Done Done Done

Posted by Diana Hsieh on 10 May 2005 at 8:15 am Uncategorized

May 102005

Well, I’m finally done my semester. It was pretty grueling toward the end, as usual. (I finished all of my papers on Saturday, but I had exams to grade by Monday.)

As some of you may know, I’ve gotten just a wee bit behind in my work at Boulder. Okay, I’ll admit that it has been pretty bad: I was carrying four incompletes this semester.

I originally got behind in the Fall 2003 semester, as I was desperately trying to sort through the the tangled mess of my association with TOC. That summer, I didn’t get much done in the end, despite far too many hours of work, largely due to conceptual problems in writing, particularly an inability to reduce the issue at hand to its fundamentals. (In the course pondering the failures of TOC, my standards for my own work rose dramatically, but my skills lagged a bit behind. I seem to be doing better now, thankfully.)

Last fall, it was nearly impossible to catch up. (In fact, I got one incomplete further behind.) I had three classes at Boulder, plus my course on Objectivism via ARI’s Objectivist Academic Center. I was also TAing for the first time: teaching and grading two recitation sections of 26 students each. This spring, I was only taking two classes at Boulder, plus the OAC course, plus TAing two recitation sections of 21 students each. So I managed to knock one incomplete off my total. (I actually finished two incompletes within the one-year deadline, then took a new one.) I’m definitely going to finish up the other three this summer; I’ve hated having them hanging over my head.

Here are the three just-completed papers:

Better Morally Good Than Morally Lucky for my Spring 2004 “Topics in Values” class. I was pretty happy with this paper. I plan on expanding it for my big “fifth semester paper,” so comments and feedback would be particularly welcome. In fact, the more general topic of moral responsibility might be of interest as a dissertation topic.

Animal Wrongs for my Spring 2004 “Environmental Philosophy” class. Oddly, I have another paper to write on animal rights and/or liberation for my Fall 2004 “Animals and Ethics” class. Since I know the topic so well now, I’d like to write something with an eye to publication.

The Inevitability of Alternative Possibilities for this semester’s “Freedom and Responsibility” class. (Update: Maybe I’m not so done after all, as problems have cropped up with this paper. I’ll post an updated version when it’s finished.)

Oh, and Paul and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary last night, with our good friends Cliff and Alexa Brett. They were best man and maid of honor (respectively) at our wedding. Oddly, we share an anniversary: we were married on their sixth anniversary. Happy anniversary Mr. Woo!