<p>Welp. June’s almost done and still no sign of the application.
:)</p>
<p>The application is up! It seems that the coeducational issue will be resolved legally by the due date for applications. My mother argues that if there are women admitted, there will be relationships, and in the event of a breakup the sense of community may be strained. This seemed to me to not be an issue, as sources say there have been gay relationships on campus. What do y’all think?</p>
<p>hminot: Where did you see information about the possible resolution of the lawsuit? I have been searching to no avail!</p>
<p>Go to a section called"coeducational" on their website, I believe it is on the news section. There they have a blog on the legal updates.</p>
<p>Thanks, hminot!</p>
<p>So what music are you guys listening to? You reading anything interesting?</p>
<p>I’m completely uneducated in any music pre-1900, and know very little about classical music in the 20th Century, so I’ve been trying to educate myself there by listening to Rachmaninov, Debussy, Strauss, Messiaen, Thomas Tallis, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Webern, Dvorak and, of course, Mozart. I’ve been pursuing this pretty far, and it’s been consuming a large amount of my spare time.</p>
<p>In terms of reading, I’ve been lounging around on JSTOR reading on Mathematical Platonism/Nominalism. I’ve been taking several online courses, too. And working. </p>
<p>For leisure, I went through J.P. Donleavy’s “Schultz”, just yesterday. It was fun and simple. Donleavy has a way with words, and the eponymous protagonist is regularly able to make you laugh by twisted virtue of the sheer ridiculousness of his statements and the disarmingly basic crassness of his language. “Schultz” is no “Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule”, but it was a very welcome break in a summer that is proving to be much more stressful than my school year.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the essay looms. I’ve begun conceptual work, and am scribbling my thoughts on a notepad I carry around, as always. But when I think of the task that lays before me, I am unavoidably subsumed by some cosmic dread, shoved to my knees by the enormous task of putting my desire into words, petrified of putting lustful pen to listless paper, deep within the swaying mountains of this wakeful fugue state that is my summer.</p>
<p>“An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.”
– Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Journey’</p>
<p>Why is it that when I post in here, the thread comes to a screeching halt?
Speak, friends! Speak!
How are your summers? What have you been reading? Watching? Listening to?
This song is getting some pretty heavy play from me, right now.
[Can</a> - Future Days - YouTube](<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube)
Helps calm me down. Really easy to listen to.</p>
<p>ThePinko, your posts are a bit disarming. You write on this forum with the thoroughness that one might employ while writing to an intimate friend. However, because you are not (this is a… public forum), and because all responses to you do not share the enthusiasm or severity of your posts, you’ve rendered this thread your own personal Fleshlight. Is this… like, I am not being facetious: were you aware? </p>
<p>I may also be totally off-point here. You may be trying to relate, in earnest, to some people–given, over the internet–who should probably share some interests with you, as they are applying to the same bizarre school that you are. </p>
<p>I don’t mean to be severe. To be perfectly honest, I would be thrilled if you and I both made it to Round 2, and we could meet. I am fascinated by the boy who sits at the computer and relays to complete strangers, in intense detail, each new intellectual pursuit! Genuinely fascinated. I don’t know what to make of you. I once mentioned you to a friend who has a slight interest in applying to DS. I had barely described what you’ve written in any depth, and he said, “ThePinko?” He shared my… alarm. I am trying to decide what you look like. Your real-life speech and personality can go so many ways.</p>
<p>We’ll find out in two days if it’s even possible for me to apply, though ;)</p>
<p>I’ll be more direct: what do you make of your audience here, on CollegeConfidential’s Deep Springs 2013 prospectives thread? Whom do you imagine it to be?</p>
<p>You know what, Pinko, while I’m up: you’ve said that you’re inclined towards the literary. Can you explain this inclination? Why is it so? Just aesthetics, or is there a more personal, tangible reason?</p>
<p>Fleshlight? I certainly hope what I’ve been saying hasn’t come off as masturbatory!
There’s nothing here to masturbate. I’m not writing for an audience, nor am I examining my posts (though I probably should be).
Now as to where my perceptions of what kind of people would frequent this thread come from? I’m using previous threads as the bases for my conjecture. I’ve seen discourse of this manner on those threads, and am hoping those who frequent this thread will respond with comments similar to mine (which, in turn, are similar to those found in “Deep Springs College”, “Deep Springs '14”, and the others).
Now as to whether responses share the enthusiasm, or, as you put it, “severity” of my posts, I am somewhat disappointed, as my expectations were (perhaps fatally) specific, and, erm, lofty, from perusing previous threads.
"You may be trying to relate, in earnest, to some people–given, over the internet–who should probably share some interests with you, as they are applying to the same bizarre school that you are. "
This is exactly what I am trying to do, and this is why your “Fleshlight” comment was genuinely hurtful, to me. In the end, I am quite sensitive.
I am hurt because what I have been hoping for is discourse. Discourse with some of the brightest on the Internet, relatively speaking (I’m taking previous threads as indication of this). I’m hurt by the suggestion that my attempts at conversation have been anything other than sincere. Hurt by the idea that my desire for Socratic dialogue has been misinterpreted by even one person to be masturbatory, or self-gratifying.
I choose to relay my intellectual pursuits on this thread because in previous threads, that has been what prospective DSers have done. I choose to relay my intellectual pursuits on this thread because I want to share ideas with intellects as nuanced as the posters in previous Deep Springs threads. Judging by your (and others in this thread’s) obviously considerable Sprachgefuhl, it seems you (+ others) are the people for whom I’ve written these posts. Yet you do not respond, for you perceive my posts as masturbatory.
Yes, I write personally, because in the past, others have written personally in these threads.
But take this as a formal apology: I am sorry for appearing self-obsessed. Hell, I’m sorry if I appear self-obsessed right now (I’m guessing I do). I don’t think I am. I really want to hear your opinions. Above anything else, I really, really do.
I imagine my audience, in short, to be people like you. People such as those from the former Deep Springs thread. Those kinds of people. And I want to talk to them.
…Yeah.</p>
<p>Add.-- I’m inclined towards the literary because I feel I can articulate myself most clearly with verbosity and length. Any abstruseness resulting therein is either a genuine error or solvable via dictionary/encyclopedia. As to who I am? Well, I speak colloquially, and (comparably) at ease in person, since I am afforded less time to formulate a clear and pure expression of my thoughts and emotions. My real life personality? A bit grumpy, sometimes. A short temper when dealing with the inattentive or ignorant. Frustrated with those who employ dogma as discursive strategies, disappointed with general phonies. Largely, though, I’m normal and I’m agreeable. I’m being far more direct right now than I am in normal conversation. Some people would call “real” me a mask. I view it as a simple facet of who I am. Neither ego is more “real” or “genuine”. They coexist. Read: “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” (Erving Goffman) for further elucidation.
Also, would you mind articulating your “alarm” in greater detail? I’m very curious.
I’ll mention again, just so you don’t forget, I do feel bad about being masturbatory. I really don’t mean to be, and I would love for people to respond to my posts. I really do just want discourse. My lengthy abstractions have been somewhat painful for me to tolerate absent response, and I now suppose I understand why others have not been responding. So I will say it again.
I am so, so sorry. I’m a direct person, a sensitive person, but a person who chooses to be governed above all else by logic and rationality. I only have made my posts this verbose that they may be similar in stature and articulation to previous posts made in earlier iterations of this thread. Now, just one more time, to be safe:
I am sorry. I really, really am.
Whew.
Alright.
Consider this (over(over(over)))overlong response… over.</p>
<p>I wrote this post and then it got deleted. Ugh.</p>
<p>ThePinko, don’t worry. You haven’t offended. If anything, you’ve amused! While I didn’t truly mean to hurt you, so much as incur a strong response (so, I am sorry for that), I wonder why you were hurt. You have never met me, and may very well never do so. Nothing that I–or anyone else on the internet–say should hurt you. Does that make sense?</p>
<p>But hey, bud, you want engaging discourse–okay. “I’m inclined towards the literary because I feel I can articulate myself most clearly with verbosity and length,” you say. Because of the definition of the word “verbosity,” I fail to see your rationalization. Verbosity and clarity tend to exist at odds. You take an overwhelmingly evident joy in language, which I can appreciate. Hey, you name-drop like nothin i ain’t ever seen (I live in the largest city in the nation and I’d bet that I’ve not even seen as many people as you know names); have you forgone Orwell for your multitudes of obscurer pals? Forgive me for referencing such a high school-common thinker… lol. </p>
<p>Additionally:
“My lengthy abstractions have been somewhat painful for me to tolerate absent response, and I now suppose I understand why others have not been responding.” You may have alienated others here to an extent, yes. You have demonstrated a clear understanding of why that might be so. I am new to CollegeConfidential (I think I may have created my account in January just to look at your profile, Pinko, because you’re so ridiculous. I want you to take that as a compliment.), so I can’t truly speak for everyone, but I don’t think that so many users come here to engage. These forums are a narrow resource for specific information.</p>
<p>I’ve never written anything on an internet forum in my life. You caused me to. Congratulations. I’m not kidding when I say that I’d be so delighted to meet you, because you are genuinely perplexing. Who does this?! Who does what you’re doing here?!</p>
<p>At risk of offending, I want you to take it as a compliment, Pink! You know who does it? You! You’re doing you. That’s totally fine. Like I said, it is clear that you take tremendous joy in language. That evident thrill makes me smile! I’m rendered hopelessly perplexed, but you’ve got my attention! Fingers crossed for a successful transition to coeducation!</p>
<p>As to your first sentence, I’m confused by your logic. My dealings with people on the internet are the same as my dealings with people in the “real world”. If someone has read the thousand or so words I’ve written and has concluded I’ve been masturbating, either in the real world or the virtual one, I am hurt. What people say is what people say, and “wonderlandwed” is just as real as “Julie”, or, you know, whatever your “real” name is. I can see why this concept might be novel to someone if they have never written on an internet forum, before, but as a person who has made some of his closest friends on the internet, I can tell you that these relationships are very much “real”.
Now, as for verbosity, I feel explaining something in more words than necessary can provide explanation for thoughts and emotions in excess of the most basic wordings. Indeed, this idea is implicit in “verbosity”‘s definition. In being so verbose, I see myself as “building the footnotes into the body”, so to speak. Putting “If You’re Interested” notes right into the text. I think this provides the most background and insight into my mental landscape and thought processes.
I promise you I have not “forgone” Orwell. I prefer, however, Orwell’s pamphlets and essays to his fiction. Admittedly, I have only read Animal Farm and 1984, so I may not be as well-educated as I should be, but, for me, the most powerful passages in those two books were his direct ideological processes and abstract political dealings, like the segment in 1984 where he describes the cyclical nature of class warfare and revolution. Also, in the end, I think the oppression we’ve ended up facing in the modern world is far closer to Huxley’s self-enslavement than Orwell’s totalitarianism. Though each certainly has its place.
The reason I discuss people other than Orwell is because the themes Orwell deals with have most likely been hashed out with some amount of rigor in these students’ classroom discussions, before this thread was ever created. I don’t much see the point in retreading old ground.
Who does what I’m doing here? Just look at the earlier threads! All of those people! Rednegativity! Dylanf! Just look here:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/deep-springs-college/758613-deep-springs-college-6.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/deep-springs-college/758613-deep-springs-college-6.html</a>
Though I appreciate your calming my obstreperous spirit with the healing words of that once-crippled Canadian poet, Drake (Oh, yeah, that’s right/I’m doin’ me), I remain hurt by your words. I do appreciate your apology, though, and I hope everyone in this thread appreciates mine.
The most valuable lesson I think YOU stand to learn, however, is that even though I haven’t “met” you, or may never “meet” you, I’m communicating with you. Right now. The words I type are undergoing a strenuous voyage, thrice, four times transmogrified, modulated, put into binary, and spat out the other end – thousands of miles in simple seconds, across the country – to you.
The words I am speaking here, through this US-Dvorak-format keyboard, and this Intel computer and this Acer monitor are just as earnest and sincere as those I speak from the plucks and hammers of the chords that sit, equipoised, so deep in my throat, hanging eager in the ambient air like so many fingers over a Macintosh’s keyboard.
I am reaching over the chasm of time and space and my words are touching something on the other end. I don’t think this conversation we’re having is false. I don’t think it’s any less real than any conversation I have “in person”. I think it’s transfinitely more beautiful, infinitesimally more subtle.
I hope you write more things on more fora, wonderlandwed. You seem, to my humble sensibilites, to be a pleasant person. A world of ones and zeroes and iridescent Liquid Crystal flickers and genuine people with alliterated “aliases” just like yours are there. Here. So let’s talk. Discourse. :)</p>
<p>I need to start by saying that I think I was understood. I didn’t mean to suggest that you were literally masturbating, but rather, as you stated yourself, gratifying yourself. We can forget it, though.</p>
<p>Gotta admit that I’m slightly disappointed. I most certainly wasn’t quoting Drake. The true author of the line, if I’m not mistaken, is Rocko! I disagree with you about virtual communication; I don’t think you are truly communicating with me in any genuine or complex way. Only if we occupied immediate physical space, I’m convinced, could our communication maintain the extent of depth that you’ve described; too much is left to subliminal and subconscious interaction.</p>
<p>That being said, of course, I do believe that reading great literature (or observing whatever sort of art speaks to you, I guess), allows humans to connect mind to mind, or heart to heart. That sort of understanding doesn’t constitute… friendship, though. Personal relationship. Please, though, I’m not asking you to defend yourself.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen the thread you’ve linked here. I’ll be sure to peruse, if just due to my interest in the college.</p>
<p>Also: I didn’t doubt that you’ve read Orwell at all, just On the Politics of the English Language. But I said that really only to be dramatic. You aren’t so verbose as to be incoherent, but you are enough to seem like you are attempting shock value.</p>
<p>“You cannot know me, because you cannot experience my person (consisting of my voice, intonation, hot blood, gesticulation, sex, dress, skin, musculature, expression, PHEROMONES, etc.)”
I simply do not think this is what constitutes your person.
The suggestion that you cannot become friends with someone by communicating with them via text over the internet is one that belies a simple lack of experience, more than anything else. I think this is provably false, but proving this in a rigorous way is a very difficult thing to do. Perhaps the best course of action here would be to “Agree to disagree”.
As to Drake v Rocko, I’ll again chalk this up to my lack of rigor. I apologize for my startling lack of research. 
I think that when you set up these various criteria for “genuine or complex” communication, you need to quantify something illusive about human communication that has never been rigorously quantified before. I still honestly do not see how “ThePinko” is any less real than “realname”. By your criteria, is a phone conversation genuine or complex? A Skype video chat?
Also, conversations like our are distinct from reading literature. We could hypothetically form a friendship (I mean – I’ve taken a pretty immediate liking to you, though it seem this has not been reciprocated) via dialogue. It’s not as if I’ve written a book, am thousands of miles away, and you are writing a criticism or review of my book. Connections like ours are much more direct, and I’m curious as to how you’re drawing your borders as to what’s necessary for a genuine or complex connection.
I can agree that “experience” is, more or less, defined as that which is understood via the senses. I am understanding you via my sense of sight. By your logic, could Helen Keller, for example, make a genuine or complex connection with someone? She lacks two fundamental senses. What about someone who is simply blind? Who is blind, has no sense of smell, and is mute? Someone who is paralyzed and in a coma, who can only communicate by tapping messages? Two prisoners on opposite sides of a cell wall communicating via taps as in “Darkness At Noon”?
Now I was speaking figuratively, as well, regarding masturbation. This thread is not for my gratification. As I’ve said numerous times, I’ve hoped only for discourse. A wish which, to my delight, seems to be being granted right now!
It seems I’ve got a Du Maurier collection right here on my shelf. “The Apple Tree”, which has Monte Verita in it.
I’ll begin reading it, right now. I should probably be done by tonight.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m not attempting shock value.
This is pretty genuinely how I “speak” when I have the time to write out long messages.
I don’t know how to prove that, really. I would appreciate if you simply took my word for it.
I have read Politics and the English Language, and I choose not to abide by Orwell’s draconian rules. I don’t wish to limit language like he suggests. Many of his ideas are valid, and, in fact, profound, but he’s ultimately a tad too restrictive for my tastes.
Lastly, throughout your posts, you’ve been making subtle jabs at me. The vast majority of these have been fine, but there are one or two that have been a bit mean, like your suggestion of some degree of elitism on my part (referring to Orwell ironically as a “common high-school thinker”). I haven’t been rude to you, so I would prefer you weren’t to me. Again, it’s mostly fine, but elitism is something of a sensitive spot for me.</p>
<p>If you KNEW me, you’d know to take my “jabs” lightly. But I also have no point of reference; I don’t really know what attributes I’m criticizing–if they are inventions of my mind, or distortions that the barrier of the internet has caused. I lack fundamental knowledge of who you are. I didn’t suggest that someone mute, deaf, blind, etc., cannot truly know another person. Remember that I mentioned pheromones; senses perceive that which the conscious brain doesn’t. What do you think, then, constitutes a person? Surely his or her experience–all up until the present moment. Right? I can tell you all about my entire life over the computer, but you cannot gauge that which my intonation would indicate, were I telling you aloud. But furthermore, no, I could not develop a true friendship with someone I have only ever even videochatted with. That which a person has to tell me does not tell me everything about him/her. That is to say that I could only ever know that which s/he told me! I can only know what you tell me about yourself, which is such a minimal amount of all that makes you who you are. HOWEVER, I could definitely form a genuine alliance with someone I’ve never met! </p>
<p>I’ll insist that I do have experience in this realm, too. When I was a younger teenager, I had a few [platonic] relationships that existed mostly over the internet. Any emotion I thought I applied to them, though, was illusory, and I aptly learned that. They didn’t work out. </p>
<p>I have been poking some fun, yes. But I’ve taken a liking to you, Pink-man! To the extent that I can without knowing you! I truly believe that you have not, at a single point, been false. You’ve proven yourself to be vulnerable. I’m on your side here. I do hope that you have good luck in applying to Deep Springs! I can respect that you are sensitive to what I say, because you actually do feel like you are bearing your core being, even though no one who reads what you’ve written knows your true name. You feel like that which you’ve revealed herein is fundamental to who you are. That is okay. I do, personally, find that odd, but I respect that you are sensitive to what I say. You are anonymous, but maybe that makes this even realer for you. What’s your MBTI type? …lol</p>
<p>Welp, looks like girls can apply this year!
Good luck, everyone!</p>
<p>Hi everybody!</p>
<p>So I’m a girl who is pretty delighted with the recent decision on coeducation. I’m planning on applying as a transfer student. Anybody else planning on applying? (girls or boys!)</p>
<p>Elle</p>