Just Curious

Dr. O'Neill

Today I went to my friend Dr. Hugh O'Neill's place again to have afternoon tea with him. It was a very pleasant experience. Dr. O'Neill, who is a professional psychiatrist, noted in our conversation that many character traits are inherited, and that the genetic makeup of a person to a certain degree determines his temperament. So this is interesting. As a Quaker, he also noted that in our efforts to "hedge" ourselves against the "world," Christians (and Quakers in particular should not view the "world" as a monolithic whole. Instead, we should spend time with "worldly" people and hang out with them so that we could learn of their conditions and understand that even within the "world" each individual is preciously unique. Without such a personal knowledge it is easy for religious folks to become somewhat anti-social. These are very important insights for me.

Also, I just got my first (surprise) midterm on ODEs (ordinary differential equations) today. This is just terrible. Plain and simple. We weren't even informed of such a test before today. It's a take-home test and we have a week's time to work on it. It's going to be fine, but still...

posted by James Chang @ 11:48 PM