My Wednesday evening seminar this semester is on "Twentieth Century German History" and the professor was born and raised in Germany. This is satisfying, because having a professor with a German accent is pretty much a stereotype of college movies, and he's the first one I've had.

Anyway, last class I wasn't too happy at the end of it, because I said something kind of stupid early on in class. We'd read a book called The Origins of the Nazi Genocide, which was about the eugenics euthanasia program that the Nazis instituted well before they started systematically executing Jews. The blind, the retarded, the crippled, and the insane were hauled off and executed secretly, and it was on them that the techniques of industrialized killing were developed (e.g. gas chambers, mass crematoriums, etc.) The book also talks about the extent to which the Jewish Holocaust has outweighed the Nazi's systematic killing of Gypsies.

Anyway, in seminar discussion, I made a minor point, forgetting that the book had pretty much demonstrated the opposite point. And the book's evidence for that point was on the book cover. Whoops!

Later, though, I kind of redeemed myself by making some good points about the other books we'd read for that week, The Reader. The end of class was people volunteering what topic they had in mind for term papers; after most of the class suggested interesting things, I had to confess that I was just thinking that doing something on WWI might be interesting, as the class had spent almost no time on it.

As class was let out, the professor called me aside. I was expecting to get criticized for showing my ass in the beginning on the point of fact– while I had read the book, my slip of memory had made it look like I hadn't. Instead, the professor said "I know you're enrolled in the Master's program. Have you considered seeking a doctorate?" As I'm still pondering that decision, having another professor suggest it was certainly a point in favor.

Then the next day, he sent me an email suggesting a few books I could read over the weekend to get a more solid idea for a paper topic. Friday I picked up the four books, which total 1900 pages. Hmmm. I already have plenty of other work, of course. I think a skim is the best I will manage before I meet the professor on Tuesday.

Posted by: Boviate at 05:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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