Philosophy Graduate Students Say the Most Peculiar Things
In the holiday spirit, I thought I'd post a few of the more memorable utterances of my fellow graduate students when I was a Berkeley in the 1990s. To give credit where credit is due, I'll use their names. I don't think they'll be embarrassed -- they shouldn't be! -- and I hope they'll forgive me if they are. (I'll remove their names from this post if they request it.)
David Barton, sitting in his usual spot on the couch in the graduate student lounge (a place he occupied sometimes for long stretches): "Work, schmerk. Kant, Schmant. For all x, schmex."
Josh Dever, sitting in a hottub, holding up the chlorinator: "This is the name I'll give to my first child." Someone else: "You'll name her 'chlorinator'?" Josh: "No, her name will be this object. If you want to refer to her, you'll have to include this chlorinator in your sentence." (Josh never did follow through with this intention, though.)
An undergraduate had written a paper on Kierkegaard including the following sentence: "Being a knight of faith is like falling off a never-ending cliff into water, hitting various flying things along the way." What can a T.A. do with that? John Holbo struck upon the perfect solution: He circled "flying things" and wrote in the margin "do you mean birds?", then photocopied the page and put it on a corkboard in the graduate student lounge.