Freedom And Justice For All

The building in which my class is held is on the left.

It's only the afternoon right now, but I feel such a strong urge to blog before I forget anything about my first class and while it is still fresh on my mind that I thought I would get an early start.

We arrived bright and early at 9 AM this morning to room G76 in Goldwin-Smith hall for Professor Kramnick's first lecture. As today was the first day, we mostly just talked about what the course is going to cover, as well as niceties and just plain basic college techniques on how to take appropriate notes during his lectures. Then we broke into discussion groups. Nick and I are in the same one, led by an under-graduate student named Vijay. For the first part of the session, we mostly got to know each other as there was not much material to discuss yet.

Then we went to lunch! Here is a picture of dining in Trillium hall. We got to see all of our cohorts from the Hotel and Management program, which was nice because our schedules will not be overlapping too much from now on as they work insane hours.

The second part of our discussion session was not only very interesting but fun as well. We started with a warm-up question of "what does freedom mean to you?" We had half an hour to write about our own opinion on the topic. I personally believe that there are limits to freedom, and it is more about what do all the rules actually allow you to do rather than ultimate freedom which would to truly always do whatever you wish.

Then we had group discussions about freedom, our TA posing different situations and having us deliberate our different opinions, many of which differed but was great to consider in the whole spectrum of levels and nuances of freedom itself.

On a side note, Ithaca truly is gorges. Haha. In fact today we saw a beaver making its way downstream! Though we have been warned consistently about the dangers of going down into them and even wading in, I can still appreciate their beauty.