that’s rhetorical… right?

Today, the “big course” of this semester started, which for me is “General Rhetorics”. The first reaction from most is probably most likely “What on Earth would you take that for, as you’re a Computer Scientist?!”. And, that’s what I plan to answer, in a way that tells about myself. And why would I do that, you might think. Mostly because we had it as an assignment, and a sort of creative way to do a naming round.

And so, there I was, taking a few minutes to ponder why I had even chosen it. The most immediate answer would be that I’ve gotten to like the who theorizing-part of discussion/argument for various stuff I find interesting. Delving a bit deeper, I – which I for some reason can’t recall writing here – had a course called “Methods in Language-Psychological Analysis” (!), which gave my general critical point of view a nudge in the right (wrong?) direction. I like having a real way of pointing out faults, inconsistencies and weak statistics and quoted stuff out in various texts – even if it’s only done “because I can”. That’s just me.

However, there’s also another reason, which I had probably known all along, but came to me when I said there wondering what to say. My writing side had been in me since early elementary school, and had most likely been suppressed (or just felt too natural for me to notice it), as my force lay in the numbers. Proving something was right in those subjects is easy, as it can be proved by applying “this formula” to values “a” and “b”, which will then always give “c”. Naturally, that doesn’t make the whole work trivial, just meaning that, if performed correct, there would in fact always only be one answer. And, sadly enough, Real life just doesn’t work like that. We have these dynamic values that gets applied here and there. And, as a reader of this, you know that I’ve “recently” gotten my urge of writing back.

All in all, I’m really looking forward to following the course and learning more of the fine arts of rhetorics, and getting to know Captain Obvious a bit more.

2 Comments


  1. I am NOT looking forward to our next argument! Oh-oooohh! “The lakes in Copenhagen are in fact one big lake”, “no, no they're not!!” <– remember?

    Reply

  2. Haha – yeah, I vaguely remember that one. One thing is being wrong, one thing is being wrong and convincing everyone else that you're not :D

    Reply

Leave a Reply