omg blogger I miss you so. It's brings back memories of the periods of time when I had so much free time to come up with stuff.

It is so hard to write stuff well, I realize. Especially regarding things that actually matter, because so much of the time, what could be said has already been said. I think even if my writing seminar didn't teach me how to write well, it has taught me intellectual humility. There are many good ideas out there, and even if an idea sounds silly initially, research can often show otherwise.

My first essay pretty much went along the lines of "why is everyone talking about these irrelevant stuff?" I thought that it didn't take much to show that something is wrong or irrelevant. The problem though, was that I was doing an essay on ethics, and there isn't a set of fundamental principles that everyone can agree on. Is ethics based on rights and duties? Intuition? Minimizing suffering? I was lucky in KI in that I never really had to deal with ethics very much, because I could simply choose another essay. But here, it was three big assignments about ethics, so I had to deal with them somehow.

Coming up with something meaningful, interesting AND original is not simple, because so many other people are writing about meaningful and original stuff. There's so much research that needs to be done beforehand. Even then, it's often the case that I'll find people who disagree with my position, and it's so damned hard to show that he/she is wrong and I am right. There are so many ways to show how one thing is ethically sound and so many ways to show that it is not.

So this writing sem was one long route march out of my comfort zone, and I'm so glad I'm finally done with it. I may not have learn how to write, but I think I've learnt the importance of reading up beforehand. It's probably below what the university expects of me as I complete this course, but I'm glad that I took something away from it.

Random thought:

Military wedding vow:

I [NRIC] [RANK] [NAME], take you  [NRIC] [RANK] [NAME], to be my wedded wife/husband. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish WITH MY LIFE.