Shakespeare with Prof K

This is the second semester of a class I took last semester as well, same professor too. I loooooooove Prof K. Last semester we read A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Henry IV Part 1, King Lear, Measure for Measure, Coriolanus, and The Tempest.

This semester we’re reading Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Richard II, Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Winter’s Tale. Exit pursued by a bear, anyone?

It won’t be the same without Aria in the class… our combined notes were…. interesting… Here’s just a piece of my notes from As You Like It

Abnormal Psych with Prof O

I knew I was going to love this class from the time that Prof O told us he wasn’t going to take us through the clinical definitions of each and every disorder that we cover. Thank god.

Prof O: I don’t need to tell you what depression is, you already know that. You go into the dining halls, you look at the food and you feel depressed.

Today in class we went through some figures from history and their mental disorders! It only furthers the proof that the line between genius and insanity is very thin. Often it’s called talent.

• Beethoven- Suffered from manic-depression. Many artists do actually, it’s the mania that allows mass production of work.
• Van Gogh- Temporal lobe epilepsy, which effects not motor skills but just the emotions. Did you know epilepsy medication can help cure bipolar disorder?
• Abraham Lincoln- Depression. Though normally though of as driven and dedicated it might be because of his bleak outlook on life.
• Virginia Wolfe- Hypographia. Seriously? It’s a disease where you can’t stop writing. If you’re over that talent line you should be fine, but if you write gibberish you’d probably fall into that category of distress.
• Winston Churchill- Bipolar. Some scholars say if he didn’t have the mania that comes with this disease he would not have been able to carry on so feriociously in a war with almost no chance of winning. Also he was an alcoholic, likely self medicating.

Other than that, there’s the geek theory of autism- The highest rates of diagnosis of autism are in Silicon Valley?