I guess I kind of just made my own Entschleunigungswoche, since the official one was an absolute dud.

I read the entirety of Death Note in two days instead of catching up on lectures. What an amazing manga. I think it’s pertinent to our current time as well: Perhaps what we are seeing on a global scale is people who want their politicians to be like Kira. But analysis aside, the story is brilliant too. I especially loved the ending.

Other than that, I watched the integration bee and participated in the physics brawl with a couple of friends. The latter was alright, though I made some regrettable mistakes throughout.

I’m going to be attending the LinAlg club after a doctor’s appointment today. I’ll have to catch up on the LinAlg lecture, unfortunately, but that should be manageable on the weekend or so. I also still have to catch up on Analysis, and the prof still hasn’t uploaded the slides.

In general, I’ve found that it’s incredibly easy to fall out of good habits and hard to get back into them. However, this may just be because I appear to be succeeding despite the bad habits. While I’m not attending all the lectures, I’m certainly not procrastinating — that appears to be the big killer. Also, it appears that only around 15% of students don’t procrastinate. I suppose I’m lucky to be part of that 15%.

Most people I know are struggling in some way or another. It’d be an absolute dick move to tell them that I’m not. But the truth is that I’m not struggling, and I can afford to relax, take things easy, write some blog posts, read obsessively, make some awful music, argue in the chat. I’ll continue to reap the benefits while I can. I don’t feel an urge to rub it in people’s faces. The reason I’m putting this on here is so that it’s a faithful log of my current state; as said before, I’m writing mostly for myself. If you’re reading this and you are struggling with uni stuff, write to me and I’ll give you pointers, explanations, whatever. Feel absolutely free. I have more than enough time on my hands, and it’ll help me learn too.

In any case, the reason I stayed up until late last night was an argument in the chat concerning a new rule our physics professor made: Each person may only ask two questions per lecture. The individual who asks far too many questions was (understandably) upset at this. For the second time, people tried to explain to him why it’s unreasonable to ask the sheer number of questions he does, but it was like watching a debate with a brick wall. This time, he was trying to act righteous — last time, he was all “fuck you” and “I’ll treat it like high school as long as the profs let me.” Clearly, this move by Ensslin was to do exactly that — to stop him from treating it like high school.

He is the exact reason that such a rule was implemented. His argumentation was almost a complete 360° from last time — first he said that the profs decide how to structure their lectures, now their rules are unfair. However, he still resorted to insults, disappointingly enough. There were one or two arguments that did make sense: It may discourage questions, as people may wish to “save their question” for something more important — however, if they are able to understand the matter without a question, then them not interrupting the lecture is a good thing.

In general, I found that individual’s arguments were simply devoid of respect for all parties, especially when he called the professor a “glorified overhead projector”. There’s a reason behind every part of every lecture, a type of Quality that underlies most elements of what he says and how he says it. We are fortunate to have good lecturers this year (and not ridiculous hype-men. I’ve been with those, and the contrast is stark). For instance, the reason he speeds through evaluations of mathematical formulae is as he said, the precise mathematical derivation of every step matters only insofar as it leads to the result. Whether it’s Kepler or the moment of inertia of a cone, he’s showing the steps (as he should), but the steps don’t really matter as much as the result, which is why he’s trying to minimise the amount of time spent on them.

Another thing that the question-asker must understand is that there are times when asking questions isn’t appropriate, yet pointing out minor corrections is — asking a prof to explain a theorem while he’s explaining the theorem will be disruptive to the flow of knowledge as long as the prof doesn’t just say: “now let me finish” — a thing our profs, sadly, seem to have to learn to do.

The prof isn’t stupid. He understands that not everyone wants to restrict the number of questions in the lecture. However, this move of his shows that he, on some level, agrees that the sheer number of questions from this individual is far too large. Also, I don’t think he enforces it very strictly — I think I asked three questions spread-out last lecture. It’s not far-fetched to say that the rule exists specifically for him and the other one or two like him that just overdo it. It’s just what Mr. Questions asked for: He said he’ll treat it like high school until the profs stop him.

In any case, I’m looking forward to the IRL discussion. I think I might go to Analysis on Monday and see how much time we spend on his questions.

[Just so that I’m not misconstruing: The first time, he said “Und wenn ihr von den fragen genervt seit weil ihr es selber schon verstanden habt fickt euch halt😂”, as well as “Ich behandle Vorlesung 1:1 wie mittelschule und werde das auch weiter so tun solange es klappt. Warum soll ich nicht fragen wenn der Dozent ea erlaubt😂”. The second time it was: “Der typ sxhreibt einfach nur das skript an did tafel. Wenn man keine Fragen stsllen darf ist [physics professor] ein überbezahlter overheadprojektor”.]