Existentialism

I finished a series lectures on existentialism today (lecturer was Professor Robert Solomon— From the University of Texas) . It was a 12 hour audio book. The lecturer went through some ideas by Camus, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger & Sartre. And what did I learn? Good question. The lectures revolve around responsibility & passion. The latter give life some meaning - we can choose to follow them! Do we exist in a sense that we live our life to the fullest? Or do we perhaps just go along with the crowd ("so called existance"), just doing what we're supposed to, being good persons etc. We're encouraged to take hold of our own lives, towards realizing what & where our particular talents and virtues are. Existentialism argues that life is about is about passionately throwing yourself into the work you do, thus "becoming the person you really are". No excuses: our personal choices and commitments define us. However, it doesn't tell people what to do, or how to do it. The choices, passions & discoveries must be made by you. We are in charge of our lives, we make ourselves. I thought it was entertaining and enlightening. A bit on the heavy side though.

I have yet to begin typing my final thesis. Research needs to be undertaken first. The first few books have been reserved from the library - I should go and pickup the first one that came available today. Naturally it would not hurt if I knew exactly what I am aiming at. Needless to say, some clarification and discussion is needed before I continue. Survey or interviews is the main topic. The thesis requires solid & useful first hand material.

Current weekly schedule: 20 hours of school, 20 hours of work. In addition, all homework & projects, and whatever time I put into the final thesis. Next week will bring some changes. I today (partially) finished 1 course, but have 3 new courses beginning shortly. The current bane of my life has been accounting. I did the final exam (second out of two) for it today, it went well I suppose. Now I need to quickly do a monster of an assignment for it - and take the midterm as a re-exam on March. If all goes well, everything will be passed & I will be a happy man. I flunked that on my first year, and never got around to doing it again. I thought the course was starting on January, but it turned out they had begun already last November. Therefore, I had quite a bit of catching up to do. My good luck was that the teacher split the course into two parts. 1. Proper accounting (double-sided, T-accounts), and 2. Understanding & evaluating financial statements. This latter part was cake, as I had already taken Finance & Investments. I really dislike the first bit though. Now I have to make a monster excel assignment by Monday. Bitch. Thursday & Friday will be full-blown workdays, with little energy left in the evening. Saturday is just 4 hours shift, so maybe that'll be the day to do it.

That's it for now.