Some things never change. I was reading Erasmus' The Praise of Folly yesterday and today and I came across a great paragraph that essentially sums up the way I feel about some of my peers here at school. Erasmus was a 16th century humanist and theologian from Rotterdam. He was a Catholic who rightly criticized the church for some of its corruption around and during the reformation. The paragraph goes like this:

"The rhetoricians of our times, who think themselves in a manner[of] gods... believe they have done a mighty act if in their Latin orations they can but shuffle in some ends of Greek like mosaic work, though altogether by head and shoulders and less to the purpose. And if they want hard words, they run over some worm-eaten manuscript and pick out half a dozen of the most old and obsolete to confound their reader, believing, no doubt, that they [who] understand their meaning will like it the better, and they [who] do not will admire it the more by how much the less they understand it."

Isn't it great? Don't get me wrong. I like graduate school. I like it for the simple facts that I like to read and I like to learn. What I don't like is the way one thinks they have to act in order to be accepted into the academic community. Sometimes it's a little too fake. Actually, I even like big words, but I don't abuse them. I'll only use an uncommon or fancy word when think that word is the best word to express my meaning and emphasis.

I know I promised I would give a top ten list, and that will come within a week. It takes time to think of one's favorite and least favorite things. Of course, this list will exclude people. Otherwise, both lists would probably include nothing but people. Ha ha. Oh, and I am making a new promise to not rant about graduate school for a while. I know I've got it good, and I don't want to seem ungrateful. I just couldn't resist posting that quote today.