Studies, Present and Prospective

This morning I surprisingly woke up before 9:00. So I took advantage of the time until lunch by "hitting the books." I started by finishing Die Richterin. It is the tale of a female judge, Stemma, who rules a region in Switzerland in the time of Charlemagne, her daughter Palma, and her stepson Wulfrin. The writing is rich and the mood turbulent, contrasting with the clear, stern, superhuman knowledge and wisdom of the main character, and the turbulence is reflected in the rugged and violent scenery. Charlemagne is portrayed as a benign arbitrator of great mental stature and nobility, and yet human. Wulfrin is a conflicted, somewhat harshly mannered warrior. As for Palma, she is obviously a figment of a masculine imagination, being an unlikely idealized compound of naivete and truth and vulnerable affectionateness. A good read, also funny to read nowadays because of its occasionally very stilted language.

After that -- much to my surprise -- I spent fifty minutes over the first chapter in my Macroeconomics textbook (fortified by Glühwein, this time with orange and lemon juice added). In the course itself we began at Chapter 19, but considering that I understood about 1/50 of everything that followed, it seems wisest to begin again at the beginning. So I took notes on market vs. command economy and the definition of "resources." Then, for the next fifty or so minutes, I tried to understand Proposition I of Book III of Euclid well enough to be able to carry out the proof myself. When I finally understood the proof some forty minutes in (some time was taken up in searching for a ruler), I discovered in the footnotes that a certain De Morgan has come up with another, much better proof, which was recorded underneath. #$%?!

During the lunch break I went grocery shopping. I intended to make potato soup, Greek salad, and a pear soufflé with a meringue topping. Once I was back I first of all heated up the last of the mushroom soup, then polished it off with my spoon in one hand and The Carolingian Empire by Heinrich Fichtenau (a translation) in the other. But then my studies had to end, and I did the dishes, which took a really long time for some reason.

Then T. said that she wanted to go to the Studienberatung at the Freie Universität. So we took the U-Bahn to Thielplatz and eventually found Brümmerstraße 50. We had to wait a few minutes because both people in the office were busy with other worried students. Then we were able to say that we came from Canada and wanted to know how to get into the FU. The person at the desk said with a smile and, in the kind voice generally reserved for children when they do something where they're too young to know any better, said that we should do our own research. I had done research already, but T. was less comfortable with her preparation. Anyway, he took pity on us and sent us on to a small office on the second floor of a wing of the same building. We did have to wait an hour for our appointment, but I took out Der goldne Topf by E.T.A. Hoffmann and had a good time reading it while T. perused a map of Berlin. The friendly person who spoke with us then told us a few things worth knowing. For one thing, even if our marks are too low to get into the FU right away, we'll be put on a waiting list, and it may take up to five years but we'll get in eventually. But he did recommend that we try finding a university in a location where the universities aren't as overrun with applications as Berlin. When T. and I came home we were both tired, and T. took refuge in YouTube while I talked with Papa and Mama and then played movements of sonatas by Beethoven, Schubert, and Mozart (quite well).

Somehow today I was in a good doing-work mood and a good piano-playing mood but not in a very good interacting-with-people mood. It's very silly, but I don't know where to look in the U-Bahn, for example. That's what made me less chirpy than I would otherwise have been. By chirpy I mean genuinely cheerful, and not in the half-hearted surface cheeriness (or, really, frivolity) that has occasionally surfaced in the past few days.

P.S.: I am considering that I should try to apply to the Universität der Künste after all.