Augustine Vs. Aquinas

Class began with a lecture on St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and a brief talk of how each were different. While St. Augustine has a very dark and pessimistic view on human nature, Aquinas is much more rational and believes in reasoning. I was able to take down many useful notes, but we did not actually go into much depth until we went to our discussion session with our TA, Nolan. There, we were able to pull out specific texts and quotes to prove how the two philosophers were actually different. We then, as a group, tried to relate each philosopher's ideal form of government to today's. In our writing session after lunch, we got our essays back from Monday, read over the comments Nolan had for us and worked on our essays with a partner. We then went around the room to discuss each of our essays. I was able to get a lot more insight from other people's ideas for it sparked new thoughts that I will now definitely add into the final version of our paper (which is due Friday).

Extremely blurry picture, but lunch with Professor Kramnick

I also had the privilege to eat lunch with the wise and interesting Professor Kramnick. Along with five other students, we each went around the table and told the group a little bit about ourselves-- where we were from, why we chose to take this course, and what we want to study in the future. Before attending lunch with him, I was very intimidated and scared to have lunch with such an accomplished professor. However, he was extremely nice and we ended the conversation with him telling a bit of background about himself.

Christian and I before checking in with Mr. Chanlaw

After a quick stuidy session with Christian and Jenna, the three of us walked to Bailey Hall to check in with Mr. Chanlaw. The cohort met up with him at 6:10 PM because the hotelies did not get out until around 6 PM (while we got out at around 3 PM). During these check ins, Mr. Chanlaw just wants to make sure that everything is going okay for us in terms of both our classes and our student/ campus life. After, the six of us went to the RPCC dining halls to eat dinner together. It feels like it's been forever since I last seen the hotelies so it was nice to catch up with them during our dinner. 

My dinner

Dinner with my entire cohort! How rare.

After going back to my dorm, I mainly reviewed the readings of Plato, just to make sure I fully understood everything. I also took a few more notes on the side of how his ideas connected with his view on justice.